blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         11th June 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
  32 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
  33 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
  34 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
  35 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
  36 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
  37 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
  38 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
  39 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
  40 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
  41 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
  42 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
  43 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
  44
  45 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
  46 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
  47 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
  48 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
  49 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
  50 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
  51 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
  52 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
  53 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
  54 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
  55
  56 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
  57 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
  58 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
  59 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
  60 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
  61 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
  62 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
  63 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
  64 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
  65
  66 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
  67 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
  68 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
  69 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
  70 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
  71 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
  72 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
  73 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
  74 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
  75 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
  76 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
  77
  78       </div>
  79       <div class="tags">
  80
  81
  82         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
  83
  84
  85       </div>
  86     </div>
  87     <div class="padding"></div>
  88
  89     <div class="entry">
  90       <div class="title">
  91         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
  92       </div>
  93       <div class="date">
  94         10th May 2015
  95       </div>
  96       <div class="body">
  97         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
  98 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
  99 criminal or not, are
 100 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
 101 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
 102 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
 103 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
 104 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
 105 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
 106 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
 107 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
 108 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
 109 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
 110 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
 111 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
 112 the police.</p>
 113
 114 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
 115 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
 116 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
 117 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
 118 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
 119 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
 120 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
 121 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
 122 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
 123 is good to know that
 124 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
 125 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
 126 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
 127 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
 128 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
 129 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
 130 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
 131 business getting access to that information.</p>
 132
 133 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
 134 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
 135 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
 136 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
 137 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
 138 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
 139 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
 140
 141 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
 142 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
 143 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
 144 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
 145
 146 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
 147 really could make such decision, I wrote
 148 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
 149 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
 150 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
 151
 152       </div>
 153       <div class="tags">
 154
 155
 156         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 157
 158
 159       </div>
 160     </div>
 161     <div class="padding"></div>
 162
 163     <div class="entry">
 164       <div class="title">
 165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
 166       </div>
 167       <div class="date">
 168          1st May 2015
 169       </div>
 170       <div class="body">
 171         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
 172 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
 173 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
 174 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
 175 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
 176 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
 177 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
 178
 179 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
 180 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
 181 the 2012 numbers are from
 182 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
 183 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
 184 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
 185 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
 186 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
 187
 188 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
 189 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
 190 enough.  See for example a
 191 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
 192 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
 193 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
 194 to get the storage requirements.</p>
 195
 196 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
 197 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
 198 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
 199 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
 200 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
 201
 202 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
 203 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
 204 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
 205 and large organisations:</p>
 206
 207 <table border="1">
 208 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
 209 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
 210 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
 211 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
 212 </table>
 213
 214 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
 215 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
 216 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
 217 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
 218 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
 219 collecting the data?</p>
 220
 221       </div>
 222       <div class="tags">
 223
 224
 225         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 226
 227
 228       </div>
 229     </div>
 230     <div class="padding"></div>
 231
 232     <div class="entry">
 233       <div class="title">
 234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
 235       </div>
 236       <div class="date">
 237         26th April 2015
 238       </div>
 239       <div class="body">
 240         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
 241 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
 242 announcement today</a>:</p>
 243
 244 <pre>
 245 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
 246 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
 247 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
 248 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
 249
 250 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
 251 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
 252 later today ;)
 253
 254 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
 255 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
 256 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
 257 be possible and encouraged!
 258
 259 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
 260 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
 261
 262 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
 263 operating system for schools, universities and other
 264 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
 265 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
 266 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
 267 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
 268 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
 269 days.
 270
 271 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
 272 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
 273 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
 274 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
 275
 276 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 277 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 278 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
 279 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
 280 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
 281 least 5 characters!
 282
 283 == Where to download ==
 284
 285 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
 286 can be downloaded at the following locations:
 287
 288     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
 289     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
 290
 291 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
 292
 293 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
 294 available, with more software included (saving additional download
 295 time):
 296
 297     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 298     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
 299
 300 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
 301
 302 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
 303 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
 304 options.
 305
 306 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
 307
 308 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
 309 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
 310
 311 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
 312 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
 313 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
 314 online version of the translated manual.
 315
 316 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
 317 release notes and the installation manual:
 318 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
 319 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
 320
 321
 322 == Errata / known problems ==
 323
 324     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
 325     DHCP (#780461).
 326
 327     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
 328
 329 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
 330 hostname immediately.
 331
 332 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
 333 more current and complete list.
 334
 335 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
 336
 337 === Software updates ===
 338
 339 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
 340
 341  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
 342    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
 343    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
 344
 345  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
 346    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
 347    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
 348    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
 349      the others see the manual.
 350  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
 351  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
 352  * GOsa 2.7.4
 353  * LTSP 5.5.4
 354  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 355  * new boot framework: systemd
 356  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
 357  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 358  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 359  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
 360  * golearn 0.9
 361  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 362  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 363  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
 364  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
 365    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
 366
 367 === Installation changes ===
 368
 369     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
 370     for the hardware present.
 371
 372 === Fixed bugs ===
 373
 374 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
 375 from a user perspective:
 376
 377  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 378    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 379    information is corrected (710362)
 380
 381  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
 382
 383 === Sugar desktop removed ===
 384
 385 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
 386 available in Debian Edu jessie.
 387
 388
 389 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
 390
 391 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
 392 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 393 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
 394 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 395 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 396 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 397 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 398 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 399 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 400 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 401 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 402 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 403 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 404 environment.
 405
 406 == About Debian ==
 407
 408 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 409 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 410 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 411 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 412 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 413 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 414 operating system.
 415
 416 == Thanks ==
 417
 418 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
 419 You rock.
 420 </pre>
 421
 422       </div>
 423       <div class="tags">
 424
 425
 426         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 427
 428
 429       </div>
 430     </div>
 431     <div class="padding"></div>
 432
 433     <div class="entry">
 434       <div class="title">
 435         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
 436       </div>
 437       <div class="date">
 438         15th April 2015
 439       </div>
 440       <div class="body">
 441         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
 442 computer system for schools I've involved in,
 443 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
 444 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
 445 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
 446 Agarwal.</p>
 447
 448 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 449
 450 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
 451 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
 452 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
 453 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
 454 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
 455 few software start-ups as well.</p>
 456
 457 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 458 project?</strong></p>
 459
 460 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
 461 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
 462 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
 463 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
 464 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
 465 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
 466 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
 467
 468 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 469 Edu?</strong></p>
 470
 471 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
 472 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
 473 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
 474 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
 475 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
 476 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
 477 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
 478 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
 479
 480 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
 481 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
 482 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
 483 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
 484 for the developer per-se.</p>
 485
 486 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 487 Edu?</strong></p>
 488
 489 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
 490 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
 491 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
 492
 493 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
 494 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
 495 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
 496 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
 497 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
 498 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
 499 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
 500
 501 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
 502 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
 503 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
 504
 505 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
 506 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
 507 interactive manner. While sites such as the
 508 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
 509 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
 510 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
 511 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
 512 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
 513 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
 514 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
 515 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
 516 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
 517 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
 518 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
 519
 520 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
 521 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
 522 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
 523 also be used.</p>
 524
 525 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
 526 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
 527 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
 528 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
 529 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
 530 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
 531 the user's input.</p>
 532
 533 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
 534 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
 535 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
 536 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
 537 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
 538 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
 539 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
 540 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
 541
 542 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
 543 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
 544 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
 545 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
 546 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
 547 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
 548 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
 549 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
 550
 551 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 552
 553 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
 554 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
 555 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
 556 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
 557 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
 558
 559 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 560 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 561
 562 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
 563 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
 564 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
 565 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
 566 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
 567 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
 568
 569 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
 570 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
 571 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
 572 well.</p>
 573
 574 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
 575 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
 576 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
 577 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
 578
 579 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
 580 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
 581 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
 582 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
 583 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
 584 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
 585 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
 586 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
 587 releases.</p>
 588
 589 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
 590 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
 591 is aimed at.
 592
 593 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
 594 around 2 years, and
 595 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
 596 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
 597 there was :</p>
 598
 599 <ol>
 600
 601   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
 602    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
 603    portion/syllabus given.</li>
 604
 605   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
 606    is in the syllabus.</li>
 607
 608   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
 609    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
 610    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
 611    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
 612    as recognizable as say a
 613    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
 614    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
 615    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
 616    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
 617    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
 618    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
 619
 620 </ol>
 621
 622       </div>
 623       <div class="tags">
 624
 625
 626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 627
 628
 629       </div>
 630     </div>
 631     <div class="padding"></div>
 632
 633     <div class="entry">
 634       <div class="title">
 635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
 636       </div>
 637       <div class="date">
 638          7th April 2015
 639       </div>
 640       <div class="body">
 641         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
 642 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
 643 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
 644
 645 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
 646 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
 647 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
 648 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
 649 part of my involvement with the
 650 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
 651 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
 652 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
 653 Hackathon with our friends
 654 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
 655 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
 656 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
 657 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
 658
 659 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
 660 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
 661
 662       </div>
 663       <div class="tags">
 664
 665
 666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 667
 668
 669       </div>
 670     </div>
 671     <div class="padding"></div>
 672
 673     <div class="entry">
 674       <div class="title">
 675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
 676       </div>
 677       <div class="date">
 678          4th April 2015
 679       </div>
 680       <div class="body">
 681         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
 682 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 683 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 684 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
 685 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
 686 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
 687 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
 688 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 689 project pages.  You can also check out the
 690 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
 691 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 692 and HTML version available in the
 693 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
 694 directory</a>.</p>
 695
 696 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
 697 you find any.</p>
 698
 699       </div>
 700       <div class="tags">
 701
 702
 703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 704
 705
 706       </div>
 707     </div>
 708     <div class="padding"></div>
 709
 710     <div class="entry">
 711       <div class="title">
 712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="date">
 715          9th March 2015
 716       </div>
 717       <div class="body">
 718         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
 719 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
 720 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
 721 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
 722 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
 723 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
 724 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
 725 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
 726 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
 727 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
 728 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
 729 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
 730 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
 731 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
 732
 733 <p>The list of NUUG videos
 734 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
 735 include things like a
 736 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
 737 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
 738 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
 739 re-implementation</a>, the
 740 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
 741 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
 742 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
 743 video</A> and many others.</p>
 744
 745 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
 746 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
 747 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
 748 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
 749 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
 750 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
 751 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
 752 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
 753 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 754 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
 755
 756 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
 757 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
 758 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
 759 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
 760 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
 761 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
 762 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
 763 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
 764 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
 765 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
 766
 767       </div>
 768       <div class="tags">
 769
 770
 771         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 772
 773
 774       </div>
 775     </div>
 776     <div class="padding"></div>
 777
 778     <div class="entry">
 779       <div class="title">
 780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
 781       </div>
 782       <div class="date">
 783         28th February 2015
 784       </div>
 785       <div class="body">
 786         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
 787 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
 788 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
 789 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
 790 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
 791 made for
 792 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
 793 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
 794 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
 795 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
 796 a friend have
 797 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
 798 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
 799 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
 800 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
 801 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
 802 it happen ourselves.
 803 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
 804 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
 805 is.</p>
 806
 807 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
 808 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
 809
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="tags">
 812
 813
 814         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 815
 816
 817       </div>
 818     </div>
 819     <div class="padding"></div>
 820
 821     <div class="entry">
 822       <div class="title">
 823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
 824       </div>
 825       <div class="date">
 826         25th February 2015
 827       </div>
 828       <div class="body">
 829         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
 830 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
 831 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
 832 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
 833 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
 834 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
 835 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
 836 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
 837 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
 838 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
 839 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
 840 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
 841 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
 842 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
 843 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
 844 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
 845 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
 846
 847 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
 848 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
 849 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
 850 with VLC.</p>
 851
 852 <ul>
 853   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
 854   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
 855 </ul>
 856
 857 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
 858 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
 859 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
 860 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
 861 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
 862 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
 863 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
 864
 865 <blockquote><pre>
 866 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
 867  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
 868  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
 869 </pre></blockquote>
 870
 871 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
 872 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
 873 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
 874 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
 875
 876       </div>
 877       <div class="tags">
 878
 879
 880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 881
 882
 883       </div>
 884     </div>
 885     <div class="padding"></div>
 886
 887     <div class="entry">
 888       <div class="title">
 889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
 890       </div>
 891       <div class="date">
 892         10th February 2015
 893       </div>
 894       <div class="body">
 895         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
 896 that
 897 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
 898 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
 899 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
 900 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
 901 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
 902 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
 903 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
 904 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
 905 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
 906 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
 907 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
 908 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
 909 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
 910 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
 911 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
 912
 913 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
 914 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
 915 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
 916 controversy about these scanners.</p>
 917
 918 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
 919 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
 920 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
 921
 922       </div>
 923       <div class="tags">
 924
 925
 926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
 927
 928
 929       </div>
 930     </div>
 931     <div class="padding"></div>
 932
 933     <div class="entry">
 934       <div class="title">
 935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="date">
 938          8th February 2015
 939       </div>
 940       <div class="body">
 941         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
 942 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
 943 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
 944 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
 945 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
 946 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
 947 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
 948 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
 949 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
 950 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
 951 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
 952 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
 953
 954 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
 955 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
 956 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
 957 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
 958
 959 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
 960 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
 961 distribute the TV content.  The
 962 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
 963 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
 964 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
 965 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
 966 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
 967 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
 968 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
 969 following activity, we now have the schedule
 970 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
 971 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
 972 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
 973 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
 974
 975 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
 976 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
 977 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
 978 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
 979 streams are working as they should.</p>
 980
 981       </div>
 982       <div class="tags">
 983
 984
 985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 986
 987
 988       </div>
 989     </div>
 990     <div class="padding"></div>
 991
 992     <div class="entry">
 993       <div class="title">
 994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
 995       </div>
 996       <div class="date">
 997         12th January 2015
 998       </div>
 999       <div class="body">
1000         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
1001 Foundation</a> announced a new video
1002 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
1003 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
1004 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
1005 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
1006 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
1007 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
1008
1009 <p>But today I was told that
1010 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
1011 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
1012 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
1013 available in
1014 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
1015 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
1016 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
1017
1018 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
1019 Libreplanet
1020 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
1021 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
1022
1023       </div>
1024       <div class="tags">
1025
1026
1027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1028
1029
1030       </div>
1031     </div>
1032     <div class="padding"></div>
1033
1034     <div class="entry">
1035       <div class="title">
1036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
1037       </div>
1038       <div class="date">
1039         30th December 2014
1040       </div>
1041       <div class="body">
1042         <p>I am very happy that we in the
1043 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
1044 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
1045 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
1046 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
1047 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
1048 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
1049 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
1050 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
1051 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
1052 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
1053
1054 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
1055 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
1056 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
1057 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
1058 reports in public.</p>
1059
1060       </div>
1061       <div class="tags">
1062
1063
1064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1065
1066
1067       </div>
1068     </div>
1069     <div class="padding"></div>
1070
1071     <div class="entry">
1072       <div class="title">
1073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
1074       </div>
1075       <div class="date">
1076         19th December 2014
1077       </div>
1078       <div class="body">
1079         <p>So, Sony caved in
1080 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
1081 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
1082 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
1083 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
1084 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
1085 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
1086 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
1087 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
1088 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
1089 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
1090 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
1091 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
1092 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
1093
1094 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
1095 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
1096 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
1097 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
1098
1099 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
1100 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
1101 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
1102 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
1103 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
1104 income. :)</p>
1105
1106       </div>
1107       <div class="tags">
1108
1109
1110         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1111
1112
1113       </div>
1114     </div>
1115     <div class="padding"></div>
1116
1117     <div class="entry">
1118       <div class="title">
1119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1120       </div>
1121       <div class="date">
1122         22nd November 2014
1123       </div>
1124       <div class="body">
1125         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1126 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1127 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1128 courtesy of
1129 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1130 Schubert</a> and
1131 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1132 McVittie</a>.
1133
1134 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1135 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1136 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1137 you upgrade:</p>
1138
1139 <p><blockquote><pre>
1140 Package: systemd-sysv
1141 Pin: release o=Debian
1142 Pin-Priority: -1
1143 </pre></blockquote><p>
1144
1145 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1146 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1147 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1148 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1149 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1150
1151 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1152 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1153 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1154 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1155 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1156 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1157
1158 <p><blockquote><pre>
1159 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1160 </pre></blockquote><p>
1161
1162 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1163
1164 <p><blockquote><pre>
1165 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1166 </pre></blockquote><p>
1167
1168 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1169 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1170
1171 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1172 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1173 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1174 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1175 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1176 Jessie is released.</p>
1177
1178 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1179 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1180 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1181 line.</p>
1182
1183       </div>
1184       <div class="tags">
1185
1186
1187         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>.
1188
1189
1190       </div>
1191     </div>
1192     <div class="padding"></div>
1193
1194     <div class="entry">
1195       <div class="title">
1196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1197       </div>
1198       <div class="date">
1199         10th November 2014
1200       </div>
1201       <div class="body">
1202         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1203 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1204 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1205
1206 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1207 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1208 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1209 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1210 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1211 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1212 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1213 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1214 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1215 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1216 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1217 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1218 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1219 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1220 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1221
1222 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1223 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1224 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1225 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1226 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1227 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1228 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1229 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1230 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1231 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1232 were fairly easy, and
1233 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1234 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1235 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1236 useful approach.</p>
1237
1238 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1239 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1240 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1241 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1242 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1243 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1244 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1245 this:</p>
1246
1247 <p><blockquote><pre>
1248 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1249   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1250 </pre></blockquote></p>
1251
1252 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1253 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1254
1255 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1256 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1257 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1258 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1259 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1260 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1261 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1262 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1263 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1264 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1265 system.</p>
1266
1267 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1268 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1269 SMTorP. :)</p>
1270
1271       </div>
1272       <div class="tags">
1273
1274
1275         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1276
1277
1278       </div>
1279     </div>
1280     <div class="padding"></div>
1281
1282     <div class="entry">
1283       <div class="title">
1284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
1285       </div>
1286       <div class="date">
1287         27th October 2014
1288       </div>
1289       <div class="body">
1290         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
1291 sent out
1292 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
1293 announcement</a>:</p>
1294
1295 <pre>
1296 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
1297 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
1298
1299 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
1300 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
1301 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
1302 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
1303 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
1304 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
1305 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
1306
1307 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1308 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1309 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
1310 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
1311 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
1312 of at least 5 characters!
1313
1314  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
1315
1316 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
1317 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
1318 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
1319 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
1320 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
1321
1322 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
1323 mostly in Germany and Norway.
1324
1325 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
1326 ===============================
1327
1328 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
1329 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1330 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1331 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1332 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1333 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1334 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1335 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
1336 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1337 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1338 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1339 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
1340 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1341 environment.
1342
1343  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
1344  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
1345
1346 Full release notes and manual
1347 =============================
1348
1349 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
1350 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
1351 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
1352 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
1353 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
1354
1355  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
1356  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
1357
1358 Where to get it
1359 ---------------
1360
1361 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
1362
1363  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1364  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
1365  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
1366
1367 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
1368
1369 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
1370 ===============================================================================
1371
1372
1373 Installation changes
1374 --------------------
1375
1376  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
1377
1378 Software updates
1379 ----------------
1380
1381 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
1382
1383  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
1384  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
1385    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
1386    choose one of the others see manual.)
1387  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
1388  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
1389  * GOsa 2.7.4
1390  * LTSP 5.5.4
1391  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1392  * new boot framework: systemd
1393  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
1394  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1395  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1396  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
1397  * golearn 0.9
1398  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1399  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1400  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
1401    installation.
1402  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
1403    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
1404
1405  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
1406  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
1407
1408 Fixed bugs
1409 ----------
1410
1411  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1412    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1413    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
1414  * and many others.
1415
1416 Documentation and translation updates
1417 -------------------------------------
1418
1419  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
1420    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
1421    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
1422
1423 Other changes
1424 -------------
1425
1426  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
1427    server takes more time.
1428  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
1429    doesn't work.
1430
1431 Regressions / known problems
1432 ----------------------------
1433
1434  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
1435    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
1436    and Debian bug #762103).
1437  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
1438    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
1439  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
1440    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
1441    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
1442
1443 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
1444
1445  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
1446
1447 How to report bugs
1448 ------------------
1449
1450 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
1451
1452 About Debian
1453 ============
1454
1455 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1456 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1457 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1458 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1459 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1460 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1461 operating system.
1462
1463 Contact Information
1464 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
1465 mail to press@debian.org.
1466
1467  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
1468 </pre>
1469
1470       </div>
1471       <div class="tags">
1472
1473
1474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1475
1476
1477       </div>
1478     </div>
1479     <div class="padding"></div>
1480
1481     <div class="entry">
1482       <div class="title">
1483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
1484       </div>
1485       <div class="date">
1486         23rd October 2014
1487       </div>
1488       <div class="body">
1489         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
1490 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
1491 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
1492 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
1493 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
1494 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
1495 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
1496 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
1497 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
1498 live.</p>
1499
1500 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
1501 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
1502 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
1503 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
1504 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
1505 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
1506 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
1507 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
1508
1509       </div>
1510       <div class="tags">
1511
1512
1513         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
1514
1515
1516       </div>
1517     </div>
1518     <div class="padding"></div>
1519
1520     <div class="entry">
1521       <div class="title">
1522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1523       </div>
1524       <div class="date">
1525         22nd October 2014
1526       </div>
1527       <div class="body">
1528         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1529 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1530 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1531 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1532 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1533 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1534 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1535 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1536 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1537 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1538 lists I recently took over:</p>
1539
1540 <p><blockquote><pre>
1541 % time listadmin xiph
1542 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1543 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1544
1545 real    0m1.709s
1546 user    0m0.232s
1547 sys     0m0.012s
1548 %
1549 </pre></blockquote></p>
1550
1551 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1552 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1553 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1554 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1555 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1556 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1557 program.</p>
1558
1559 <p>If you install
1560 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1561 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1562 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1563
1564 <p><blockquote><pre>
1565 username username@example.org
1566 spamlevel 23
1567 default discard
1568 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1569
1570 password secret
1571 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1572 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1573
1574 password hidden
1575 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1576 </pre></blockquote></p>
1577
1578 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1579 learn the details.</p>
1580
1581 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1582 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1583 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1584 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1585
1586 <p><blockquote><pre>
1587 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1588 </pre></blockquote></p>
1589
1590 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1591 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1592 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1593 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1594 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1595 email.</p>
1596
1597 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1598 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1599 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1600 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1601 software.</p>
1602
1603 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1604 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1605 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1606
1607 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1608 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1609 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1610 sure why.</p>
1611
1612       </div>
1613       <div class="tags">
1614
1615
1616         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>.
1617
1618
1619       </div>
1620     </div>
1621     <div class="padding"></div>
1622
1623     <div class="entry">
1624       <div class="title">
1625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1626       </div>
1627       <div class="date">
1628         17th October 2014
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="body">
1631         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1632 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1633 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1634 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1635 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1636 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1637 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1638
1639 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1640 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1641 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1642 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1643 of this story.)</p>
1644
1645 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1646 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1647 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1648 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1649 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1650 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1651 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1652 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1653 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1654 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1655
1656 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1657 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1658 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1659 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1660
1661 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1662 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1663
1664 <p><blockquote><pre>
1665 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1666 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1667 </pre></blockquote></p>
1668
1669 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1670 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1671 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1672 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1673 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1674 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1675 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1676 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1677
1678 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1679 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1680
1681 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1682 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1683 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1684 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1685 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1686
1687 <p><blockquote><pre>
1688 Task: isenkram-packages
1689 Section: hardware
1690 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1691  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1692  proposed.
1693 Test-new-install: show show
1694 Relevance: 8
1695 Packages: for-current-hardware
1696
1697 Task: isenkram-firmware
1698 Section: hardware
1699 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1700  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1701  packages are proposed.
1702 Test-new-install: mark show
1703 Relevance: 8
1704 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1705 </pre></blockquote></p>
1706
1707 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1708 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1709 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1710 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1711 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1712
1713 <p><blockquote><pre>
1714 #!/bin/sh
1715 #
1716 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1717 export PATH
1718 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1719 </pre></blockquote></p>
1720
1721 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1722 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1723
1724 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1725 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1726 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1727 install.</p>
1728
1729 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1730 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1731 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1732
1733       </div>
1734       <div class="tags">
1735
1736
1737         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1738
1739
1740       </div>
1741     </div>
1742     <div class="padding"></div>
1743
1744     <div class="entry">
1745       <div class="title">
1746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1747       </div>
1748       <div class="date">
1749          4th October 2014
1750       </div>
1751       <div class="body">
1752         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1753 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1754 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1755 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1756
1757 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1758
1759 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1760 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1761 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1762
1763       </div>
1764       <div class="tags">
1765
1766
1767         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>.
1768
1769
1770       </div>
1771     </div>
1772     <div class="padding"></div>
1773
1774     <div class="entry">
1775       <div class="title">
1776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
1777       </div>
1778       <div class="date">
1779          4th October 2014
1780       </div>
1781       <div class="body">
1782         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1783 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1784 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1785 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1786 Dibb.</p>
1787
1788 <p>I just wrapped up
1789 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1790 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1791 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1792 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1793 0.17.</p>
1794
1795 <ul>
1796
1797  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1798  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1799    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1800  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1801  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1802  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1803  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1804  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1805  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1806    the palette size is the same.</li>
1807  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1808  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1809  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1810  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1811    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1812
1813 </ul>
1814
1815 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1816 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1817 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1818
1819       </div>
1820       <div class="tags">
1821
1822
1823         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1824
1825
1826       </div>
1827     </div>
1828     <div class="padding"></div>
1829
1830     <div class="entry">
1831       <div class="title">
1832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
1833       </div>
1834       <div class="date">
1835         26th September 2014
1836       </div>
1837       <div class="body">
1838         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1839 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1840 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1841 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1842 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1843 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1844 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1845 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1846 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1847 future.  The
1848 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1849 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1850 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1851 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1852 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1853
1854 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1855 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1856 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1857 or rsync (use
1858 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1859 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1860 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1861 install with some tweaking.</p>
1862
1863 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1864 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1865
1866 <p><blockquote><pre>
1867 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1868 </pre></blockquote></p>
1869
1870 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1871 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1872 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1873 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1874
1875 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1876 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1877 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1878 your need.</p>
1879
1880 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1881 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1882 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1883 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1884 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1885 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1886 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1887 days.</p>
1888
1889 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1890 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1891 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1892 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1893 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1894 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1895 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1896 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1897 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1898
1899 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1900 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1901 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1902
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="tags">
1905
1906
1907         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>.
1908
1909
1910       </div>
1911     </div>
1912     <div class="padding"></div>
1913
1914     <div class="entry">
1915       <div class="title">
1916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="date">
1919         25th September 2014
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="body">
1922         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1923 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1924 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1925 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1926 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1927 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1928 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1929 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1930 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1931 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1932 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1933 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1934 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1935
1936 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1937 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1938 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1939 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1940 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1941 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1942 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1943 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1944 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1945 list</a>. :)</p>
1946
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="tags">
1949
1950
1951         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1952
1953
1954       </div>
1955     </div>
1956     <div class="padding"></div>
1957
1958     <div class="entry">
1959       <div class="title">
1960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
1961       </div>
1962       <div class="date">
1963         16th September 2014
1964       </div>
1965       <div class="body">
1966         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1967 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1968 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1969 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1970 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1971 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1972 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1973 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1974 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1975 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1976 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1977 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1978 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1979 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1980
1981 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1982 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1983 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1984 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1985 depend on the small and clever package
1986 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1987 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1988 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1989 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1990 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1991 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1992 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1993 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1994 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1995 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1996 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1997
1998 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1999 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2000 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2001 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2002 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2003 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2004 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2005 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2006 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2007 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2008 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2009 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2010 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2011 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2012 dialog.</p>
2013
2014 <p><table>
2015
2016 <tr>
2017 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2018 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2019 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2020 <th>Reduction</th>
2021 </tr>
2022
2023 <tr>
2024 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2025 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2026 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2027 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2028 </tr>
2029
2030 <tr>
2031 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2032 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2033 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2034 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2035 </tr>
2036
2037 <tr>
2038 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
2039 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
2040 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
2041 <td>11 min 50%</td>
2042 </tr>
2043
2044 <tr>
2045 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
2046 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
2047 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
2048 <td>2 min 33%</td>
2049 </tr>
2050
2051 <tr>
2052 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
2053 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
2054 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
2055 <td>4 min 21%</td>
2056 </tr>
2057
2058 </table></p>
2059
2060 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
2061 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
2062 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
2063 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
2064 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
2065 installed.</p>
2066
2067 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
2068 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
2069 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
2070 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
2071 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
2072 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
2073 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
2074 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
2075 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
2076 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
2077 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
2078 for the entire installation.</p>
2079
2080 <p>I've implemented this in the
2081 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
2082 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
2083 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
2084 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
2085 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
2086
2087 <p><blockquote><pre>
2088 #!/bin/sh
2089 set -e
2090 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2091 info() {
2092     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
2093 }
2094 error() {
2095     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
2096 }
2097 override_install() {
2098     apt-install eatmydata || true
2099     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2100         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2101             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2102             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2103             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2104                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2105                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2106                     > /target$file.edu
2107                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2108                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2109                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2110                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2111             else
2112                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2113             fi
2114         done
2115     else
2116         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2117     fi
2118 }
2119
2120 override_install
2121 </pre></blockquote></p>
2122
2123 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2124 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2125
2126 <p><blockquote><pre>
2127 #! /bin/sh -e
2128 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2129 error() {
2130     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2131 }
2132 remove_install_override() {
2133     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2134         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2135         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2136             rm /target$file
2137             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2138                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2139             rm /target$file.edu
2140         else
2141             error "Missing divert for $file."
2142         fi
2143     done
2144     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2145 }
2146
2147 remove_install_override
2148 </pre></blockquote></p>
2149
2150 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2151 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2152 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2153
2154 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2155 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2156 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2157 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2158 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2159 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2160 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2161 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2162 everyone.</p>
2163
2164 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2165 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2166 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2167 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2168
2169 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2170 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2171 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2172 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2173 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2174
2175 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2176 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2177 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2178 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2179 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2180
2181       </div>
2182       <div class="tags">
2183
2184
2185         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>.
2186
2187
2188       </div>
2189     </div>
2190     <div class="padding"></div>
2191
2192     <div class="entry">
2193       <div class="title">
2194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
2195       </div>
2196       <div class="date">
2197         10th September 2014
2198       </div>
2199       <div class="body">
2200         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2201 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2202 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2203 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2204 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2205 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2206 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2207 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2208 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2209 those problems are gone now.</p>
2210
2211 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2212 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2213 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2214 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2215 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2216
2217 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2218 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2219 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2220
2221 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2222 line:</p>
2223
2224 <p><blockquote><pre>
2225 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2226 </pre></blockquote></p>
2227
2228 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2229 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2230 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2231 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2232
2233 <p><blockquote><pre>
2234 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2235 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2236 %
2237 </pre></blockquote></p>
2238
2239 <p>Now if only
2240 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2241 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2242 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2243 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2244 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2245 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2246 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2247 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2248 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2249
2250       </div>
2251       <div class="tags">
2252
2253
2254         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2255
2256
2257       </div>
2258     </div>
2259     <div class="padding"></div>
2260
2261     <div class="entry">
2262       <div class="title">
2263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
2264       </div>
2265       <div class="date">
2266         25th August 2014
2267       </div>
2268       <div class="body">
2269         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
2270 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
2271 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
2272 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
2273 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
2274 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
2275 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
2276 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
2277 am not sure.
2278 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
2279 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
2280 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
2281 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
2282 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
2283 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
2284 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
2285 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
2286 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
2287 licenses are.</p>
2288
2289 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
2290 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
2291 end user</a>
2292 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
2293 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
2294
2295 <p><blockquote>
2296 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
2297 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
2298
2299 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
2300 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
2301 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
2302 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
2303 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
2304 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
2305 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
2306 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
2307 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
2308 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
2309 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
2310 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
2311 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
2312 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
2313 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
2314 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
2315 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
2316 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
2317
2318 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
2319 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
2320
2321 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
2322 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
2323 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
2324 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
2325 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
2326 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
2327 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
2328 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2329 </blockquote></p>
2330
2331 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
2332 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
2333
2334 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
2335 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
2336
2337 <p><blockquote>
2338
2339 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
2340 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
2341 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
2342 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
2343 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
2344 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
2345 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
2346 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
2347 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
2348 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
2349 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
2350 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
2351
2352 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
2353 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
2354 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
2355 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
2356 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
2357 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
2358 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
2359 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
2360 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
2361 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
2362 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
2363 additional details.</p>
2364
2365 </blockquote></p>
2366
2367 <p>Some free software like
2368 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
2369 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
2370 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
2371 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
2372
2373       </div>
2374       <div class="tags">
2375
2376
2377         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
2378
2379
2380       </div>
2381     </div>
2382     <div class="padding"></div>
2383
2384     <div class="entry">
2385       <div class="title">
2386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
2387       </div>
2388       <div class="date">
2389         31st July 2014
2390       </div>
2391       <div class="body">
2392         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
2393 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2394 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
2395 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
2396 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
2397 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
2398
2399 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2400
2401 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
2402 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
2403 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
2404 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
2405 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
2406 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
2407 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
2408 works with Windows . :-(</p>
2409
2410 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
2411 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
2412 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
2413 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
2414 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
2415 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
2416
2417 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2418 project?</strong></p>
2419
2420 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
2421 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
2422 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
2423 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
2424 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
2425 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
2426 with this job.</p>
2427
2428 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2429 Edu?</strong></p>
2430
2431 <p>The independence.</p>
2432
2433 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
2434 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
2435 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
2436
2437 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
2438 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
2439 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
2440 working reliable. </p>
2441
2442 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
2443 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
2444 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
2445 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
2446 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
2447 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
2448 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
2449 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
2450
2451 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2452 Edu?</strong></p>
2453
2454 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
2455 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
2456 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
2457
2458 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2459
2460 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
2461 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
2462
2463 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2464 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2465
2466 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
2467 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
2468 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
2469 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
2470 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
2471 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
2472 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
2473
2474       </div>
2475       <div class="tags">
2476
2477
2478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2479
2480
2481       </div>
2482     </div>
2483     <div class="padding"></div>
2484
2485     <div class="entry">
2486       <div class="title">
2487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2488       </div>
2489       <div class="date">
2490         23rd July 2014
2491       </div>
2492       <div class="body">
2493         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
2494 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2495 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2496 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
2497 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
2498 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
2499 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
2500 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
2501 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
2502 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
2503 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
2504 the translation show this very well:</p>
2505
2506 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2507
2508 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
2509 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
2510 project pages and the
2511 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
2512 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2513 and HTML version available in the
2514 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
2515 directory</a>.</p>
2516
2517 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
2518 you find any.</p>
2519
2520       </div>
2521       <div class="tags">
2522
2523
2524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2525
2526
2527       </div>
2528     </div>
2529     <div class="padding"></div>
2530
2531     <div class="entry">
2532       <div class="title">
2533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
2534       </div>
2535       <div class="date">
2536         17th June 2014
2537       </div>
2538       <div class="body">
2539         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2540 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2541 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2542 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2543 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2544
2545 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2546 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2547 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2548 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2549 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2550 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2551 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2552 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2553 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2554 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2555 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2556 goals.</p>
2557
2558 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2559 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2560 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2561 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2562 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2563 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2564 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2565 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2566 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2567 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2568 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2569 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2570 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2571 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2572 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2573 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2574 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2575 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2576 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2577 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2578 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2579 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2580 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2581 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2582
2583 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2584 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2585 track the English original.  For this we use the
2586 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2587 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2588 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2589 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2590 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2591 files), which the translations update with the native language
2592 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2593 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2594 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2595 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2596 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2597 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2598 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2599 of the documentation.</p>
2600
2601 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2602 recommend using
2603 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2604 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2605 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2606 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2607 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2608 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2609 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2610 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2611
2612 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2613 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2614 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2615 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2616 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2617 translated images by storing translated versions in
2618 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2619 package maintainers know more.</p>
2620
2621 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2622 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2623 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2624 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2625 PDF version</a> or the
2626 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2627 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2628 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2629
2630 <p>To learn more, check out
2631 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2632 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2633 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2634 manual on the wiki</a> and
2635 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2636 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2637
2638       </div>
2639       <div class="tags">
2640
2641
2642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2643
2644
2645       </div>
2646     </div>
2647     <div class="padding"></div>
2648
2649     <div class="entry">
2650       <div class="title">
2651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
2652       </div>
2653       <div class="date">
2654         29th May 2014
2655       </div>
2656       <div class="body">
2657         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
2658 in my car, connected to
2659 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
2660 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
2661 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
2662 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
2663 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
2664 such car computer.</p>
2665
2666 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
2667
2668 <ul>
2669
2670  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
2671
2672  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
2673    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
2674    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
2675    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
2676    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
2677
2678  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
2679    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
2680    route.</li>
2681
2682  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
2683
2684  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
2685    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
2686    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
2687    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
2688    connection do not work.</li>
2689
2690  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
2691    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
2692
2693  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
2694    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
2695
2696  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
2697    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
2698
2699 </ul>
2700
2701 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
2702 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
2703
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="tags">
2706
2707
2708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2709
2710
2711       </div>
2712     </div>
2713     <div class="padding"></div>
2714
2715     <div class="entry">
2716       <div class="title">
2717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="date">
2720         29th April 2014
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="body">
2723         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
2724 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
2725 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
2726 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
2727 newer AVM2 format - see
2728 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
2729 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
2730 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
2731 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
2732 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
2733 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
2734 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
2735 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
2736 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
2737 sites do not work yet.</p>
2738
2739 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
2740 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
2741 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
2742 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
2743 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
2744 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
2745 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
2746 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
2747 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
2748 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
2749 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
2750
2751 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
2752 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
2753 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
2754 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
2755 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
2756 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
2757 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
2758
2759 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
2760 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
2761 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
2762 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
2763 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
2764
2765       </div>
2766       <div class="tags">
2767
2768
2769         Tags: <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>.
2770
2771
2772       </div>
2773     </div>
2774     <div class="padding"></div>
2775
2776     <div class="entry">
2777       <div class="title">
2778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
2779       </div>
2780       <div class="date">
2781         23rd April 2014
2782       </div>
2783       <div class="body">
2784         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2785 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2786 So I implemented one, using
2787 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2788 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2789 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2790 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2791 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2792 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2793
2794 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2795 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2796 packages to install.  The first part is in
2797 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2798 this:</p>
2799
2800 <p><blockquote><pre>
2801 Task: isenkram
2802 Section: hardware
2803 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2804  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2805  proposed.
2806 Test-new-install: mark show
2807 Relevance: 8
2808 Packages: for-current-hardware
2809 </pre></blockquote></p>
2810
2811 <p>The second part is in
2812 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2813 this:</p>
2814
2815 <p><blockquote><pre>
2816 #!/bin/sh
2817 #
2818 (
2819     isenkram-lookup
2820     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2821 ) | sort -u
2822 </pre></blockquote></p>
2823
2824 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2825 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2826 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2827 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2828 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2829 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2830
2831 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2832 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2833 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2834 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2835 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2836 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2837 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2838 the python-apt code (bug
2839 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2840 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2841 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2842 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2843 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2844 unstable today.</p>
2845
2846 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2847 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2848 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2849 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2850 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2851 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2852 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2853 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2854 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2855
2856 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2857 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2858 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2859 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2860 package.  See also
2861 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2862 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2863 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2864 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2865
2866       </div>
2867       <div class="tags">
2868
2869
2870         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2871
2872
2873       </div>
2874     </div>
2875     <div class="padding"></div>
2876
2877     <div class="entry">
2878       <div class="title">
2879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
2880       </div>
2881       <div class="date">
2882         15th April 2014
2883       </div>
2884       <div class="body">
2885         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2886 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2887 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2888 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2889 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2890 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2891
2892 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2893 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2894 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2895 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2896 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2897 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2898 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2899
2900 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2901 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2902 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2903 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2904 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2905 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2906 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2907 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2908 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2909 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2910 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2911 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2912
2913 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2914 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2915 become root:</p>
2916
2917 <p><pre>
2918 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2919   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2920   u-boot-tools
2921 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2922   freedom-maker
2923 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2924 </pre></p>
2925
2926 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2927 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2928 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2929 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2930 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2931 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2932 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2933 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2934
2935 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2936 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2937 the preseed values:</p>
2938
2939 <p><pre>
2940 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2941 </pre></p>
2942
2943 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2944 it still work.</p>
2945
2946 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2947 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2948 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2949 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2950 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2951 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2952 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2953
2954 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2955 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2956 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2957 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2958 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2959 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2960
2961       </div>
2962       <div class="tags">
2963
2964
2965         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2966
2967
2968       </div>
2969     </div>
2970     <div class="padding"></div>
2971
2972     <div class="entry">
2973       <div class="title">
2974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
2975       </div>
2976       <div class="date">
2977          9th April 2014
2978       </div>
2979       <div class="body">
2980         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2981 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2982 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2983 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2984 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2985 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2986 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2987 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2988 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2989 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2990 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2991 have looked at a system called
2992 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2993 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2994
2995 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2996 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2997 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2998 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2999 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3000 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3001 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3002 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3003 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3004 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3005 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3006 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3007 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3008
3009 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3010 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3011 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3012 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3013 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3014 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3015 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3016 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3017 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3018 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3019 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3020 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3021 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3022 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3023 account.</p>
3024
3025 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3026 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3027 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3028 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3029 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3030 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3031 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3032
3033 <p><blockquote><pre>
3034 [s3c]
3035 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3036 backend-login: API-login
3037 backend-password: API-password
3038 fs-passphrase: local-password
3039 </pre></blockquote></p>
3040
3041 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
3042 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
3043 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
3044 details and password to create it:</p>
3045
3046 <p><blockquote><pre>
3047 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
3048 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3049   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3050 Enter backend login:
3051 Enter backend password:
3052 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
3053 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
3054 Enter encryption password:
3055 Confirm encryption password:
3056 Generating random encryption key...
3057 Creating metadata tables...
3058 Dumping metadata...
3059 ..objects..
3060 ..blocks..
3061 ..inodes..
3062 ..inode_blocks..
3063 ..symlink_targets..
3064 ..names..
3065 ..contents..
3066 ..ext_attributes..
3067 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3068 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
3069 # </pre></blockquote></p>
3070
3071 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
3072
3073 <p><blockquote><pre>
3074 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3075   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3076 Using 4 upload threads.
3077 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
3078 Reading metadata...
3079 ..objects..
3080 ..blocks..
3081 ..inodes..
3082 ..inode_blocks..
3083 ..symlink_targets..
3084 ..names..
3085 ..contents..
3086 ..ext_attributes..
3087 Mounting filesystem...
3088 # df -h /s3ql
3089 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
3090 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
3091 #
3092 </pre></blockquote></p>
3093
3094 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
3095 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
3096 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
3097 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
3098 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
3099 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
3100
3101 <p><blockquote><pre>
3102 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
3103 #
3104 </pre></blockquote></p>
3105
3106 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
3107 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
3108 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
3109 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
3110 file system:</p>
3111
3112 <p><blockquote><pre>
3113 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3114 Using cached metadata.
3115 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
3116 Checking DB integrity...
3117 Creating temporary extra indices...
3118 Checking lost+found...
3119 Checking cached objects...
3120 Checking names (refcounts)...
3121 Checking contents (names)...
3122 Checking contents (inodes)...
3123 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
3124 Checking objects (reference counts)...
3125 Checking objects (backend)...
3126 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
3127 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
3128 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
3129 Checking objects (sizes)...
3130 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
3131 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
3132 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
3133 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
3134 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
3135 Checking inodes (sizes)...
3136 Checking extended attributes (names)...
3137 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
3138 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
3139 Checking directory reachability...
3140 Checking unix conventions...
3141 Checking referential integrity...
3142 Dropping temporary indices...
3143 Backing up old metadata...
3144 Dumping metadata...
3145 ..objects..
3146 ..blocks..
3147 ..inodes..
3148 ..inode_blocks..
3149 ..symlink_targets..
3150 ..names..
3151 ..contents..
3152 ..ext_attributes..
3153 Compressing and uploading metadata...
3154 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
3155 #
3156 </pre></blockquote></p>
3157
3158 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
3159 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
3160 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
3161 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
3162 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
3163 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
3164 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
3165 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
3166 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
3167 working set.</p>
3168
3169 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
3170 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
3171 busy:</p>
3172
3173 <p><blockquote><pre>
3174 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3175   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
3176 Using 8 upload threads.
3177 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
3178 #
3179 </pre></blockquote></p>
3180
3181 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
3182 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
3183 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
3184 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
3185 s3qlctrl:
3186
3187 <p><blockquote><pre>
3188 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
3189 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
3190 #
3191 </pre></blockquote></p>
3192
3193 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
3194 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
3195 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
3196 a report:</p>
3197
3198 <p><blockquote><pre>
3199 # s3qlstat /s3ql
3200 Directory entries:    9141
3201 Inodes:               9143
3202 Data blocks:          8851
3203 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
3204 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
3205 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
3206 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
3207 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
3208 #
3209 </pre></blockquote></p>
3210
3211 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
3212 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
3213 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
3214 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
3215 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
3216 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
3217 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
3218 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
3219 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
3220 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
3221 best.</p>
3222
3223 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
3224 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
3225 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
3226 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
3227 poster is titled
3228 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
3229 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
3230 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
3231 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
3232 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
3233
3234 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
3235 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
3236 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
3237 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
3238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
3239 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
3240 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
3241 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
3242
3243 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
3244 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
3245 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
3246 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
3247 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
3248 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
3249 only read from it.</p>
3250
3251 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3252 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3253 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3254
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="tags">
3257
3258
3259         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3260
3261
3262       </div>
3263     </div>
3264     <div class="padding"></div>
3265
3266     <div class="entry">
3267       <div class="title">
3268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="date">
3271          1st April 2014
3272       </div>
3273       <div class="body">
3274         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
3275 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
3276 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
3277 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
3278 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
3279 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
3280 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
3281 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
3282 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
3283 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
3284 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
3285 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
3286 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
3287
3288 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
3289 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
3290 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
3291 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
3292 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
3293 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
3294 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
3295 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
3296 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
3297 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
3298 Linux.</p>
3299
3300 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
3301 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
3302 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
3303 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
3304 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
3305 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
3306 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
3307 Windows before metro).</p>
3308
3309 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
3310 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
3311 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
3312 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
3313 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
3314 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
3315 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
3316 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
3317 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
3318 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
3319 old Windows binaries, check it out by
3320 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
3321 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
3322 image.</p>
3323
3324       </div>
3325       <div class="tags">
3326
3327
3328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
3329
3330
3331       </div>
3332     </div>
3333     <div class="padding"></div>
3334
3335     <div class="entry">
3336       <div class="title">
3337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
3338       </div>
3339       <div class="date">
3340         30th March 2014
3341       </div>
3342       <div class="body">
3343         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3344 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
3345 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
3346 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
3347 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
3348
3349 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3350
3351 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
3352 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
3353 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
3354 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
3355 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
3356
3357 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
3358 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
3359 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
3360
3361 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
3362 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
3363 hunger.</p>
3364
3365 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3366 project?</strong></p>
3367
3368 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
3369 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
3370 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
3371 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
3372 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
3373 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
3374 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
3375 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
3376 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
3377 running.  I just loved it.</p>
3378
3379 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3380 Edu?</strong></p>
3381
3382 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
3383 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
3384 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
3385 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
3386 be made of steel.</p>
3387
3388 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3389 Edu?</strong></p>
3390
3391 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
3392
3393 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
3394 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
3395 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
3396 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
3397 or dropped.</p>
3398
3399 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
3400 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
3401 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
3402 discourage many people too.</p>
3403
3404 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3405
3406 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
3407 Virtualbox.</p>
3408
3409
3410 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3411 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3412
3413 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
3414 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
3415 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
3416 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
3417 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
3418 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
3419 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
3420 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
3421 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
3422
3423       </div>
3424       <div class="tags">
3425
3426
3427         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3428
3429
3430       </div>
3431     </div>
3432     <div class="padding"></div>
3433
3434     <div class="entry">
3435       <div class="title">
3436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
3437       </div>
3438       <div class="date">
3439         25th March 2014
3440       </div>
3441       <div class="body">
3442         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
3443 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
3444 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
3445 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
3446 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
3447 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
3448 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
3449 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
3450 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
3451
3452 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
3453 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
3454 looked a given way.  Such
3455 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
3456 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
3457 called a
3458 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
3459 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
3460 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
3461 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
3462 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
3463 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
3464 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
3465 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
3466 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
3467 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
3468 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
3469 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
3470 There are several commercial services around providing such
3471 timestamping.  A quick search for
3472 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
3473 service</a>" pointed me to at least
3474 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
3475 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
3476 Vadis</a>,
3477 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
3478 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
3479 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
3480 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
3481
3482 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
3483 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
3484 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
3485 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
3486 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
3487 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
3488 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
3489 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
3490 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
3491 Greifswald.</p>
3492
3493 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
3494 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
3495 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
3496 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
3497 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
3498
3499 <p><blockquote><pre>
3500 #!/bin/sh
3501 set -e
3502 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
3503 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
3504 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
3505 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
3506 cafile=chain.txt
3507 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
3508     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
3509 fi
3510 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
3511     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
3512 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
3513 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
3514 base64 < "$resfile"
3515 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
3516 </pre></blockquote></p>
3517
3518 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
3519 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
3520 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
3521 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
3522 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
3523 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
3524 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
3525 changed.</p>
3526
3527 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
3528 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
3529 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
3530 to set up?</p>
3531
3532       </div>
3533       <div class="tags">
3534
3535
3536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3537
3538
3539       </div>
3540     </div>
3541     <div class="padding"></div>
3542
3543     <div class="entry">
3544       <div class="title">
3545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
3546       </div>
3547       <div class="date">
3548         21st March 2014
3549       </div>
3550       <div class="body">
3551         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
3552 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
3553 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
3554 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
3555 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
3556 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
3557 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
3558
3559 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
3560 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
3561 tried using
3562 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
3563 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
3564 and program
3565 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
3566 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
3567 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
3568 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
3569 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
3570 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
3571 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
3572 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
3573 this method.</p>
3574
3575 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
3576 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
3577 problem is
3578 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
3579 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
3580 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
3581 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
3582 DVD structures, as the python library
3583 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
3584 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
3585 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
3586 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
3587 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
3588 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
3589
3590 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
3591 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
3592
3593       </div>
3594       <div class="tags">
3595
3596
3597         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3598
3599
3600       </div>
3601     </div>
3602     <div class="padding"></div>
3603
3604     <div class="entry">
3605       <div class="title">
3606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
3607       </div>
3608       <div class="date">
3609         14th March 2014
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="body">
3612         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3613 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
3614 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
3615 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
3616 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
3617 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
3618 release (0.2).</p>
3619
3620 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
3621 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
3622 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
3623 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
3624 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
3625 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
3626 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
3627 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
3628 and build using
3629 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
3630 with a user with sudo access to become root:
3631
3632 <pre>
3633 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3634   freedom-maker
3635 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3636   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3637   u-boot-tools
3638 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3639 </pre>
3640
3641 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3642 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
3643 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
3644 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
3645 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
3646 kpartx call.</p>
3647
3648 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3649 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3650 the preseed values:</p>
3651
3652 <pre>
3653 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3654 </pre>
3655
3656 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
3657 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
3658 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
3659 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
3660 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
3661 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
3662
3663 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3664 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3665 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3666 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3667 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3668 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3669
3670       </div>
3671       <div class="tags">
3672
3673
3674         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3675
3676
3677       </div>
3678     </div>
3679     <div class="padding"></div>
3680
3681     <div class="entry">
3682       <div class="title">
3683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3684       </div>
3685       <div class="date">
3686         12th March 2014
3687       </div>
3688       <div class="body">
3689         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
3690 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
3691 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
3692 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
3693 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
3694 document this better when one of the customers of
3695 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
3696 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
3697 get this working are the following:</p>
3698
3699 <p><ol>
3700
3701 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
3702 example host here.</li>
3703
3704 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
3705 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
3706
3707 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
3708 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
3709
3710 </ol></p>
3711
3712 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
3713 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
3714 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
3715 started).</p>
3716
3717 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
3718 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
3719
3720 <p><blockquote><pre>
3721 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
3722 Export list for nas-server:
3723 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
3724 root@tjener:~#
3725 </pre></blockquote></p>
3726
3727 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
3728 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
3729 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
3730 NFS access.</p>
3731
3732 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
3733 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
3734 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
3735
3736 <p><blockquote><pre>
3737 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3738 </pre></blockquote></p>
3739
3740 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
3741 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
3742 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
3743 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
3744
3745 <p><blockquote><pre>
3746 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3747 objectClass: automount
3748 cn: nas-server
3749 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3750
3751 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3752 objectClass: top
3753 objectClass: automountMap
3754 ou: auto.nas-server
3755
3756 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3757 objectClass: automount
3758 cn: /
3759 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
3760 </pre></blockquote></p>
3761
3762 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
3763 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
3764 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
3765
3766 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
3767 the storage server directly by just visiting the
3768 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
3769 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
3770
3771       </div>
3772       <div class="tags">
3773
3774
3775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
3776
3777
3778       </div>
3779     </div>
3780     <div class="padding"></div>
3781
3782     <div class="entry">
3783       <div class="title">
3784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="date">
3787         22nd February 2014
3788       </div>
3789       <div class="body">
3790         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3791 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3792 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3793 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3794 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3795 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3796 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3797 proper home since then.</p>
3798
3799 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3800 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3801 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3802 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3803 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3804
3805 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3806 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3807 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3808 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3809 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3810 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3811 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3812 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3813 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3814
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="tags">
3817
3818
3819         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>.
3820
3821
3822       </div>
3823     </div>
3824     <div class="padding"></div>
3825
3826     <div class="entry">
3827       <div class="title">
3828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="date">
3831          3rd February 2014
3832       </div>
3833       <div class="body">
3834         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3835 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3836 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3837 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3838 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3839 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3840 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3841 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
3842 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3843
3844 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3845 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3846 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3847 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3848 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3849 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3850
3851 <p><blockquote><pre>
3852 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3853 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3854 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3855 dhclient /dev/eth0
3856 </pre></blockquote></p>
3857
3858 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3859 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3860 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3861
3862 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3863 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3864 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3865 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3866 side.</p>
3867
3868 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3869 stuff:</p>
3870
3871 <p><blockquote><pre>
3872 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3873 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3874 EOF
3875 apt-get update
3876 apt-get dist-upgrade
3877 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3878     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3879 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3880 </pre></blockquote></p>
3881
3882 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3883 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3884 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3885 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3886 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3887 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3888 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3889 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3890 ssh instead.
3891
3892 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3893 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3894 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3895 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3896 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3897 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3898
3899 <p><blockquote><pre>
3900 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3901 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3902 EOF
3903 </pre></blockquote></p>
3904
3905 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3906 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3907 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3908 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3909
3910 <p><blockquote><pre>
3911 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3912 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3913 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3914 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3915 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3916 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3917 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3918 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3919 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3920 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3921 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3922 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3923 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3924 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3925 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3926 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3927 #
3928 </pre></blockquote></p>
3929
3930 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3931 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3932 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3933 command line stuff.<p>
3934
3935       </div>
3936       <div class="tags">
3937
3938
3939         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>.
3940
3941
3942       </div>
3943     </div>
3944     <div class="padding"></div>
3945
3946     <div class="entry">
3947       <div class="title">
3948         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="date">
3951         29th January 2014
3952       </div>
3953       <div class="body">
3954         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
3955 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
3956 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
3957 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
3958 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
3959 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
3960 investigated in
3961 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
3962 from December 2013, in the article
3963 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
3964 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
3965 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
3966 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
3967 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
3968 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
3969 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
3970 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
3971
3972 <p><blockquote>
3973 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
3974 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
3975 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
3976 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
3977 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
3978 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
3979 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
3980 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
3981 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
3982 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
3983 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
3984 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
3985
3986 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
3987 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
3988 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
3989 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
3990 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
3991 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
3992 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
3993 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
3994 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
3995 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
3996 </blockquote><p>
3997
3998 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
3999 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
4000 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
4001 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
4002 summarized like this:</p>
4003
4004 <p><blockquote>
4005 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
4006 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
4007 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
4008 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
4009 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
4010 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
4011 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
4012 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
4013 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
4014 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
4015 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
4016 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
4017 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
4018 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
4019 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
4020 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
4021 </blockquote></p>
4022
4023 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
4024 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
4025 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
4026 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
4027
4028 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4029 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4030 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4031
4032       </div>
4033       <div class="tags">
4034
4035
4036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
4037
4038
4039       </div>
4040     </div>
4041     <div class="padding"></div>
4042
4043     <div class="entry">
4044       <div class="title">
4045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4046       </div>
4047       <div class="date">
4048         14th January 2014
4049       </div>
4050       <div class="body">
4051         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4052 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4053 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4054 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4055 the source.  The company behind it provide
4056 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4057 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4058 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4059 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4060 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4061 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4062 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4063 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4064 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4065 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4066 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4067 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4068 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4069 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4070 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4071 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4072 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4073 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4074 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4075
4076 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4077
4078 <ul>
4079
4080   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4081   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4082   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4083
4084 </ul>
4085
4086 <p>You can
4087 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4088 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4089 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4090 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4091 include a test suite check.</p>
4092
4093       </div>
4094       <div class="tags">
4095
4096
4097         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
4098
4099
4100       </div>
4101     </div>
4102     <div class="padding"></div>
4103
4104     <div class="entry">
4105       <div class="title">
4106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="date">
4109         25th December 2013
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="body">
4112         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4113 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
4114 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
4115 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
4116 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
4117 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
4118 George</a>.</p>
4119
4120 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
4121
4122 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4123
4124 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
4125 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
4126 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
4127 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
4128 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
4129 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
4130
4131 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
4132 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
4133 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
4134 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
4135 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
4136 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
4137 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
4138 to help building another school's informational education concept from
4139 scratch.</p>
4140
4141 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
4142 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
4143 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
4144
4145 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
4146 and cycling.</p>
4147
4148 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4149 project?</strong></p>
4150
4151 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
4152 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
4153 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
4154 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
4155 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
4156 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
4157
4158 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
4159 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
4160 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
4161 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
4162 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
4163 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
4164 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
4165 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
4166 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
4167
4168 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
4169 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
4170 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
4171 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
4172
4173 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4174 Edu?</strong></p>
4175
4176 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
4177 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
4178 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
4179 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
4180 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
4181 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
4182 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
4183 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
4184 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
4185 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
4186 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
4187 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
4188 that it rocks!</p>
4189
4190 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
4191 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
4192 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
4193 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
4194 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
4195 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
4196 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
4197
4198 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4199 Edu?</strong></p>
4200
4201 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
4202 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
4203 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
4204 can list a few points about that:</p>
4205
4206 <ul>
4207
4208  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
4209  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
4210  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
4211
4212 </ul>
4213
4214 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
4215
4216 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4217
4218 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
4219 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
4220 year.</p>
4221
4222 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
4223 run text tools. I use
4224 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
4225 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
4226 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
4227 based full-featured student management software with the two),
4228 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
4229 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
4230 coloured world called the WWW, I use
4231 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
4232 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
4233 e-mail.</p>
4234
4235 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
4236 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
4237 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
4238 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
4239 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
4240 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
4241 Facebook now ;).</p>
4242
4243 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4244 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4245
4246 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
4247 side is what I have experienced.</p>
4248
4249 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
4250 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
4251 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
4252 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
4253 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
4254 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
4255 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
4256 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
4257 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
4258 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
4259 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
4260 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
4261 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
4262 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
4263 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
4264 plain criminal.</p>
4265
4266 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
4267 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
4268 founded an association named
4269 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
4270 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
4271 area of free and open source software, for example the
4272 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
4273 Teckids and are the youth programme of
4274 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
4275 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
4276 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
4277 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
4278 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
4279 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
4280
4281 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
4282 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
4283 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
4284 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
4285 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
4286 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
4287 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
4288 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
4289 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
4290 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
4291 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
4292 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
4293
4294 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
4295 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
4296 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
4297 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
4298
4299 <!--
4300
4301 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
4302
4303 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
4304 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
4305
4306  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
4307    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
4308    of the decision makers above;
4309  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
4310    knowledge about free software
4311
4312 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
4313
4314 -->
4315
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="tags">
4318
4319
4320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4321
4322
4323       </div>
4324     </div>
4325     <div class="padding"></div>
4326
4327     <div class="entry">
4328       <div class="title">
4329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="date">
4332          6th December 2013
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="body">
4335         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
4336 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4337 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
4338 had a new school administrator show up on
4339 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
4340 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
4341 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
4342 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
4343 Germany a few years ago.</p>
4344
4345 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4346
4347 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
4348 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
4349 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
4350 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
4351
4352 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
4353 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
4354 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
4355 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
4356 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
4357 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
4358 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
4359 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
4360 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
4361
4362 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4363 project?</strong></p>
4364
4365 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
4366 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
4367 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
4368 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
4369
4370 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4371 Edu?</strong></p>
4372
4373 <ul>
4374   <li>Quick installation,</li>
4375   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
4376   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
4377   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
4378     single company,</li>
4379   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
4380     experience and problem solutions.</li>
4381 </ul>
4382
4383 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4384 Edu?</strong></p>
4385
4386 <ul>
4387   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
4388   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
4389   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
4390   working again reliably.
4391
4392   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
4393   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
4394   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
4395   as their base.
4396
4397   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
4398   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
4399   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
4400   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
4401   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
4402   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
4403
4404   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
4405   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
4406   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
4407   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
4408   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
4409   schemes.</li>
4410
4411   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
4412   compared to Debian.</li>
4413
4414 </ul>
4415
4416 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
4417 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
4418 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
4419 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
4420
4421 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4422
4423 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
4424 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
4425 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
4426 programming languages for teaching.</p>
4427
4428 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4429 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4430
4431 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
4432
4433 <ul>
4434
4435   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
4436     teaching and learning.</li>
4437
4438   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
4439     home, and at their working place without running into license or
4440     conversion problems.</li>
4441
4442   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
4443     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
4444     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
4445     science, not products.</li>
4446
4447   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
4448     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
4449
4450 </ul>
4451
4452       </div>
4453       <div class="tags">
4454
4455
4456         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4457
4458
4459       </div>
4460     </div>
4461     <div class="padding"></div>
4462
4463     <div class="entry">
4464       <div class="title">
4465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
4466       </div>
4467       <div class="date">
4468         30th November 2013
4469       </div>
4470       <div class="body">
4471         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
4472 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
4473 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
4474 experiment with interesting network technology, the
4475 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
4476 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
4477 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
4478 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
4479 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
4480 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
4481 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
4482 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
4483 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
4484 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
4485 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
4486 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
4487 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
4488 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
4489 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
4490 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
4491
4492       </div>
4493       <div class="tags">
4494
4495
4496         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4497
4498
4499       </div>
4500     </div>
4501     <div class="padding"></div>
4502
4503     <div class="entry">
4504       <div class="title">
4505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4506       </div>
4507       <div class="date">
4508         24th November 2013
4509       </div>
4510       <div class="body">
4511         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4512 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4513 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4514 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4515 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4516 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4517 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4518 is working on.  I checked the
4519 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4520 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4521 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4522 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4523 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4524 These are the release notes:</p>
4525
4526 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4527
4528 <ul>
4529
4530   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4531    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4532    up.</li>
4533
4534   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4535
4536   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4537    Matthias Klose.</li>
4538
4539   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4540    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4541
4542   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4543    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4544    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4545
4546 </ul>
4547
4548 <p>You can
4549 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4550 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4551 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4552 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4553 include a testsuite check.</p>
4554
4555       </div>
4556       <div class="tags">
4557
4558
4559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
4560
4561
4562       </div>
4563     </div>
4564     <div class="padding"></div>
4565
4566     <div class="entry">
4567       <div class="title">
4568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
4569       </div>
4570       <div class="date">
4571         21st November 2013
4572       </div>
4573       <div class="body">
4574         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
4575 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
4576 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
4577 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
4578 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
4579 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
4580 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
4581 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
4582 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
4583 TED talk
4584 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
4585 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
4586 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
4587
4588 <blockquote>
4589
4590 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
4591 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
4592 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
4593 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
4594 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
4595 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
4596 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
4597 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
4598 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
4599 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
4600 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
4601
4602 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
4603 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
4604 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
4605
4606 </blockquote>
4607
4608 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
4609 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
4610 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
4611 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
4612 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
4613 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
4614 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
4615 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
4616 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
4617
4618       </div>
4619       <div class="tags">
4620
4621
4622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4623
4624
4625       </div>
4626     </div>
4627     <div class="padding"></div>
4628
4629     <div class="entry">
4630       <div class="title">
4631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="date">
4634         13th November 2013
4635       </div>
4636       <div class="body">
4637         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
4638 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
4639 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
4640 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
4641 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
4642 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
4643 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
4644 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
4645 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
4646 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
4647 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
4648 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
4649 right away. :)</p>
4650
4651       </div>
4652       <div class="tags">
4653
4654
4655         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4656
4657
4658       </div>
4659     </div>
4660     <div class="padding"></div>
4661
4662     <div class="entry">
4663       <div class="title">
4664         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
4665       </div>
4666       <div class="date">
4667         10th November 2013
4668       </div>
4669       <div class="body">
4670         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
4671 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
4672 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
4673 MR3040 as a mesh node using
4674 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
4675
4676 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
4677 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
4678 and downloaded
4679 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
4680 recommended firmware image</a>
4681 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
4682 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
4683 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
4684 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
4685 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
4686
4687 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
4688 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
4689 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
4690 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
4691 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
4692 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
4693 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
4694 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
4695 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
4696 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
4697 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
4698 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
4699 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
4700
4701 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
4702 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
4703 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
4704 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
4705 them:</p>
4706
4707 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
4708
4709 <pre>
4710
4711 config interface 'loopback'
4712         option ifname 'lo'
4713         option proto 'static'
4714         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
4715         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
4716
4717 config globals 'globals'
4718         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
4719
4720 config interface 'lan'
4721         option ifname 'eth0'
4722         option type 'bridge'
4723         option proto 'dhcp'
4724         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
4725         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
4726         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
4727         option ip6assign '60'
4728
4729 config interface 'mesh'
4730         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4731         option mtu '1528'
4732         option proto 'batadv'
4733         option mesh 'bat0'
4734 </pre>
4735
4736 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
4737 <pre>
4738
4739 config wifi-device 'radio0'
4740         option type 'mac80211'
4741         option channel '11'
4742         option hwmode '11ng'
4743         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
4744         option htmode 'HT20'
4745         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
4746         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
4747         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
4748         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
4749         option disabled '0'
4750
4751 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
4752         option device 'radio0'
4753         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4754         option network 'mesh'
4755         option encryption 'none'
4756         option mode 'adhoc'
4757         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
4758         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
4759 </pre>
4760 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
4761 <pre>
4762
4763 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
4764         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
4765         option 'aggregated_ogms'
4766         option 'ap_isolation'
4767         option 'bonding'
4768         option 'fragmentation'
4769         option 'gw_bandwidth'
4770         option 'gw_mode'
4771         option 'gw_sel_class'
4772         option 'log_level'
4773         option 'orig_interval'
4774         option 'vis_mode'
4775         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
4776         option 'distributed_arp_table'
4777         option 'network_coding'
4778         option 'hop_penalty'
4779
4780 # yet another batX instance
4781 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
4782 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
4783 </pre>
4784
4785 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
4786 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
4787 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
4788
4789       </div>
4790       <div class="tags">
4791
4792
4793         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4794
4795
4796       </div>
4797     </div>
4798     <div class="padding"></div>
4799
4800     <div class="entry">
4801       <div class="title">
4802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="date">
4805          2nd November 2013
4806       </div>
4807       <div class="body">
4808         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4809 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4810 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4811 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4812 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4813
4814 <p><pre>
4815 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4816 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4817 # Provides:          rsyslog
4818 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4819 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4820 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4821 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4822 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4823 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4824 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4825 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4826 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4827 ### END INIT INFO
4828 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4829 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4830 </pre></p>
4831
4832 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4833 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4834 info/comments.</p>
4835
4836 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4837 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4838
4839 <p><pre>
4840 #!/bin/sh
4841
4842 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4843 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4844 # and status_of_proc is working.
4845 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4846
4847 #
4848 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4849
4850 #
4851 do_start()
4852 {
4853         # Return
4854         #   0 if daemon has been started
4855         #   1 if daemon was already running
4856         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4857         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4858                 || return 1
4859         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4860                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4861                 || return 2
4862         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4863         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4864         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4865 }
4866
4867 #
4868 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4869 #
4870 do_stop()
4871 {
4872         # Return
4873         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4874         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4875         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4876         #   other if a failure occurred
4877         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4878         RETVAL="$?"
4879         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4880         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4881         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4882         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4883         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4884         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4885         # sleep for some time.
4886         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4887         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4888         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4889         rm -f $PIDFILE
4890         return "$RETVAL"
4891 }
4892
4893 #
4894 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4895 #
4896 do_reload() {
4897         #
4898         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4899         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4900         # then implement that here.
4901         #
4902         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4903         return 0
4904 }
4905
4906 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4907 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4908 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4909 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4910     script="$1"
4911     shift
4912     . $script
4913 else
4914     exit 0
4915 fi
4916
4917 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4918 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4919
4920 # Exit if the package is not installed
4921 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4922
4923 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4924 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4925
4926 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4927 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4928
4929 case "$1" in
4930   start)
4931         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4932         do_start
4933         case "$?" in
4934                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4935                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4936         esac
4937         ;;
4938   stop)
4939         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4940         do_stop
4941         case "$?" in
4942                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4943                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4944         esac
4945         ;;
4946   status)
4947         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4948         ;;
4949   #reload|force-reload)
4950         #
4951         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4952         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4953         #
4954         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4955         #do_reload
4956         #log_end_msg $?
4957         #;;
4958   restart|force-reload)
4959         #
4960         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4961         # 'force-reload' alias
4962         #
4963         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4964         do_stop
4965         case "$?" in
4966           0|1)
4967                 do_start
4968                 case "$?" in
4969                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4970                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4971                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4972                 esac
4973                 ;;
4974           *)
4975                 # Failed to stop
4976                 log_end_msg 1
4977                 ;;
4978         esac
4979         ;;
4980   *)
4981         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4982         exit 3
4983         ;;
4984 esac
4985
4986 :
4987 </pre></p>
4988
4989 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4990 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4991 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4992 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4993
4994 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4995 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4996 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4997 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4998 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4999
5000       </div>
5001       <div class="tags">
5002
5003
5004         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>.
5005
5006
5007       </div>
5008     </div>
5009     <div class="padding"></div>
5010
5011     <div class="entry">
5012       <div class="title">
5013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
5014       </div>
5015       <div class="date">
5016          1st November 2013
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="body">
5019         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5020 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5021 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5022 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5023 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5024 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5025 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5026 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5027 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5028 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
5029 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
5030 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
5031
5032 <p>The source is now available from
5033 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
5034
5035       </div>
5036       <div class="tags">
5037
5038
5039         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>.
5040
5041
5042       </div>
5043     </div>
5044     <div class="padding"></div>
5045
5046     <div class="entry">
5047       <div class="title">
5048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
5049       </div>
5050       <div class="date">
5051         27th October 2013
5052       </div>
5053       <div class="body">
5054         <p>The
5055 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
5056 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
5057 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
5058 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
5059 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
5060 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
5061 of a plan to simplify the build system for
5062 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
5063 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
5064 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
5065 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
5066 Raspberry Pi.</p>
5067
5068 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
5069 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
5070 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
5071 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
5072 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
5073 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
5074 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
5075 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
5076 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
5077 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
5078 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
5079 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
5080 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
5081 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
5082 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
5083 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
5084 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
5085 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
5086 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
5087 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
5088 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
5089 available from
5090 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
5091 upstream project page</a>.</p>
5092
5093 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
5094 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
5095 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
5096 list:</p>
5097
5098 <p><pre>
5099 #!/bin/sh
5100 set -e # Exit on first error
5101 rootdir="$1"
5102 cd "$rootdir"
5103 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
5104 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
5105 EOF
5106 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
5107 # install a kernel somewhere too.
5108 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
5109     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5110 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
5111 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
5112 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
5113 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
5114 </pre></p>
5115
5116 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
5117 to build the image:</p>
5118
5119 <pre>
5120 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
5121     --variant minbase \
5122     --arch armel \
5123     --distribution jessie \
5124     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
5125     --image test.img \
5126     --size 600M \
5127     --bootsize 64M \
5128     --boottype vfat \
5129     --log-level debug \
5130     --verbose \
5131     --no-kernel \
5132     --no-extlinux \
5133     --root-password raspberry \
5134     --hostname raspberrypi \
5135     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
5136     --customize `pwd`/customize \
5137     --package netbase \
5138     --package git-core \
5139     --package binutils \
5140     --package ca-certificates \
5141     --package wget \
5142     --package kmod
5143 </pre></p>
5144
5145 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
5146 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
5147 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
5148 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
5149 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
5150 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
5151 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
5152
5153 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
5154 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
5155 build dependency list.</p>
5156
5157 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
5158 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
5159 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
5160 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
5161
5162       </div>
5163       <div class="tags">
5164
5165
5166         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
5167
5168
5169       </div>
5170     </div>
5171     <div class="padding"></div>
5172
5173     <div class="entry">
5174       <div class="title">
5175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
5176       </div>
5177       <div class="date">
5178         21st October 2013
5179       </div>
5180       <div class="body">
5181         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
5182 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
5183 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
5184 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
5185 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
5186 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
5187 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
5188 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
5189
5190 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
5191 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
5192 instead, I started playing with a
5193 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
5194 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
5195 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
5196 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
5197 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
5198 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
5199 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
5200 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
5201 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
5202 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
5203 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
5204 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
5205 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
5206 every client on the local network.</p>
5207
5208 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
5209 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
5210 and a script
5211 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
5212 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
5213 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
5214 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
5215 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
5216 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
5217 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
5218 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
5219 support.</p>
5220
5221 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
5222 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
5223
5224 <p><pre>
5225 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
5226     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
5227 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
5228 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
5229 %
5230 </pre></p>
5231
5232 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
5233 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
5234 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
5235 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
5236 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
5237 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
5238
5239 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
5240 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
5241 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
5242
5243 <p><table>
5244
5245 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
5246 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
5247 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
5248 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
5249 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
5250 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
5251
5252 </table></p>
5253
5254 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
5255 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
5256 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
5257 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
5258 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
5259 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
5260 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
5261
5262       </div>
5263       <div class="tags">
5264
5265
5266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5267
5268
5269       </div>
5270     </div>
5271     <div class="padding"></div>
5272
5273     <div class="entry">
5274       <div class="title">
5275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
5276       </div>
5277       <div class="date">
5278         19th October 2013
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="body">
5281         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
5282 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
5283 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
5284 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
5285 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
5286 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
5287 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
5288 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
5289
5290       </div>
5291       <div class="tags">
5292
5293
5294         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
5295
5296
5297       </div>
5298     </div>
5299     <div class="padding"></div>
5300
5301     <div class="entry">
5302       <div class="title">
5303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
5304       </div>
5305       <div class="date">
5306         15th October 2013
5307       </div>
5308       <div class="body">
5309         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
5310 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
5311 these. :)</p>
5312
5313 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
5314 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
5315 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
5316 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
5317 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
5318 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
5319 hope you will to. :)</p>
5320
5321 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
5322 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
5323 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
5324 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
5325 donated.  Are you next?</p>
5326
5327 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
5328 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
5329 statement under the heading
5330 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
5331 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
5332 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
5333 too.</p>
5334
5335       </div>
5336       <div class="tags">
5337
5338
5339         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5340
5341
5342       </div>
5343     </div>
5344     <div class="padding"></div>
5345
5346     <div class="entry">
5347       <div class="title">
5348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
5349       </div>
5350       <div class="date">
5351         11th October 2013
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="body">
5354         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
5355 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
5356 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
5357 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
5358 successful examples like
5359 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
5360 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
5361 (see
5362 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
5363 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
5364 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
5365 can be seen from their
5366 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
5367 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
5368 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
5369 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
5370 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
5371
5372 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
5373 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
5374 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
5375 my recent involvement in
5376 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
5377 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
5378 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
5379 when possible, given that most communication between people are
5380 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
5381 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
5382 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
5383 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
5384 important over the years.</p>
5385
5386 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
5387 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
5388 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
5389 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
5390 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
5391 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
5392 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
5393 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
5394 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
5395 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
5396 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
5397 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
5398 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
5399 speakers about this talk (from
5400 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
5401
5402 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5403
5404 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
5405 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
5406 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
5407 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
5408 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
5409 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
5410 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
5411 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
5412 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
5413 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
5414 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
5415 that project (from
5416 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
5417
5418 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
5419
5420 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
5421 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
5422 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
5423 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
5424 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
5425 based community mesh networks.</p>
5426
5427 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
5428 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
5429 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
5430 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
5431 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
5432 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
5433 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
5434 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
5435 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
5436
5437 <p><table>
5438 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
5439 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
5440 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
5441 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
5442 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
5443 </table></p>
5444
5445 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
5446 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
5447 VillageTelco about
5448 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
5449 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
5450 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
5451 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
5452 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
5453 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
5454
5455 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
5456 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
5457 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
5458 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
5459
5460 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
5461 us on IRC, either channel
5462 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
5463 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
5464 irc.freenode.net.</p>
5465
5466 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
5467 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
5468 and Innovation called
5469 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
5470 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
5471 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
5472 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
5473 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
5474 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
5475 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
5476 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
5477
5478 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
5479 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
5480 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
5481 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
5482 mesh system.</p>
5483
5484       </div>
5485       <div class="tags">
5486
5487
5488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5489
5490
5491       </div>
5492     </div>
5493     <div class="padding"></div>
5494
5495     <div class="entry">
5496       <div class="title">
5497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
5498       </div>
5499       <div class="date">
5500          8th October 2013
5501       </div>
5502       <div class="body">
5503         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
5504 Salvador had published a
5505 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
5506 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
5507 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
5508 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
5509 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
5510 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
5511 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
5512 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
5513 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
5514 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
5515 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
5516 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
5517 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
5518 computers without hard drives by installing one central
5519 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
5520
5521 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
5522
5523 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5524
5525 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
5526 me know. :)</p>
5527
5528       </div>
5529       <div class="tags">
5530
5531
5532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5533
5534
5535       </div>
5536     </div>
5537     <div class="padding"></div>
5538
5539     <div class="entry">
5540       <div class="title">
5541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
5542       </div>
5543       <div class="date">
5544         29th September 2013
5545       </div>
5546       <div class="body">
5547         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
5548 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
5549 complete announcement text can be found at
5550 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
5551 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
5552
5553 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
5554 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
5555 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
5556 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
5557
5558       </div>
5559       <div class="tags">
5560
5561
5562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5563
5564
5565       </div>
5566     </div>
5567     <div class="padding"></div>
5568
5569     <div class="entry">
5570       <div class="title">
5571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
5572       </div>
5573       <div class="date">
5574         27th September 2013
5575       </div>
5576       <div class="body">
5577         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5578 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5579 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
5580 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
5581
5582 <ul>
5583
5584 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5585 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
5586
5587 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5588 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5589
5590 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5591 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5592 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
5593 (Youtube)</li>
5594
5595 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
5596 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
5597
5598 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5599 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5600
5601 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5602 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5603 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
5604
5605 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5606 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
5607 (Youtube)</li>
5608
5609 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5610 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
5611
5612 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5613 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
5614
5615 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5616 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5617 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
5618
5619 </ul>
5620
5621 <p>A larger list is available from
5622 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5623 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
5624
5625 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5626 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5627 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5628 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5629 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5630 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5631 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
5632 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5633 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
5634 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5635 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5636
5637       </div>
5638       <div class="tags">
5639
5640
5641         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5642
5643
5644       </div>
5645     </div>
5646     <div class="padding"></div>
5647
5648     <div class="entry">
5649       <div class="title">
5650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
5651       </div>
5652       <div class="date">
5653         16th September 2013
5654       </div>
5655       <div class="body">
5656         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5657 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
5658
5659 <blockquote>
5660 <p>Hi,</p>
5661
5662 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
5663 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5664 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
5665
5666 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
5667 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
5668 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
5669 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
5670
5671 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
5672 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
5673
5674 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
5675 compared to beta1:</p>
5676
5677 <ul>
5678
5679 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
5680 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
5681 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
5682 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
5683 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
5684 main server.</li>
5685 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
5686 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
5687 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
5688 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
5689 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
5690
5691 </ul>
5692
5693 <p>Where to get it:</p>
5694
5695 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5696
5697 <ul>
5698 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5699 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5700 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
5701 </ul>
5702
5703 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
5704
5705 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
5706 <ul>
5707 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5708 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5709 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
5710 </ul>
5711
5712 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
5713
5714 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
5715 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
5716 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
5717 as the other isos.</p>
5718
5719 <p>How to report bugs</p>
5720
5721 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
5722 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5723
5724
5725 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
5726
5727 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5728 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5729 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5730 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5731 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5732 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5733 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5734 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5735 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5736 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5737 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5738 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5739 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5740
5741 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5742 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5743 Squeeze release.</p>
5744
5745 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
5746
5747 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5748 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5749 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5750 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5751 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
5752 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
5753 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
5754 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
5755 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
5756 directory.</p>
5757
5758
5759 <p>cheers,
5760 <br>        Holger</p>
5761 </blockquote>
5762
5763       </div>
5764       <div class="tags">
5765
5766
5767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5768
5769
5770       </div>
5771     </div>
5772     <div class="padding"></div>
5773
5774     <div class="entry">
5775       <div class="title">
5776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
5777       </div>
5778       <div class="date">
5779         10th September 2013
5780       </div>
5781       <div class="body">
5782         <p>I was introduced to the
5783 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5784 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5785 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5786 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5787 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5788 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5789 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5790 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5791
5792 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5793 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5794 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5795 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5796 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5797
5798 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5799 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5800 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5801 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5802 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5803 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5804 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5805 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5806 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5807 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5808 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5809 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5810 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5811 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5812 missing in Debian).</p>
5813
5814 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5815 scripts
5816 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5817 and a administrative web interface
5818 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5819 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5820 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5821 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5822 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5823 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5824 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5825 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5826 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5827 this is really working yet, see
5828 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5829 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5830 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5831 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5832 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5833 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5834 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5835
5836 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5837 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5838 at.</p>
5839
5840 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5841
5842 <ol>
5843
5844 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5845 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5846 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5847 to the Debian installer:<p>
5848 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5849
5850 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5851 install on.</li>
5852
5853 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5854 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5855
5856 </ol>
5857
5858 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5859
5860 <ol>
5861
5862 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5863 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5864 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5865 <pre>
5866 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5867 </pre></li>
5868 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5869 <pre>
5870 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5871    apt-key add -
5872 apt-get update
5873 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5874 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5875 </pre></li>
5876 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5877
5878 </ol>
5879
5880 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5881 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5882 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5883 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5884 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5885
5886 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5887 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5888 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5889 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5890
5891 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5892 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5893 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5894 irc.debian.org and the
5895 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5896 mailing list</a>.</p>
5897
5898 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5899 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5900 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5901 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5902 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5903 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5904
5905       </div>
5906       <div class="tags">
5907
5908
5909         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5910
5911
5912       </div>
5913     </div>
5914     <div class="padding"></div>
5915
5916     <div class="entry">
5917       <div class="title">
5918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5919       </div>
5920       <div class="date">
5921         22nd August 2013
5922       </div>
5923       <div class="body">
5924         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5925 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
5926 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
5927
5928 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
5929
5930 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5931 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5932
5933 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5934
5935 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5936 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5937 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5938 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5939 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5940 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5941 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5942 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
5943 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5944 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5945 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5946 desktop contains
5947 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5948 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5949 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5950 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5951
5952 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
5953 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
5954 release.</p>
5955
5956 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5957 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5958 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5959 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5960 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
5961 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
5962 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
5963 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
5964 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
5965 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
5966 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
5967
5968 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5969
5970 <ul>
5971
5972 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
5973     work also without a attached tty.</li>
5974 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
5975     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
5976     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
5977     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
5978     required).</li>
5979
5980 </ul>
5981
5982 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5983
5984 <ul>
5985
5986 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
5987 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
5988 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
5989 stick ISO image.</li>
5990 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
5991 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
5992 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
5993     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
5994     cope with this.</li>
5995 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
5996 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
5997     empty password hashes.</li>
5998 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
5999     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
6000     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
6001
6002 </ul>
6003
6004 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6005
6006 <ul>
6007
6008 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6009     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6010 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
6011     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
6012
6013 </ul>
6014
6015 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6016
6017 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6018
6019 <ul>
6020
6021 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6022
6023 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6024
6025 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
6026
6027 </ul>
6028
6029 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
6030 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
6031
6032 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6033
6034 <ul>
6035
6036 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6037 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
6038 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
6039
6040 </ul>
6041
6042 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
6043 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
6044
6045
6046 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6047
6048 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6049
6050       </div>
6051       <div class="tags">
6052
6053
6054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6055
6056
6057       </div>
6058     </div>
6059     <div class="padding"></div>
6060
6061     <div class="entry">
6062       <div class="title">
6063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="date">
6066         18th August 2013
6067       </div>
6068       <div class="body">
6069         <p>Earlier, I reported about
6070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
6071 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
6072 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
6073 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
6074 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
6075 currently on the disk.</p>
6076
6077 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
6078 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
6079 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
6080 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
6081 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
6082 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
6083 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
6084 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
6085 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
6086 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
6087 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
6088 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
6089 the broken disks.</p>
6090
6091       </div>
6092       <div class="tags">
6093
6094
6095         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>.
6096
6097
6098       </div>
6099     </div>
6100     <div class="padding"></div>
6101
6102     <div class="entry">
6103       <div class="title">
6104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
6105       </div>
6106       <div class="date">
6107          2nd August 2013
6108       </div>
6109       <div class="body">
6110         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
6111 have worked on a Norwegian
6112 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6113 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6114 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
6115 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
6116 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
6117 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
6118 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
6119 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
6120 progress of the translation:</p>
6121
6122 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
6123
6124 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
6125 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
6126 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
6127 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
6128 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
6129 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
6130 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
6131 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
6132 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
6133 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
6134 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
6135
6136 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6137 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6138 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6139 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6140 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6141 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
6142 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
6143 project files currently available from
6144 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6145
6146 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6147 the updated
6148 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6149 and
6150 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6151 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6152 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6153 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6154
6155       </div>
6156       <div class="tags">
6157
6158
6159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6160
6161
6162       </div>
6163     </div>
6164     <div class="padding"></div>
6165
6166     <div class="entry">
6167       <div class="title">
6168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6169       </div>
6170       <div class="date">
6171         27th July 2013
6172       </div>
6173       <div class="body">
6174         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6175 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6176
6177 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
6178 2013-07-27</strong></p>
6179
6180 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6181 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6182
6183 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6184
6185 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6186 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6187 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6188 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6189 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6190 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6191 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6192 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6193 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6194 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6195 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6196 desktop contains
6197 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6198 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6199 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6200 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6201
6202 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6203 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6204 Squeeze release.</p>
6205
6206 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6207 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6208 release.</p>
6209
6210 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6211
6212 <ul>
6213
6214 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
6215    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
6216 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
6217    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
6218    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
6219    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
6220    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
6221 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
6222 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
6223 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
6224    crash bugs.</li>
6225
6226 </ul>
6227
6228 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6229
6230 <ul>
6231
6232 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
6233    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
6234 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
6235    netinst CD.</li>
6236 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
6237    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
6238 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
6239    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
6240    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
6241 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
6242    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
6243    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
6244 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
6245    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
6246    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
6247 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
6248    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
6249 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
6250
6251 </ul>
6252
6253 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6254
6255 <ul>
6256
6257 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
6258 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6259     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6260 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
6261
6262 </ul>
6263
6264 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6265
6266 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6267
6268 <ul>
6269
6270 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6271
6272 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
6273
6274 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
6275
6276 </ul>
6277
6278 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
6279 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
6280
6281 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6282
6283 <ul>
6284
6285 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6286 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
6287 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
6288
6289 </ul>
6290
6291 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
6292 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
6293
6294
6295 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6296
6297 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6298
6299       </div>
6300       <div class="tags">
6301
6302
6303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6304
6305
6306       </div>
6307     </div>
6308     <div class="padding"></div>
6309
6310     <div class="entry">
6311       <div class="title">
6312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
6313       </div>
6314       <div class="date">
6315         17th July 2013
6316       </div>
6317       <div class="body">
6318         <p>Today I switched to
6319 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
6320 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
6321 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
6322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
6323 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
6324 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
6325 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
6326 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
6327 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
6328 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
6329 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
6330 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
6331 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
6332 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
6333 station from now on.</p>
6334
6335 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
6336 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
6337 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
6338 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
6339 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
6340 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
6341 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
6342 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
6343 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
6344 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
6345 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
6346 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
6347
6348 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
6349 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
6350 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6351 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6352 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
6353 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
6354 parameters are tuned:</p>
6355
6356 <ul>
6357
6358 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6359     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6360
6361 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6362     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6363     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6364
6365 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6366     systems.</li>
6367
6368 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6369     /etc/fstab.</li>
6370
6371 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6372
6373 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6374     cron.daily).</li>
6375
6376 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6377     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6378
6379 </ul>
6380
6381 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6382 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6383 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6384 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6385 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6386 from getting the data on the disk (see
6387 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6388 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6389 right thing to do.</p>
6390
6391 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6392 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6393 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6394
6395 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6396 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6397 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6398 instead of during my work.</p>
6399
6400 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6401 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6402
6403 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
6404 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6405 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6406
6407 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6408 there.</p>
6409
6410 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6411 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6412 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6413 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6414 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6415 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6416 back.</p>
6417
6418       </div>
6419       <div class="tags">
6420
6421
6422         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>.
6423
6424
6425       </div>
6426     </div>
6427     <div class="padding"></div>
6428
6429     <div class="entry">
6430       <div class="title">
6431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
6432       </div>
6433       <div class="date">
6434         10th July 2013
6435       </div>
6436       <div class="body">
6437         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6438 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
6439 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6440 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6441 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
6442 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6443 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
6444 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6445
6446 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6447 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
6448 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
6449 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6450 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6451 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
6452 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
6453 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
6454 lock up when I download a new
6455 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6456 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6457 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6458
6459 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6460 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6461 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6462 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6463 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6464 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6465
6466 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6467 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
6468 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6469 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6470 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6471 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6472
6473 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6474 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
6475 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6476 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6477 exist).</p>
6478
6479       </div>
6480       <div class="tags">
6481
6482
6483         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>.
6484
6485
6486       </div>
6487     </div>
6488     <div class="padding"></div>
6489
6490     <div class="entry">
6491       <div class="title">
6492         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
6493       </div>
6494       <div class="date">
6495          9th July 2013
6496       </div>
6497       <div class="body">
6498         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
6499 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6500 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6501 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
6502 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6503 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6504 Bitraf</a>.</p>
6505
6506 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
6507 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
6508 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
6509 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6510 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
6511
6512       </div>
6513       <div class="tags">
6514
6515
6516         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>.
6517
6518
6519       </div>
6520     </div>
6521     <div class="padding"></div>
6522
6523     <div class="entry">
6524       <div class="title">
6525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
6526       </div>
6527       <div class="date">
6528          5th July 2013
6529       </div>
6530       <div class="body">
6531         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
6532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
6533 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
6534 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
6535 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
6536 ended up picking a
6537 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
6538 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
6539 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
6540 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
6541 on that below.</p>
6542
6543 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6544 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6545 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6546 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6547 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6548 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
6549 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
6550 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
6551 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
6552
6553 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
6554 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
6555 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
6556 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
6557 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
6558 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
6559 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
6560
6561 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
6562 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
6563
6564 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
6565 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
6566 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
6567 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
6568 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
6569 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
6570 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
6571 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
6572 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
6573 kernel developers as
6574 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
6575 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
6576 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
6577 Lenovo forums, both for
6578 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
6579 2012-11-10</a> and for
6580 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
6581 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
6582 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
6583 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
6584 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
6585 There is even a
6586 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
6587 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
6588 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
6589
6590 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
6591 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
6592 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
6593 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
6594 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
6595 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
6596 fixed. :)</p>
6597
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="tags">
6600
6601
6602         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>.
6603
6604
6605       </div>
6606     </div>
6607     <div class="padding"></div>
6608
6609     <div class="entry">
6610       <div class="title">
6611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="date">
6614          4th July 2013
6615       </div>
6616       <div class="body">
6617         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
6618 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
6619 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
6620 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
6621 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
6622 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
6623 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
6624 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
6625 with an expencive door stop.</p>
6626
6627 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6628 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6629 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6630 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6631 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6632 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
6633 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
6634
6635 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
6636 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
6637 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
6638 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
6639 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
6640 new laptop now. :)</p>
6641
6642 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
6643
6644       </div>
6645       <div class="tags">
6646
6647
6648         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>.
6649
6650
6651       </div>
6652     </div>
6653     <div class="padding"></div>
6654
6655     <div class="entry">
6656       <div class="title">
6657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6658       </div>
6659       <div class="date">
6660          3rd July 2013
6661       </div>
6662       <div class="body">
6663         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6664 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6665
6666 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
6667 2013-07-03</strong></p>
6668
6669 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6670 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6671
6672 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6673
6674 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6675 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6676 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6677 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6678 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6679 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6680 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6681 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6682 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6683 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6684 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6685 desktop contains
6686 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6687 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6688 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6689 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6690
6691 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6692 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6693 Squeeze release.</p>
6694
6695 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6696 <ul>
6697   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
6698   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
6699     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
6700     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
6701   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
6702     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
6703     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
6704   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
6705     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
6706     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
6707     too.</li>
6708   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
6709     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
6710 </ul>
6711 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6712 <ul>
6713   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
6714   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
6715   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
6716     up for some language options.</li>
6717   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
6718   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
6719   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
6720     d-i is doing it.</li>
6721   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
6722     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
6723   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
6724     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
6725     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
6726   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
6727     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
6728   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
6729   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
6730     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
6731   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
6732     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
6733 </ul>
6734 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6735 <ul>
6736   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6737     available yet (698840).</li>
6738   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
6739 </ul>
6740 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6741
6742 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6743 <ul>
6744   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6745   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6746   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
6747 </ul>
6748
6749 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
6750 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
6751
6752 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6753 <ul>
6754   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6755   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6756   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
6757 </ul>
6758
6759 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
6760 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
6761
6762 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6763
6764 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6765
6766       </div>
6767       <div class="tags">
6768
6769
6770         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6771
6772
6773       </div>
6774     </div>
6775     <div class="padding"></div>
6776
6777     <div class="entry">
6778       <div class="title">
6779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
6780       </div>
6781       <div class="date">
6782         25th June 2013
6783       </div>
6784       <div class="body">
6785         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6786 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6787 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6788 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6789 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6790 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6791 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6792 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6793 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6794 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6795 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6796
6797 <p><pre>
6798 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6799 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6800 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6801 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6802 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6803 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6804 firmware-ipw2x00
6805 firmware-ipw2x00
6806 Preconfiguring packages ...
6807 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6808 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6809 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6810 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6811 #
6812 </pre></p>
6813
6814 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6815 printed instead:</p>
6816
6817 <p><pre>
6818 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6819 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6820 #
6821 </pre></p>
6822
6823 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6824 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
6825
6826 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
6827 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6828 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
6829 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6830 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6831 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
6832 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6833 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
6834 machine.</p>
6835
6836 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6837 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6838 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6839 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6840 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6841 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
6842
6843       </div>
6844       <div class="tags">
6845
6846
6847         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6848
6849
6850       </div>
6851     </div>
6852     <div class="padding"></div>
6853
6854     <div class="entry">
6855       <div class="title">
6856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
6857       </div>
6858       <div class="date">
6859         22nd June 2013
6860       </div>
6861       <div class="body">
6862         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6863 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
6864 which check that services are running, working, and return the
6865 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
6866 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
6867 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
6868 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
6869 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
6870 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
6871
6872 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
6873 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
6874 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
6875 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
6876 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
6877 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
6878 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
6879 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
6880 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
6881 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
6882 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
6883 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
6884 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
6885 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
6886
6887 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
6888 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
6889 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
6890 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
6891 the problem.</p>
6892
6893 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
6894 please join us on
6895 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6896 irc.debian.org</a> and the
6897 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
6898 list.</p>
6899
6900       </div>
6901       <div class="tags">
6902
6903
6904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6905
6906
6907       </div>
6908     </div>
6909     <div class="padding"></div>
6910
6911     <div class="entry">
6912       <div class="title">
6913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
6914       </div>
6915       <div class="date">
6916         17th June 2013
6917       </div>
6918       <div class="body">
6919         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6920 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
6921 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
6922 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
6923 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
6924 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
6925 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
6926 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
6927
6928 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6929
6930 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
6931 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
6932 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
6933 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
6934 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
6935 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
6936 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
6937 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
6938 field.</p>
6939
6940 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
6941 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
6942 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
6943 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
6944 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
6945 the only one we have in our country.</p>
6946
6947 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6948 project?</strong></p>
6949
6950 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
6951 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
6952 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
6953 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
6954 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
6955 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
6956 ways to contribute.</p>
6957
6958 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
6959 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
6960 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
6961 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
6962 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
6963 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
6964 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
6965 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
6966 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
6967 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
6968
6969 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6970 Edu?</strong></p>
6971
6972 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
6973 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
6974 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
6975 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
6976 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
6977 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
6978 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
6979 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
6980
6981 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
6982 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
6983 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
6984 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
6985 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
6986 project.</p>
6987
6988 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6989 Edu?</strong></p>
6990
6991 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
6992 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
6993 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
6994 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
6995 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
6996 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
6997 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
6998 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
6999 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
7000
7001 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
7002 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
7003 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
7004 on.</p>
7005
7006 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7007
7008 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
7009 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
7010 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
7011 Enlightenment project a lot!),
7012 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
7013 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
7014 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
7015 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
7016 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
7017
7018 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7019 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7020
7021 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
7022 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
7023 that:</p>
7024
7025 <ul>
7026
7027 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
7028
7029 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
7030     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
7031     of teenagers more?</li>
7032
7033 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
7034     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
7035     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
7036     them!)</li>
7037
7038 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
7039     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
7040     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
7041
7042 </ul>
7043
7044 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
7045 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
7046 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
7047 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
7048 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
7049
7050       </div>
7051       <div class="tags">
7052
7053
7054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7055
7056
7057       </div>
7058     </div>
7059     <div class="padding"></div>
7060
7061     <div class="entry">
7062       <div class="title">
7063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
7064       </div>
7065       <div class="date">
7066         12th June 2013
7067       </div>
7068       <div class="body">
7069         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
7070 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7071 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
7072 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
7073 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
7074 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
7075
7076 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7077
7078 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
7079 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
7080 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
7081
7082 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
7083 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
7084 each other.</p>
7085
7086 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7087 project?</strong></p>
7088
7089 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
7090 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
7091 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
7092 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
7093 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
7094 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
7095 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
7096 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
7097 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
7098 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
7099 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
7100 we'll get there one day.</p>
7101
7102 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7103 Edu?</strong></p>
7104
7105 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
7106 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
7107 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
7108 very high quality work.</p>
7109
7110 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
7111 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
7112 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
7113 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
7114 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
7115
7116 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7117 Edu?</strong></p>
7118
7119 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
7120 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
7121 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
7122
7123 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
7124 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
7125 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
7126 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
7127 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
7128 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
7129 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
7130 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
7131 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
7132 currently.</p>
7133
7134 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
7135 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
7136 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
7137 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
7138 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
7139 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
7140 autonomous.</p>
7141
7142 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7143
7144 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
7145 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
7146 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
7147 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
7148 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
7149
7150 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
7151 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
7152 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
7153 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
7154 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
7155 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
7156 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
7157 X.</p>
7158
7159 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
7160 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
7161 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
7162 it :p)
7163
7164 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7165 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7166
7167 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
7168 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
7169 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
7170 that.</p>
7171
7172 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
7173 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
7174 advantage of that.</p>
7175
7176 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
7177 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
7178 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
7179 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
7180 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
7181 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
7182 best solution for them.</p>
7183
7184 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
7185 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
7186 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
7187
7188       </div>
7189       <div class="tags">
7190
7191
7192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7193
7194
7195       </div>
7196     </div>
7197     <div class="padding"></div>
7198
7199     <div class="entry">
7200       <div class="title">
7201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7202       </div>
7203       <div class="date">
7204         11th June 2013
7205       </div>
7206       <div class="body">
7207         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7208 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7209 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7210 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7211 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7212 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7213 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7214 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7215 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7216 i915 driver used by the
7217 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7218 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7219
7220 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7221 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7222 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7223 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7224 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7225
7226 <pre>
7227 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7228 update-initramfs -u -k all
7229 </pre>
7230
7231 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7232 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7233 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7234 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7235 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7236 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7237 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7238 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7239 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7240 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7241 number.</p>
7242
7243 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7244 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7245
7246 <p><pre>
7247 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7248     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7249     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7250  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7251  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7252     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7253  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7254     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7255  Latency: 0
7256  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7257  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7258  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7259  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7260  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7261  Capabilities: <access denied>
7262  Kernel driver in use: i915
7263 </pre></p>
7264
7265 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7266
7267 <p><pre>
7268 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7269        ...
7270         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7271         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7272        ...
7273 }
7274 </pre></p>
7275
7276 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7277 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7278 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7279 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7280 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7281 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7282 yet shown up in
7283 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7284 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7285 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7286 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7287 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7288 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7289
7290 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7291 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7292 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7293 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7294 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7295 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7296 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7297 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7298 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7299 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7300 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7301 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7302
7303 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7304 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7305 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7306 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7307 backlight.</p>
7308
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="tags">
7311
7312
7313         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>.
7314
7315
7316       </div>
7317     </div>
7318     <div class="padding"></div>
7319
7320     <div class="entry">
7321       <div class="title">
7322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7323       </div>
7324       <div class="date">
7325         10th June 2013
7326       </div>
7327       <div class="body">
7328         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7329 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7330
7331 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
7332 2013-06-10</strong></p>
7333
7334 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7335 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7336
7337 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7338
7339 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7340 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7341 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7342 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7343 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7344 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7345 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7346 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7347 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7348 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7349 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7350 desktop contains
7351 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7352 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7353 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7354 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7355
7356 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7357 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7358 Squeeze release.</p>
7359
7360 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7361
7362 <ul>
7363
7364 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
7365 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
7366 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
7367 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
7368 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
7369
7370 </ul>
7371
7372 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7373
7374 <ul>
7375
7376 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
7377 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
7378 <li>New Romanian translation.
7379 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
7380 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
7381 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
7382 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
7383 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
7384 <li>More testsuite tests.
7385 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
7386 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
7387
7388 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
7389 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
7390
7391 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
7392 them up with GOsa².</li>
7393
7394 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
7395
7396 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
7397 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
7398 entered password). </li>
7399
7400 </ul>
7401
7402 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7403
7404 <ul>
7405
7406 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
7407
7408 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7409 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
7410 missing import feature).</li>
7411
7412 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
7413
7414 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
7415 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
7416 unfixed.</li>
7417
7418 </ul>
7419
7420 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7421
7422 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7423
7424 <ul>
7425
7426 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7427
7428 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
7429
7430 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
7431
7432 </ul>
7433
7434 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
7435 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
7436
7437 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7438
7439 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7440
7441       </div>
7442       <div class="tags">
7443
7444
7445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7446
7447
7448       </div>
7449     </div>
7450     <div class="padding"></div>
7451
7452     <div class="entry">
7453       <div class="title">
7454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="date">
7457          5th June 2013
7458       </div>
7459       <div class="body">
7460         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
7461 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
7462 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
7463 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
7464 the project:
7465
7466 <ol>
7467
7468 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
7469   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
7470   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
7471   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
7472   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
7473
7474 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
7475   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
7476   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
7477   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
7478   #698840</a>.</li>
7479
7480 </ol>
7481
7482 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
7483 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7484 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
7485
7486       </div>
7487       <div class="tags">
7488
7489
7490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7491
7492
7493       </div>
7494     </div>
7495     <div class="padding"></div>
7496
7497     <div class="entry">
7498       <div class="title">
7499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
7500       </div>
7501       <div class="date">
7502          4th June 2013
7503       </div>
7504       <div class="body">
7505         <p>It has been a while since my last English
7506 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7507 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
7508 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
7509 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
7510 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
7511
7512 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7513
7514 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
7515 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
7516 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
7517 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
7518
7519 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
7520 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
7521 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
7522
7523 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7524 project?</strong></p>
7525
7526 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
7527 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
7528 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
7529 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
7530 manual.
7531
7532 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
7533 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
7534 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
7535 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
7536
7537 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
7538 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
7539 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
7540 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
7541 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
7542 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
7543 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
7544 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
7545 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
7546 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
7547
7548 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
7549 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
7550 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
7551 beautiful project.</p>
7552
7553 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7554 Edu?</strong></p>
7555
7556 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
7557 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
7558 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
7559
7560 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
7561 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
7562 of educational free software.</p>
7563
7564 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7565 Edu?</strong></p>
7566
7567 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
7568 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
7569 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
7570 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
7571 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
7572
7573 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
7574 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
7575 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
7576 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
7577 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
7578 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
7579 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
7580 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
7581
7582 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7583
7584 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
7585 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
7586 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
7587 also using the mathematical software
7588 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
7589 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
7590 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
7591
7592 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
7593 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
7594 statistics?</strong></p>
7595
7596 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
7597 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
7598 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
7599 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
7600
7601 <ul>
7602
7603 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
7604 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
7605 constructions in planar geometry
7606
7607 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
7608 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
7609 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
7610
7611 </ul>
7612
7613 <p>I like also
7614 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
7615 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
7616 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
7617
7618 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7619 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7620
7621 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
7622
7623 <ul>
7624
7625 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
7626
7627 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
7628     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
7629     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
7630
7631 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
7632
7633 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
7634     system.</li>
7635
7636 </ul>
7637
7638       </div>
7639       <div class="tags">
7640
7641
7642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7643
7644
7645       </div>
7646     </div>
7647     <div class="padding"></div>
7648
7649     <div class="entry">
7650       <div class="title">
7651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
7652       </div>
7653       <div class="date">
7654          1st June 2013
7655       </div>
7656       <div class="body">
7657         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7658 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
7659 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
7660 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
7661 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
7662 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
7663 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
7664 program.</p>
7665
7666 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
7667
7668 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
7669 <p>
7670 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
7671 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7672 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
7673 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
7674 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7675 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
7676 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
7677 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
7678 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
7679 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
7680 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
7681 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
7682 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
7683 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
7684 </p>
7685
7686 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
7687 <p>
7688 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
7689 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
7690 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
7691 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
7692 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
7693 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7694 </p>
7695
7696 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
7697 <p>
7698 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7699 </p>
7700
7701 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
7702 <p>
7703 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
7704 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
7705 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
7706 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
7707 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
7708 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
7709 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
7710 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
7711 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7712 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
7713 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
7714 </p>
7715
7716 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
7717 <p>
7718 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
7720 </p>
7721
7722 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
7723 <p>
7724 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
7725 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
7726 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7727 </p>
7728
7729 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
7730 <p>
7731 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7732 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
7733 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
7734 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
7735 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
7736 </p>
7737
7738 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
7739 <p>
7740 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7741 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
7742 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7743 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
7744 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
7745 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
7746 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
7747 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
7748 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
7749 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
7750 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
7751 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
7752 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
7753 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
7754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
7756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
7757 </p>
7758
7759 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
7760 <p>
7761 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7762 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
7763 </p>
7764
7765 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
7766 <p>
7767 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
7768 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
7769 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7770 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7771 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
7772 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
7773 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
7774 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
7775 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
7776 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7777 </p>
7778
7779 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
7780 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
7781 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
7782 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
7783 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
7784 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
7785 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
7786
7787       </div>
7788       <div class="tags">
7789
7790
7791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7792
7793
7794       </div>
7795     </div>
7796     <div class="padding"></div>
7797
7798     <div class="entry">
7799       <div class="title">
7800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
7801       </div>
7802       <div class="date">
7803         27th May 2013
7804       </div>
7805       <div class="body">
7806         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7807 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
7808 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7809 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7810 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7811 and Windows 8.</p>
7812
7813 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7814 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7815 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7816 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7817 enough to tell.</p>
7818
7819 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7820 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7821 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7822 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7823 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7824 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7825 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7826 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7827 to follow.</p>
7828
7829 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7830 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7831 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7832 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7833 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7834 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7835 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7836 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7837
7838 <p>I've updated the
7839 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7840 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7841 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7842 machine.</p>
7843
7844 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7845 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7846
7847       </div>
7848       <div class="tags">
7849
7850
7851         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>.
7852
7853
7854       </div>
7855     </div>
7856     <div class="padding"></div>
7857
7858     <div class="entry">
7859       <div class="title">
7860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
7861       </div>
7862       <div class="date">
7863         25th May 2013
7864       </div>
7865       <div class="body">
7866         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7867 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7868 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7869 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7870 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7871 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7872
7873 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7874 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7875 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7876 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7877 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7878 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7879 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7880 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7881 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7882 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7883
7884 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7885 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7886 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7887 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7888 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7889 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7890
7891 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7892 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7893 on new Laptops?</p>
7894
7895       </div>
7896       <div class="tags">
7897
7898
7899         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>.
7900
7901
7902       </div>
7903     </div>
7904     <div class="padding"></div>
7905
7906     <div class="entry">
7907       <div class="title">
7908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
7909       </div>
7910       <div class="date">
7911         17th May 2013
7912       </div>
7913       <div class="body">
7914         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7915 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7916 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7917 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7918 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7919 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7920 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7921 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7922 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7923 donate some money</a>.
7924
7925 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7926 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7927 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7928 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7929 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7930
7931 <p>The script,
7932 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
7933 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7934 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7935 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7936
7937 <ol>
7938
7939 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7940 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7941 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7942     our configuration.</li>
7943 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7944     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7945     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7946     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7947 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7948     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7949 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7950
7951 </ol>
7952
7953 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7954 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7955 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7956 the needed packages.</p>
7957
7958 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7959 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7960 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7961 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7962 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7963 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7964
7965 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7966 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7967 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7968
7969 <p><pre>
7970 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7971 DESKTOP="lxde"
7972 </pre></p>
7973
7974 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7975 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7976 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7977 boot.</p>
7978
7979       </div>
7980       <div class="tags">
7981
7982
7983         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>.
7984
7985
7986       </div>
7987     </div>
7988     <div class="padding"></div>
7989
7990     <div class="entry">
7991       <div class="title">
7992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7993       </div>
7994       <div class="date">
7995         14th May 2013
7996       </div>
7997       <div class="body">
7998         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7999 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
8000 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8001
8002 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
8003 2013-05-14</strong></p>
8004
8005 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8006 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
8007 codename "Wheezy".</p>
8008
8009 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8010
8011 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
8012 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8013 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
8014 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8015 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8016 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8017 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
8018 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
8019
8020 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8021 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8022 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8023
8024 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8025 <ul>
8026   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
8027     default.</li>
8028   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
8029   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
8030   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
8031     ibus-anthy.</li>
8032 </ul>
8033
8034 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8035 <ul>
8036
8037   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
8038     reliability improvements.</li>
8039   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
8040     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
8041   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
8042     problems.</li>
8043   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
8044     direct:// URL.</li>
8045   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
8046   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
8047   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
8048   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
8049     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
8050   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
8051     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
8052 </ul>
8053
8054 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8055 <ul>
8056
8057   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
8058     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
8059     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
8060   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
8061   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8062     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
8063   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
8064   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
8065   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
8066     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
8067   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
8068     password submission problem
8069     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
8070
8071 </ul>
8072
8073 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8074
8075 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8076 <ul>
8077
8078   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8079   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
8080   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
8081
8082 </ul>
8083
8084 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
8085
8086 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
8087
8088 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8089
8090 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8091
8092       </div>
8093       <div class="tags">
8094
8095
8096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8097
8098
8099       </div>
8100     </div>
8101     <div class="padding"></div>
8102
8103     <div class="entry">
8104       <div class="title">
8105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
8106       </div>
8107       <div class="date">
8108         11th May 2013
8109       </div>
8110       <div class="body">
8111         <P>In January,
8112 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
8113 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
8114 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
8115 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
8116 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
8117 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
8118 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
8119 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
8120 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
8121 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
8122 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
8123 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
8124
8125 <p><table>
8126 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
8127 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
8128 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
8129 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
8130 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
8131 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
8132 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
8133 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
8134 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
8135 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
8136 </table></p>
8137
8138 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
8139 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8140 available in experimental.</p>
8141
8142 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8143 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8144 for LEGO designers.</p>
8145
8146       </div>
8147       <div class="tags">
8148
8149
8150         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/robot">robot</a>.
8151
8152
8153       </div>
8154     </div>
8155     <div class="padding"></div>
8156
8157     <div class="entry">
8158       <div class="title">
8159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8160       </div>
8161       <div class="date">
8162          5th May 2013
8163       </div>
8164       <div class="body">
8165         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8166 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8167 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8168 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8169 soon.</p>
8170
8171 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8172 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8173 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8174 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8175 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8176 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8177 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8178 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8179 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8180 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8181 Edu.</a>
8182
8183 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8184 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8185 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8186 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8187 follow.<p>
8188
8189       </div>
8190       <div class="tags">
8191
8192
8193         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>.
8194
8195
8196       </div>
8197     </div>
8198     <div class="padding"></div>
8199
8200     <div class="entry">
8201       <div class="title">
8202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8203       </div>
8204       <div class="date">
8205         26th April 2013
8206       </div>
8207       <div class="body">
8208         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
8209 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
8210 announcement:</p>
8211
8212 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
8213 2013-04-26</strong></p>
8214
8215 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
8216 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8217
8218 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8219
8220 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8221 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8222 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8223 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
8224 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8225 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8226 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8227 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8228 installed via the network.</p>
8229
8230 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8231 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8232 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8233
8234 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8235
8236 <ul>
8237 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
8238   <ul>
8239      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
8240      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
8241          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
8242          manual.)</li>
8243      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
8244      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
8245      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
8246      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
8247      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
8248      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
8249      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
8250      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
8251      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
8252      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
8253      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
8254      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
8255          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
8256          manual</a> for more details.</li>
8257      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
8258          installation.</li>
8259      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
8260          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
8261   </ul></li>
8262 </ul>
8263
8264 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
8265 <ul>
8266 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
8267     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
8268     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
8269 </ul>
8270
8271 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
8272 <ul>
8273 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
8274     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
8275     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
8276 </ul>
8277
8278 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8279 <ul>
8280 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
8281     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
8282     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
8283 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
8284     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
8285     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
8286 </ul>
8287
8288 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
8289 <ul>
8290 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
8291     yet.</li>
8292 </ul>
8293
8294 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
8295
8296 <ul>
8297 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
8298     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
8299     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
8300 </ul>
8301
8302 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8303
8304 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
8305 <ul>
8306 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8307 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
8308 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
8309 </ul>
8310
8311 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
8312
8313 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
8314
8315 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8316
8317 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8318
8319       </div>
8320       <div class="tags">
8321
8322
8323         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8324
8325
8326       </div>
8327     </div>
8328     <div class="padding"></div>
8329
8330     <div class="entry">
8331       <div class="title">
8332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
8333       </div>
8334       <div class="date">
8335         16th April 2013
8336       </div>
8337       <div class="body">
8338         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
8339 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
8340 Details about the gathering can be found
8341 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
8342 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
8343 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
8344 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
8345 weekend.</p>
8346
8347 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
8348 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
8349 Edu release.</p>
8350
8351 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
8352
8353       </div>
8354       <div class="tags">
8355
8356
8357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8358
8359
8360       </div>
8361     </div>
8362     <div class="padding"></div>
8363
8364     <div class="entry">
8365       <div class="title">
8366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
8367       </div>
8368       <div class="date">
8369          3rd April 2013
8370       </div>
8371       <div class="body">
8372         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
8373 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
8374 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
8375 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
8376
8377 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
8378 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
8379 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
8380 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
8381 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
8382 BTS. :)</p>
8383
8384       </div>
8385       <div class="tags">
8386
8387
8388         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8389
8390
8391       </div>
8392     </div>
8393     <div class="padding"></div>
8394
8395     <div class="entry">
8396       <div class="title">
8397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
8398       </div>
8399       <div class="date">
8400         26th March 2013
8401       </div>
8402       <div class="body">
8403         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
8404 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
8405 font you use when printing.</p>
8406
8407 <p>Three years ago,
8408 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
8409 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
8410 changed their default front from
8411 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
8412 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
8413 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
8414 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
8415 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
8416 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
8417 prints.</p>
8418
8419 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
8420 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
8421 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
8422 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
8423 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
8424 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
8425 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
8426 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
8427 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
8428 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
8429 depend on the documents printed.</p>
8430
8431 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
8432 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
8433 and save some money in the process.</p>
8434
8435 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
8436 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
8437 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
8438 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
8439 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
8440 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
8441 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
8442 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
8443 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
8444
8445       </div>
8446       <div class="tags">
8447
8448
8449         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8450
8451
8452       </div>
8453     </div>
8454     <div class="padding"></div>
8455
8456     <div class="entry">
8457       <div class="title">
8458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
8459       </div>
8460       <div class="date">
8461         24th March 2013
8462       </div>
8463       <div class="body">
8464         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
8465 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
8466 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
8467 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
8468 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
8469 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
8470 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
8471 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
8472 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
8473 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
8474 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
8475 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
8476
8477 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
8478 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
8479 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
8480 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
8481 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
8482 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
8483 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
8484 all I had to do was to use the
8485 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
8486 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
8487 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
8488 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
8489 xsltproc/fop (aka
8490 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
8491 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
8492 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
8493 technical detail.</p>
8494
8495 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
8496 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
8497 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
8498 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
8499 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
8500 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
8501
8502 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
8503 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
8504 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
8505 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
8506 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
8507 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
8508 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
8509 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
8510 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
8511
8512 <p><blockquote><pre>
8513 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8514 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8515   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8516     &lt;hr/&gt;
8517   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8518 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8519 </pre></blockquote></p>
8520
8521 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8522
8523 <p><blockquote><pre>
8524 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8525 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8526   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
8527     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
8528       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
8529     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
8530   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8531 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8532 </pre></blockquote></p>
8533
8534 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
8535 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
8536 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
8537 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
8538 enough.</p>
8539
8540 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
8541 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
8542 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
8543 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
8544 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
8545 look like this:</p>
8546
8547 <p><blockquote><pre>
8548 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8549 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
8550   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8551     &lt;br/&gt;
8552   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8553 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8554 </pre></blockquote></p>
8555
8556 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
8557
8558 <p><blockquote><pre>
8559 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
8560 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
8561   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
8562   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
8563     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
8564   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
8565 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
8566 </pre></blockquote></p>
8567
8568 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
8569 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
8570 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
8571 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
8572 page.</p>
8573
8574 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
8575 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
8576 github</a>
8577 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
8578 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
8579 days.</p>
8580
8581       </div>
8582       <div class="tags">
8583
8584
8585         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8586
8587
8588       </div>
8589     </div>
8590     <div class="padding"></div>
8591
8592     <div class="entry">
8593       <div class="title">
8594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
8595       </div>
8596       <div class="date">
8597         17th March 2013
8598       </div>
8599       <div class="body">
8600         <p>Via
8601 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
8602 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
8603 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
8604 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
8605 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
8606 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
8607 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
8608
8609 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
8610 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
8611
8612 <blockquote>
8613 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
8614 </blockquote>
8615
8616 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
8617
8618 <blockquote>
8619 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
8620 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
8621 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
8622 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
8623 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
8624 </blockquote>
8625
8626 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
8627 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
8628 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
8629 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
8630
8631 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
8632 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
8633
8634 <blockquote>
8635 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
8636 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
8637 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
8638 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
8639 </blockquote>
8640
8641 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
8642 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
8643 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
8644 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
8645 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
8646
8647 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
8648 embedding:</p>
8649
8650 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
8651
8652       </div>
8653       <div class="tags">
8654
8655
8656         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8657
8658
8659       </div>
8660     </div>
8661     <div class="padding"></div>
8662
8663     <div class="entry">
8664       <div class="title">
8665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
8666       </div>
8667       <div class="date">
8668          8th March 2013
8669       </div>
8670       <div class="body">
8671         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
8672 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8673 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
8674 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8675 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
8676 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
8677 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
8678
8679 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
8680
8681 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
8682 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
8683
8684 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
8685 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
8686 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
8687 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
8688 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
8689 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
8690
8691 <p>Images are available for download at
8692 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
8693
8694 <p>md5sums:
8695 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8696 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8697 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8698
8699 <p>sha1sums:
8700 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8701 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8702 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8703
8704 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
8705
8706 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
8707 2013-03-03:</p>
8708
8709 <ul>
8710   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
8711   <ul>
8712         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
8713         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
8714   </ul></li>
8715   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
8716   <ul>
8717         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
8718         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
8719   </ul></li>
8720   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
8721      <ul>
8722         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
8723         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
8724         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
8725                 Closes: #664596</li>
8726         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
8727                 Closes: #664976</li>
8728         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
8729            <ul>
8730                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
8731                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
8732            </ul></li>
8733         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
8734            <ul>
8735                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
8736                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
8737                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
8738                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
8739                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
8740            </ul></li>
8741         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
8742     </ul>
8743   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
8744     <ul>
8745         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
8746     </ul></li>
8747 </ul>
8748
8749 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
8750 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
8751 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
8752 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
8753
8754 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
8755 mailinglist
8756 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
8757 </p></blockquote>
8758
8759 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
8760
8761       </div>
8762       <div class="tags">
8763
8764
8765         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8766
8767
8768       </div>
8769     </div>
8770     <div class="padding"></div>
8771
8772     <div class="entry">
8773       <div class="title">
8774         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
8775       </div>
8776       <div class="date">
8777          3rd March 2013
8778       </div>
8779       <div class="body">
8780         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
8781 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
8782 support using
8783 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
8784 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
8785 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
8786 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
8787 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
8788 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
8789 using the GNU LGPL, and
8790 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
8791
8792 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
8793 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
8794 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
8795 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
8796 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
8797 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
8798
8799 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
8800 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
8801 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
8802 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
8803 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
8804 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
8805 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
8806 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
8807 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
8808 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
8809 signal distribution is handled using
8810 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
8811 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
8812 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
8813 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
8814 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
8815 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
8816 them up a bit more first.</p>
8817
8818 <p>The development is coordinated on the
8819 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
8820 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
8821 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
8822 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
8823 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
8824 development.</p>
8825
8826       </div>
8827       <div class="tags">
8828
8829
8830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8831
8832
8833       </div>
8834     </div>
8835     <div class="padding"></div>
8836
8837     <div class="entry">
8838       <div class="title">
8839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
8840       </div>
8841       <div class="date">
8842         27th February 2013
8843       </div>
8844       <div class="body">
8845         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
8846 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
8847 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
8848 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
8849 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
8850 (where I am the chair of the board) and
8851 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
8852 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
8853 GNU», with this description:
8854
8855 <p><blockquote>
8856 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
8857 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
8858 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
8859 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
8860 </blockquote></p>
8861
8862 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
8863 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
8864 am really curious how many will show up.  See
8865 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
8866 page</a> for the location details.</p>
8867
8868       </div>
8869       <div class="tags">
8870
8871
8872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8873
8874
8875       </div>
8876     </div>
8877     <div class="padding"></div>
8878
8879     <div class="entry">
8880       <div class="title">
8881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
8882       </div>
8883       <div class="date">
8884         15th February 2013
8885       </div>
8886       <div class="body">
8887         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
8888 now a great source of free maps available from
8889 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
8890 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
8891 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
8892 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
8893 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
8894 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
8895 page for descriptions).</p>
8896
8897 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
8898 map you can just edit the
8899 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
8900 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
8901
8902       </div>
8903       <div class="tags">
8904
8905
8906         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
8907
8908
8909       </div>
8910     </div>
8911     <div class="padding"></div>
8912
8913     <div class="entry">
8914       <div class="title">
8915         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
8916       </div>
8917       <div class="date">
8918         12th February 2013
8919       </div>
8920       <div class="body">
8921         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
8922 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
8923 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
8924 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
8925 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
8926 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
8927 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
8928 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
8929 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
8930 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
8931 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
8932 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
8933 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
8934 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
8935 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
8936 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
8937
8938 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
8939 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
8940 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
8941 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
8942 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
8943 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
8944 fields:</p>
8945
8946 <p><pre>
8947 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8948 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8949 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
8950 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8951 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8952 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8953 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8954 </pre></p>
8955
8956 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
8957 answer regarding
8958 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
8959 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
8960 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
8961 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
8962
8963 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
8964
8965 <p><pre>
8966 BEGIN:VCARD
8967 VERSION:2.1
8968 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
8969 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
8970 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
8971 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
8972 REV:20130212T095000Z
8973 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8974 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8975 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8976 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8977 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8978 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8979 END:VCARD
8980 </pre></p>
8981
8982 <p>The resulting QR code created using
8983 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
8984 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
8985 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
8986 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
8987 system.</p>
8988
8989 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
8990
8991 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
8992 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
8993 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
8994 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
8995
8996 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
8997 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
8998
8999       </div>
9000       <div class="tags">
9001
9002
9003         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9004
9005
9006       </div>
9007     </div>
9008     <div class="padding"></div>
9009
9010     <div class="entry">
9011       <div class="title">
9012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
9013       </div>
9014       <div class="date">
9015         10th February 2013
9016       </div>
9017       <div class="body">
9018         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
9019
9020 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
9021 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
9022 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
9023 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
9024 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
9025 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
9026 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
9027 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
9028 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
9029 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
9030 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
9031
9032 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
9033 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
9034 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
9035 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
9036 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
9037 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
9038 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
9039 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
9040 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
9041 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
9042 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
9043 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
9044 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
9045 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
9046 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
9047 ones own
9048 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
9049 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
9050 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
9051 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
9052 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
9053 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
9054 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
9055 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
9056 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
9057 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
9058 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
9059
9060 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
9061 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
9062 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
9063 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
9064 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
9065 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
9066
9067 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
9068 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
9069 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
9070
9071       </div>
9072       <div class="tags">
9073
9074
9075         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9076
9077
9078       </div>
9079     </div>
9080     <div class="padding"></div>
9081
9082     <div class="entry">
9083       <div class="title">
9084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
9085       </div>
9086       <div class="date">
9087          2nd February 2013
9088       </div>
9089       <div class="body">
9090         <p>My
9091 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
9092 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
9093 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
9094 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
9095 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
9096 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
9097 version too.</p>
9098
9099 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
9100 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
9101 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
9102 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
9103 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
9104 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
9105 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
9106 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
9107
9108 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
9109 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
9110 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
9111 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
9112 it. :)</p>
9113
9114 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9115 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9116 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9117
9118       </div>
9119       <div class="tags">
9120
9121
9122         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
9123
9124
9125       </div>
9126     </div>
9127     <div class="padding"></div>
9128
9129     <div class="entry">
9130       <div class="title">
9131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
9132       </div>
9133       <div class="date">
9134         22nd January 2013
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="body">
9137         <p>Yesterday, I
9138 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
9139 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
9140 pluggable hardware devices, which I
9141 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
9142 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
9143 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
9144 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
9145 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
9146 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
9147 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
9148 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
9149 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
9150 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
9151
9152 <pre>
9153 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
9154 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
9155 </pre>
9156
9157 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
9158 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
9159 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
9160 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
9161
9162 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
9163 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
9164 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
9165 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
9166 word.</p>
9167
9168 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
9169 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
9170 process.</p>
9171
9172 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
9173 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
9174
9175       </div>
9176       <div class="tags">
9177
9178
9179         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9180
9181
9182       </div>
9183     </div>
9184     <div class="padding"></div>
9185
9186     <div class="entry">
9187       <div class="title">
9188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
9189       </div>
9190       <div class="date">
9191         21st January 2013
9192       </div>
9193       <div class="body">
9194         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
9195 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
9196 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
9197 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
9198 it, fetch the
9199 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
9200 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
9201 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
9202 autostart script.</p>
9203
9204 <p>The design is simple:</p>
9205
9206 <ul>
9207
9208 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
9209 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
9210
9211 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
9212 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
9213 initially did.</li>
9214
9215 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
9216 the APT database, a database
9217 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
9218 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
9219
9220 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
9221 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
9222 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
9223 package or packages.</li>
9224
9225 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
9226 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
9227
9228 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
9229 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
9230
9231 </ul>
9232
9233 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
9234 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
9235 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
9236 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
9237
9238 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
9239 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
9240 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
9241 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
9242 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
9243
9244 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
9245 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
9246 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
9247 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
9248 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
9249 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
9250 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
9251 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
9252
9253 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
9254 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
9255 '<tt>svn checkout
9256 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
9257 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
9258 devscripts package.</p>
9259
9260 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
9261 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
9262 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
9263 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
9264 instructions</a> for details.</p>
9265
9266       </div>
9267       <div class="tags">
9268
9269
9270         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9271
9272
9273       </div>
9274     </div>
9275     <div class="padding"></div>
9276
9277     <div class="entry">
9278       <div class="title">
9279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
9280       </div>
9281       <div class="date">
9282         19th January 2013
9283       </div>
9284       <div class="body">
9285         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
9286 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
9287 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
9288 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
9289 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
9290 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
9291 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
9292 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
9293 not a durable solution.
9294
9295 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
9296 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
9297
9298 <ul>
9299
9300 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
9301   than A4).</li>
9302 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
9303 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
9304 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
9305 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
9306 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
9307 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
9308 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
9309 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
9310 size).</li>
9311 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
9312   X.org packages.</li>
9313 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
9314   the time).
9315
9316 </ul>
9317
9318 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
9319 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
9320 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
9321 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
9322 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
9323 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
9324 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
9325 still be useful.</p>
9326
9327 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
9328 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
9329 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
9330 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
9331 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
9332 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
9333
9334       </div>
9335       <div class="tags">
9336
9337
9338         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>.
9339
9340
9341       </div>
9342     </div>
9343     <div class="padding"></div>
9344
9345     <div class="entry">
9346       <div class="title">
9347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
9348       </div>
9349       <div class="date">
9350         18th January 2013
9351       </div>
9352       <div class="body">
9353         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
9354 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
9355 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
9356 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
9357 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
9358 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
9359 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
9360
9361 <pre>
9362 #!/usr/bin/python
9363 import sys
9364 import apt
9365 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9366     cache = apt.Cache()
9367     cache.open(None)
9368     thepkgs = []
9369     for pkg in cache:
9370         version = pkg.candidate
9371         if version is None:
9372             version = pkg.installed
9373         if version is None:
9374             continue
9375         record = version.record
9376         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
9377             continue
9378         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
9379         for t in mime_types:
9380             t = t.rstrip().strip()
9381             if t == mimetype:
9382                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
9383     return thepkgs
9384 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
9385 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
9386     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
9387 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
9388 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
9389     print "  %s" %pkg
9390 </pre>
9391
9392 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
9393
9394 <pre>
9395 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
9396 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
9397   gecko-mediaplayer
9398 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
9399 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
9400   browser-plugin-gnash
9401 %
9402 </pre>
9403
9404 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
9405 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
9406 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
9407 anyone working on adding it?</p>
9408
9409 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
9410 request for icweasel support for this feature is
9411 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
9412 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
9413 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
9414 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
9415
9416       </div>
9417       <div class="tags">
9418
9419
9420         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>.
9421
9422
9423       </div>
9424     </div>
9425     <div class="padding"></div>
9426
9427     <div class="entry">
9428       <div class="title">
9429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
9430       </div>
9431       <div class="date">
9432         16th January 2013
9433       </div>
9434       <div class="body">
9435         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
9436 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
9437 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
9438 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
9439 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
9440 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
9441 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
9442 downloaded by the browser.</p>
9443
9444 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
9445 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
9446 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
9447 can be found on the
9448 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
9449 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
9450 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
9451 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
9452 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
9453
9454 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
9455
9456 <pre>
9457   count MIME type
9458   ----- -----------------------
9459      32 text/plain
9460      30 audio/mpeg
9461      29 image/png
9462      28 image/jpeg
9463      27 application/ogg
9464      26 audio/x-mp3
9465      25 image/tiff
9466      25 image/gif
9467      22 image/bmp
9468      22 audio/x-wav
9469      20 audio/x-flac
9470      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9471      18 video/x-ms-asf
9472      18 audio/x-musepack
9473      18 audio/x-mpeg
9474      18 application/x-ogg
9475      17 video/mpeg
9476      17 audio/x-scpls
9477      17 audio/ogg
9478      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9479 </pre>
9480
9481 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
9482
9483 <pre>
9484   count MIME type
9485   ----- -----------------------
9486      33 text/plain
9487      32 image/png
9488      32 image/jpeg
9489      29 audio/mpeg
9490      27 image/gif
9491      26 image/tiff
9492      26 application/ogg
9493      25 audio/x-mp3
9494      22 image/bmp
9495      21 audio/x-wav
9496      19 audio/x-mpegurl
9497      19 audio/x-mpeg
9498      18 video/mpeg
9499      18 audio/x-scpls
9500      18 audio/x-flac
9501      18 application/x-ogg
9502      17 video/x-ms-asf
9503      17 text/html
9504      17 audio/x-musepack
9505      16 image/x-xbitmap
9506 </pre>
9507
9508 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
9509
9510 <pre>
9511   count MIME type
9512   ----- -----------------------
9513      31 text/plain
9514      31 image/png
9515      31 image/jpeg
9516      29 audio/mpeg
9517      28 application/ogg
9518      27 image/gif
9519      26 image/tiff
9520      26 audio/x-mp3
9521      23 audio/x-wav
9522      22 image/bmp
9523      21 audio/x-flac
9524      20 audio/x-mpegurl
9525      19 audio/x-mpeg
9526      18 video/x-ms-asf
9527      18 video/mpeg
9528      18 audio/x-scpls
9529      18 application/x-ogg
9530      17 audio/x-musepack
9531      16 video/x-ms-wmv
9532      16 video/x-msvideo
9533 </pre>
9534
9535 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
9536 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
9537 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
9538 issues.</p>
9539
9540 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
9541 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
9542
9543       </div>
9544       <div class="tags">
9545
9546
9547         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>.
9548
9549
9550       </div>
9551     </div>
9552     <div class="padding"></div>
9553
9554     <div class="entry">
9555       <div class="title">
9556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
9557       </div>
9558       <div class="date">
9559         15th January 2013
9560       </div>
9561       <div class="body">
9562         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
9563 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
9564 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
9565 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
9566 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
9567 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
9568 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
9569 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
9570 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
9571 packages.</p>
9572
9573 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
9574 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
9575 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
9576 modalias.</p>
9577
9578 <p><blockquote>
9579 Package: package-name
9580 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
9581 </blockquote></p>
9582
9583 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
9584 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
9585
9586 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
9587 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
9588
9589 <p><blockquote>
9590 Package: cheese
9591 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
9592 </blockquote></p>
9593
9594 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
9595 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
9596
9597 <p><blockquote>
9598 Package: pcmciautils
9599 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
9600 </blockquote></p>
9601
9602 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
9603 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
9604
9605 <p><blockquote>
9606 Package: colorhug-client
9607 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
9608 </blockquote></p>
9609
9610 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
9611 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
9612 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
9613
9614 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
9615 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
9616 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
9617 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
9618 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
9619 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
9620 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
9621 Raring.</p>
9622
9623 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
9624 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
9625 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
9626 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
9627 try the
9628 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
9629 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
9630 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
9631 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
9632
9633 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
9634 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
9635
9636 <p><blockquote>
9637 % ./hw-support-lookup
9638 <br>yubikey-personalization
9639 <br>%
9640 </blockquote></p>
9641
9642 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
9643 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
9644
9645 <p><blockquote>
9646 % ./hw-support-lookup
9647 <br>pcmciautils
9648 <br>%
9649 </blockquote></p>
9650
9651 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
9652 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
9653 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
9654
9655 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
9656 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
9657 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
9658 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
9659 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
9660 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
9661 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
9662 see if it work.</p>
9663
9664 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9665 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9666 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9667 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9668
9669       </div>
9670       <div class="tags">
9671
9672
9673         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9674
9675
9676       </div>
9677     </div>
9678     <div class="padding"></div>
9679
9680     <div class="entry">
9681       <div class="title">
9682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
9683       </div>
9684       <div class="date">
9685         14th January 2013
9686       </div>
9687       <div class="body">
9688         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9689 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9690 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9691 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9692 in
9693 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9694 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9695
9696 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9697
9698 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9699 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9700 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9701 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
9702 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
9703 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
9704
9705 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9706 this shell script:</p>
9707
9708 <pre>
9709 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9710 </pre>
9711
9712 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9713 using modinfo:</p>
9714
9715 <pre>
9716 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9717 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9718 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9719 %
9720 </pre>
9721
9722 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9723
9724 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9725 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9726
9727 <p><blockquote>
9728 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9729 </blockquote></p>
9730
9731 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9732
9733 <pre>
9734  v   00008086  (vendor)
9735  d   00002770  (device)
9736  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9737  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9738  bc  06        (bus class)
9739  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9740  i   00        (interface)
9741 </pre>
9742
9743 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9744 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9745 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9746 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9747
9748 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9749 means.</p>
9750
9751 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9752
9753 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9754 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9755
9756 <p><blockquote>
9757 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9758 </blockquote></p>
9759
9760 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9761
9762 <pre>
9763  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9764  p    0001  (device product)
9765  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9766  dc     09  (device class)
9767  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9768  dp     00  (device protocol)
9769  ic     09  (interface class)
9770  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9771  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9772 </pre>
9773
9774 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9775 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9776 these alias entries show up:</p>
9777
9778 <p><blockquote>
9779 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9780 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9781 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9782 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9783 </blockquote></p>
9784
9785 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9786 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9787 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9788
9789 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9790
9791 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9792 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9793
9794 <p><blockquote>
9795 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9796 </blockquote></p>
9797
9798 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9799
9800 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9801
9802 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9803 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9804 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9805
9806 <p><blockquote>
9807 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9808 </blockquote></p>
9809
9810 <p>The values present are</p>
9811
9812 <pre>
9813  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9814  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9815  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9816  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9817  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9818  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9819  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9820  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9821  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9822  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9823  ct   10             (chassis type)
9824  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9825 </pre>
9826
9827 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9828 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9829
9830 <pre>
9831   3 Desktop
9832   4 Low Profile Desktop
9833   5 Pizza Box
9834   6 Mini Tower
9835   7 Tower
9836   8 Portable
9837   9 Laptop
9838  10 Notebook
9839  11 Hand Held
9840  12 Docking Station
9841  13 All In One
9842  14 Sub Notebook
9843  15 Space-saving
9844  16 Lunch Box
9845  17 Main Server Chassis
9846  18 Expansion Chassis
9847  19 Sub Chassis
9848  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9849  21 Peripheral Chassis
9850  22 RAID Chassis
9851  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9852  24 Sealed-case PC
9853  25 Multi-system
9854  26 CompactPCI
9855  27 AdvancedTCA
9856  28 Blade
9857  29 Blade Enclosing
9858 </pre>
9859
9860 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9861 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9862 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9863
9864 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9865
9866 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9867 test machine:</p>
9868
9869 <p><blockquote>
9870 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9871 </blockquote></p>
9872
9873 <p>The values present are</p>
9874
9875 <pre>
9876   ty  01  (type)
9877   pr  00  (prototype)
9878   id  00  (id)
9879   ex  00  (extra)
9880 </pre>
9881
9882 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9883 the valid values are.</p>
9884
9885 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9886
9887 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9888 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9889 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9890 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9891 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9892 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9893 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9894
9895 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9896
9897 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9898 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9899
9900 <pre>
9901   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9902     echo "$id" ; \
9903     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9904   done
9905 </pre>
9906
9907 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9908 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9909
9910 <pre>
9911   acpi:ACPI0003:
9912     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9913   acpi:device:
9914   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9915   acpi:IBM0068:
9916     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9917     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9918     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9919     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9920   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9921     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9922     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9923     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9924   [...]
9925 </pre>
9926
9927 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9928 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9929 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9930 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9931
9932 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9933 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9934 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9935
9936       </div>
9937       <div class="tags">
9938
9939
9940         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9941
9942
9943       </div>
9944     </div>
9945     <div class="padding"></div>
9946
9947     <div class="entry">
9948       <div class="title">
9949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
9950       </div>
9951       <div class="date">
9952         10th January 2013
9953       </div>
9954       <div class="body">
9955         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9956 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9957 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9958 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9959 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9960 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9961 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9962 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9963 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9964 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9965 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9966 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9967 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9968 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9969 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9970 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9971 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9972 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9973
9974       </div>
9975       <div class="tags">
9976
9977
9978         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9979
9980
9981       </div>
9982     </div>
9983     <div class="padding"></div>
9984
9985     <div class="entry">
9986       <div class="title">
9987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
9988       </div>
9989       <div class="date">
9990          9th January 2013
9991       </div>
9992       <div class="body">
9993         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9994 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9995 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9996 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9997 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9998 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9999 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10000 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10001 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10002 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
10003 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
10004
10005 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
10006 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
10007 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
10008 simple:
10009
10010 <ul>
10011
10012 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10013   starting when a user log in.</li>
10014
10015 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10016   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
10017
10018 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10019   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10020   packages.</li>
10021
10022 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10023   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
10024
10025 </ul>
10026
10027 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10028 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
10029 discover database to find packages and
10030 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
10031 packages.</p>
10032
10033 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
10034 draft package is now checked into
10035 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10036 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
10037 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
10038 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
10039 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
10040 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
10041 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
10042 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
10043 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
10044 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
10045 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
10046 because of the freeze).</p>
10047
10048 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
10049 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
10050 inserted):</p>
10051
10052 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
10053
10054 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
10055 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
10056 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
10057
10058 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
10059 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
10060 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
10061 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
10062 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
10063 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
10064 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
10065
10066 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
10067 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
10068 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
10069 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
10070 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
10071 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
10072 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
10073 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
10074 not be installed?</p>
10075
10076 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
10077 please send me an email. :)</p>
10078
10079       </div>
10080       <div class="tags">
10081
10082
10083         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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10084
10085
10086       </div>
10087     </div>
10088     <div class="padding"></div>
10089
10090     <div class="entry">
10091       <div class="title">
10092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
10093       </div>
10094       <div class="date">
10095          2nd January 2013
10096       </div>
10097       <div class="body">
10098         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
10099 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
10100 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
10101 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
10102 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
10103 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
10104 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
10105 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
10106 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
10107 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
10108
10109 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
10110 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
10111 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
10112
10113       </div>
10114       <div class="tags">
10115
10116
10117         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/robot">robot</a>.
10118
10119
10120       </div>
10121     </div>
10122     <div class="padding"></div>
10123
10124     <div class="entry">
10125       <div class="title">
10126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10127       </div>
10128       <div class="date">
10129         28th December 2012
10130       </div>
10131       <div class="body">
10132         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
10133 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10134 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
10135 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
10136 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
10137 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
10138 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
10139 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
10140 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
10141 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
10142 followed by many others. :)</p>
10143
10144 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
10145 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
10146 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
10147 you want to donate to the project.</p>
10148
10149       </div>
10150       <div class="tags">
10151
10152
10153         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10154
10155
10156       </div>
10157     </div>
10158     <div class="padding"></div>
10159
10160     <div class="entry">
10161       <div class="title">
10162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
10163       </div>
10164       <div class="date">
10165         25th December 2012
10166       </div>
10167       <div class="body">
10168         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
10169 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
10170
10171 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
10172 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
10173 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
10174 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
10175 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
10176 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
10177 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
10178 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
10179 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
10180 name.</p>
10181
10182 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
10183 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
10184 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
10185
10186 <blockquote><pre>
10187 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
10188 cd bitcoin
10189 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
10190 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
10191 </pre></blockquote>
10192
10193 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
10194 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
10195 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
10196 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
10197 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
10198 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
10199 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
10200 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
10201 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
10202
10203 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10204 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10205 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10206
10207       </div>
10208       <div class="tags">
10209
10210
10211         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
10212
10213
10214       </div>
10215     </div>
10216     <div class="padding"></div>
10217
10218     <div class="entry">
10219       <div class="title">
10220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
10221       </div>
10222       <div class="date">
10223         21st December 2012
10224       </div>
10225       <div class="body">
10226         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
10227 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
10228 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
10229 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
10230 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
10231 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
10232 is now maintained by a
10233 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
10234 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
10235 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
10236 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
10237 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
10238 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
10239 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
10240 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
10241 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
10242 Corallo in a
10243 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
10244 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
10245 Debian package.</p>
10246
10247 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
10248 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
10249 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
10250 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
10251 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
10252 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
10253 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
10254 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
10255 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
10256 new version to unstable.
10257
10258 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
10259 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
10260 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
10261 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
10262 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
10263 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
10264 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
10265 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
10266 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
10267 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
10268 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
10269 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
10270 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
10271 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
10272 have not tested them.</p>
10273
10274 <p>My
10275 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
10276 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
10277 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
10278 years ago, as can be
10279 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
10280 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
10281 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
10282 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
10283 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
10284 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
10285 the same address as last time,
10286 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10287
10288       </div>
10289       <div class="tags">
10290
10291
10292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
10293
10294
10295       </div>
10296     </div>
10297     <div class="padding"></div>
10298
10299     <div class="entry">
10300       <div class="title">
10301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
10302       </div>
10303       <div class="date">
10304         18th December 2012
10305       </div>
10306       <div class="body">
10307         <p>A few days ago I came across
10308 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
10309 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
10310 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
10311 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
10312 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
10313 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
10314 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
10315 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
10316 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
10317
10318 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
10319 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
10320 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
10321 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
10322
10323 <blockquote><pre>
10324 2004-05-27 Book Store
10325       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
10326       Liabilities:Visa
10327 </pre></blockquote>
10328
10329 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
10330 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
10331 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
10332 Spang</a>,
10333 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
10334 Keen</a>,
10335 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
10336 Cantino</a> and
10337 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
10338 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
10339 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
10340 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
10341 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
10342
10343 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
10344 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
10345 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
10346 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
10347 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
10348
10349 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
10350 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
10351 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
10352 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
10353 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
10354 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
10355 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
10356 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
10357 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
10358
10359       </div>
10360       <div class="tags">
10361
10362
10363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10364
10365
10366       </div>
10367     </div>
10368     <div class="padding"></div>
10369
10370     <div class="entry">
10371       <div class="title">
10372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
10373       </div>
10374       <div class="date">
10375          6th December 2012
10376       </div>
10377       <div class="body">
10378         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
10379 Oslo</a>, we use the
10380 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
10381 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
10382 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
10383 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
10384 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
10385 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
10386 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
10387 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
10388 Python.</p>
10389
10390 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
10391 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
10392 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
10393 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
10394 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
10395 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
10396
10397 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
10398 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
10399 user currently logged in:</p>
10400
10401 <blockquote><pre>
10402 #!/usr/bin/env python
10403 import getpass
10404 import xmlrpclib
10405 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
10406 username = getpass.getuser()
10407 password = getpass.getpass()
10408 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
10409 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
10410 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
10411 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
10412 result = server.logout(sessionid)
10413 print result
10414 </pre></blockquote>
10415
10416 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
10417 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
10418
10419       </div>
10420       <div class="tags">
10421
10422
10423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
10424
10425
10426       </div>
10427     </div>
10428     <div class="padding"></div>
10429
10430     <div class="entry">
10431       <div class="title">
10432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
10433       </div>
10434       <div class="date">
10435         17th November 2012
10436       </div>
10437       <div class="body">
10438         <p>While working on a
10439 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
10440 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
10441 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
10442 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
10443 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
10444 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
10445
10446 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
10447 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
10448 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
10449 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
10450 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
10451 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
10452 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
10453 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
10454 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
10455 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
10456 arguments.</p>
10457
10458 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
10459 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
10460 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
10461 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
10462 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
10463 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
10464 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
10465 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
10466
10467 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
10468 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
10469 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
10470 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
10471 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
10472 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
10473 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
10474 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
10475 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
10476 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
10477 correct right holder.</p>
10478
10479 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
10480 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
10481 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
10482 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
10483 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
10484 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
10485 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
10486 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
10487 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
10488 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
10489 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
10490 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
10491 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
10492 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
10493
10494 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
10495 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
10496 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
10497
10498 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
10499 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
10500
10501       </div>
10502       <div class="tags">
10503
10504
10505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10506
10507
10508       </div>
10509     </div>
10510     <div class="padding"></div>
10511
10512     <div class="entry">
10513       <div class="title">
10514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
10515       </div>
10516       <div class="date">
10517         14th November 2012
10518       </div>
10519       <div class="body">
10520         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
10521 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10522 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
10523 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
10524 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
10525 the people behind the German
10526 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
10527 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
10528 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
10529
10530 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10531
10532 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
10533 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
10534 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
10535
10536 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
10537 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
10538 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
10539 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
10540 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
10541 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
10542
10543 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
10544 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
10545 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
10546 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
10547 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
10548 relationship management and the communication processes in the
10549 project.</p>
10550
10551 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
10552 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
10553 and a yoga teacher.</p>
10554
10555 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
10556 project?</strong></p>
10557
10558 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
10559
10560 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
10561 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
10562 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
10563 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
10564 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
10565 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
10566 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
10567 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
10568 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
10569 parents.</p>
10570
10571 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
10572 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
10573 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
10574 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
10575 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
10576 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
10577 Germany.</p>
10578
10579 <p>For information about our school project you can read
10580 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
10581 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
10582
10583 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10584 Edu?</strong></p>
10585
10586 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
10587 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
10588
10589 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
10590 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
10591 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
10592 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
10593 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
10594 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
10595 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
10596 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
10597 teachers, parents...</p>
10598
10599 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
10600 Edu?</strong></p>
10601
10602 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
10603 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10604
10605 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
10606 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
10607 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
10608 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
10609 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10610
10611 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
10612 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
10613 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
10614 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
10615 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
10616 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
10617 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
10618
10619 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10620
10621 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
10622 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
10623 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
10624 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
10625
10626 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10627 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10628
10629 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
10630 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
10631 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
10632 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
10633 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
10634
10635 <ul>
10636
10637 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
10638 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
10639 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
10640
10641 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
10642 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
10643 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
10644 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
10645 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
10646 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
10647 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
10648
10649 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
10650 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
10651 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
10652 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
10653
10654 </ul>
10655
10656       </div>
10657       <div class="tags">
10658
10659
10660         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10661
10662
10663       </div>
10664     </div>
10665     <div class="padding"></div>
10666
10667     <div class="entry">
10668       <div class="title">
10669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
10670       </div>
10671       <div class="date">
10672          4th November 2012
10673       </div>
10674       <div class="body">
10675         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
10676 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
10677 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
10678 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
10679 see how a member of the bitcoin community
10680 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
10681 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
10682 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
10683 competition.  My thoughts go to the
10684 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
10685 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
10686 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
10687 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
10688 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
10689
10690 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
10691 that the community already seem to have
10692 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
10693 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
10694 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
10695 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
10696 wealth is available.</p>
10697
10698       </div>
10699       <div class="tags">
10700
10701
10702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10703
10704
10705       </div>
10706     </div>
10707     <div class="padding"></div>
10708
10709     <div class="entry">
10710       <div class="title">
10711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
10712       </div>
10713       <div class="date">
10714         26th October 2012
10715       </div>
10716       <div class="body">
10717         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10718 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
10719 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
10720 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
10721 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
10722 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
10723 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
10724 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
10725 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
10726 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
10727 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
10728 it every time.</p>
10729
10730 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
10731 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
10732 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
10733 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
10734 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
10735 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
10736 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
10737 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
10738 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
10739 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
10740 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
10741 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
10742
10743 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
10744 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
10745 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
10746 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
10747 article: First the unplanned outage:
10748
10749 <blockquote><pre>
10750 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
10751 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
10752 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
10753 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
10754 Duration:    40 minutes
10755 Scope:       Exchange 2003
10756 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
10757              a cluster failover.
10758
10759 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
10760              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
10761 Technician:  [xxx]
10762 </pre></blockquote>
10763
10764 Next the planned outage:
10765
10766 <blockquote><pre>
10767 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
10768 Severity:    Major (Planned)
10769 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
10770 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
10771 Duration:    10 hours
10772 Scope:       H2 Transport
10773 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
10774              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
10775              4510s.
10776 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
10777              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
10778              connectivity.
10779 Technician:  [xxx]
10780 </pre></blockquote>
10781
10782 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
10783 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
10784 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
10785 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
10786 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
10787 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
10788 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
10789
10790 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
10791 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
10792 university too.  We do register
10793 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
10794 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
10795 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
10796 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
10797 for other sites to consider too?</p>
10798
10799       </div>
10800       <div class="tags">
10801
10802
10803         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10804
10805
10806       </div>
10807     </div>
10808     <div class="padding"></div>
10809
10810     <div class="entry">
10811       <div class="title">
10812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
10813       </div>
10814       <div class="date">
10815         22nd October 2012
10816       </div>
10817       <div class="body">
10818         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
10819 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
10820 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
10821 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
10822 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
10823 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
10824 background information is available in Norwegian from
10825 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
10826 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
10827 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
10828 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
10829 willing to
10830 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
10831 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
10832 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
10833 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
10834 sounded like
10835 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
10836 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
10837 later.</p>
10838
10839 <p>And thought this action is
10840 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
10841 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
10842 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
10843 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
10844 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
10845 rights.</p>
10846
10847 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
10848 unacceptable terms.  For example
10849 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
10850 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
10851 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
10852 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
10853 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
10854
10855 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
10856 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
10857 restored the account of the user, as reported by
10858 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
10859 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
10860 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
10861 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
10862 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
10863 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
10864 reading two opinions from
10865 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
10866 Phipps</a> and
10867 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
10868 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
10869 details about the original story.</p>
10870
10871       </div>
10872       <div class="tags">
10873
10874
10875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</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>.
10876
10877
10878       </div>
10879     </div>
10880     <div class="padding"></div>
10881
10882     <div class="entry">
10883       <div class="title">
10884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
10885       </div>
10886       <div class="date">
10887         18th October 2012
10888       </div>
10889       <div class="body">
10890         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
10891 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
10892 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
10893 across a marvellous drawing by
10894 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
10895 visualising some of what is going on.
10896
10897 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
10898 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
10899
10900 <blockquote>
10901 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
10902 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
10903 </blockquote>
10904
10905 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
10906 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
10907 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
10908 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
10909 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
10910 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
10911
10912       </div>
10913       <div class="tags">
10914
10915
10916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10917
10918
10919       </div>
10920     </div>
10921     <div class="padding"></div>
10922
10923     <div class="entry">
10924       <div class="title">
10925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
10926       </div>
10927       <div class="date">
10928         12th October 2012
10929       </div>
10930       <div class="body">
10931         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
10932 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
10933 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
10934 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
10935 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
10936 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
10937 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
10938 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
10939 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
10940 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
10941 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
10942 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
10943 matter".</p>
10944
10945 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
10946 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
10947 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
10948 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
10949 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
10950 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
10951 to argue its side.</p>
10952
10953 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
10954 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
10955 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
10956 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
10957
10958 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
10959 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
10960 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
10961
10962       </div>
10963       <div class="tags">
10964
10965
10966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
10967
10968
10969       </div>
10970     </div>
10971     <div class="padding"></div>
10972
10973     <div class="entry">
10974       <div class="title">
10975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
10976       </div>
10977       <div class="date">
10978          3rd October 2012
10979       </div>
10980       <div class="body">
10981         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
10982 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
10983 the computer science book collection available in his local
10984 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
10985 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
10986 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
10987 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
10988 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
10989 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
10990 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
10991 recently published books.</p>
10992
10993 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
10994 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
10995 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
10996 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
10997 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
10998 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
10999 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
11000 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
11001 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
11002 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
11003 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
11004 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
11005 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
11006 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
11007 for the library that evening.</p>
11008
11009 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
11010 going to know that for example
11011 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
11012 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
11013 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
11014 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
11015 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
11016 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
11017 book right away.</p>
11018
11019       </div>
11020       <div class="tags">
11021
11022
11023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11024
11025
11026       </div>
11027     </div>
11028     <div class="padding"></div>
11029
11030     <div class="entry">
11031       <div class="title">
11032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
11033       </div>
11034       <div class="date">
11035         23rd September 2012
11036       </div>
11037       <div class="body">
11038         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
11039 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
11040 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11041 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
11042 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
11043 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
11044
11045 When I started, I
11046 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11047 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
11048 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
11049 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
11050 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
11051 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
11052 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
11053
11054 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11055
11056 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
11057 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
11058 the project files currently available from
11059 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11060
11061 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11062 the updated
11063 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11064 and
11065 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11066 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11067 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11068 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11069
11070       </div>
11071       <div class="tags">
11072
11073
11074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11075
11076
11077       </div>
11078     </div>
11079     <div class="padding"></div>
11080
11081     <div class="entry">
11082       <div class="title">
11083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
11084       </div>
11085       <div class="date">
11086         17th September 2012
11087       </div>
11088       <div class="body">
11089         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
11090 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11091 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
11092 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
11093 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
11094 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
11095 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
11096
11097 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11098
11099 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
11100 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
11101 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
11102 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
11103 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
11104 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
11105 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
11106 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
11107 training is anyway very important</p>
11108
11109 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
11110 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
11111 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
11112 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
11113 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
11114
11115 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11116 project?</strong></p>
11117
11118 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
11119 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
11120 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
11121 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
11122 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
11123 hole.</p>
11124
11125 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11126 Edu?</strong></p>
11127
11128 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
11129 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
11130 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
11131 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
11132 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
11133 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
11134 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
11135 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
11136 hassle.</p>
11137
11138 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11139 Edu?</strong></p>
11140
11141 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
11142 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
11143 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
11144 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
11145 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
11146 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
11147 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
11148 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
11149
11150 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11151
11152 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
11153 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
11154 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
11155 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
11156 has the same...</p>
11157
11158 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
11159 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
11160 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
11161 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
11162
11163 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11164 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11165
11166 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
11167 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
11168 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
11169
11170 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
11171 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
11172 don't.</p>
11173
11174 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
11175 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
11176 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
11177 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
11178 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
11179 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
11180 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
11181
11182       </div>
11183       <div class="tags">
11184
11185
11186         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11187
11188
11189       </div>
11190     </div>
11191     <div class="padding"></div>
11192
11193     <div class="entry">
11194       <div class="title">
11195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
11196       </div>
11197       <div class="date">
11198         15th September 2012
11199       </div>
11200       <div class="body">
11201         <p>After the
11202 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
11203 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
11204 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
11205 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
11206 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
11207 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
11208 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
11209 was
11210 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
11211 formal working group should be formed.</p>
11212
11213 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
11214 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
11215 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
11216 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
11217 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
11218 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
11219 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
11220 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
11221
11222 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
11223 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
11224 IETF.</p>
11225
11226       </div>
11227       <div class="tags">
11228
11229
11230         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
11231
11232
11233       </div>
11234     </div>
11235     <div class="padding"></div>
11236
11237     <div class="entry">
11238       <div class="title">
11239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
11240       </div>
11241       <div class="date">
11242         12th September 2012
11243       </div>
11244       <div class="body">
11245         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
11246 publication of of
11247 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
11248 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
11249 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
11250 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
11251 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
11252 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
11253 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
11254 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
11255 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
11256 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
11257
11258 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
11259 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
11260 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
11261 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
11262
11263 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
11264 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
11265
11266       </div>
11267       <div class="tags">
11268
11269
11270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
11271
11272
11273       </div>
11274     </div>
11275     <div class="padding"></div>
11276
11277     <div class="entry">
11278       <div class="title">
11279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11280       </div>
11281       <div class="date">
11282          7th September 2012
11283       </div>
11284       <div class="body">
11285         <p>As I
11286 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
11287 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
11288 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
11289 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
11290 repository for the project</a>.</p>
11291
11292 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
11293 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
11294 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
11295 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
11296
11297 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
11298 PostScript formats at
11299 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
11300 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
11301
11302       </div>
11303       <div class="tags">
11304
11305
11306         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/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
11307
11308
11309       </div>
11310     </div>
11311     <div class="padding"></div>
11312
11313     <div class="entry">
11314       <div class="title">
11315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
11316       </div>
11317       <div class="date">
11318         23rd August 2012
11319       </div>
11320       <div class="body">
11321         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
11322 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
11323 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
11324 revisit the great site
11325 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
11326 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
11327 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
11328
11329       </div>
11330       <div class="tags">
11331
11332
11333         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11334
11335
11336       </div>
11337     </div>
11338     <div class="padding"></div>
11339
11340     <div class="entry">
11341       <div class="title">
11342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
11343       </div>
11344       <div class="date">
11345         17th August 2012
11346       </div>
11347       <div class="body">
11348         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
11349 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
11350 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
11351 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
11352 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
11353 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
11354 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
11355 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
11356 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
11357 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
11358 summer I
11359 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
11360 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
11361 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
11362
11363 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
11364 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
11365 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
11366 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
11367 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
11368 progress:</p>
11369
11370 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
11371
11372 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
11373 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
11374 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
11375 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
11376 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
11377 english version of the docbook source.</p>
11378
11379 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
11380 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
11381 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
11382 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
11383 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
11384 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
11385 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
11386 project files currently available from <a
11387 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11388
11389 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
11390 the updated
11391 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
11392 and
11393 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
11394 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
11395 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
11396 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
11397
11398       </div>
11399       <div class="tags">
11400
11401
11402         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11403
11404
11405       </div>
11406     </div>
11407     <div class="padding"></div>
11408
11409     <div class="entry">
11410       <div class="title">
11411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
11412       </div>
11413       <div class="date">
11414         10th August 2012
11415       </div>
11416       <div class="body">
11417         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
11418 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
11419 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
11420 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
11421 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
11422 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
11423 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
11424 case for the language
11425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
11426 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
11427
11428 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
11429 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
11430 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
11431 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
11432 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
11433
11434 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
11435 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
11436 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
11437 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
11438 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
11439 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
11440 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
11441 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
11442 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
11443 alias for 'nb'.</p>
11444
11445 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
11446 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
11447 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
11448 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
11449 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
11450 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
11451 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
11452 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
11453 at the same time. :(</p>
11454
11455 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
11456 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
11457 processors. :(</p>
11458
11459 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
11460
11461       </div>
11462       <div class="tags">
11463
11464
11465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11466
11467
11468       </div>
11469     </div>
11470     <div class="padding"></div>
11471
11472     <div class="entry">
11473       <div class="title">
11474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
11475       </div>
11476       <div class="date">
11477         31st July 2012
11478       </div>
11479       <div class="body">
11480         <p>I tried to send this text to the
11481 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
11482 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
11483 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
11484 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
11485 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
11486 out.</p>
11487
11488 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
11489 learning curve at the moment.</p>
11490
11491 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
11492 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
11493 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
11494 available from
11495 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
11496 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
11497 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
11498 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
11499 Squeeze.</p>
11500
11501 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
11502 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
11503 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
11504 problems.</p>
11505
11506 <ul>
11507
11508 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
11509    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
11510    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
11511    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
11512    index references spanning several pages (See
11513    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
11514    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
11515    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
11516
11517 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
11518    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
11519    #683163</a>).</li>
11520
11521 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
11522    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
11523    footnote and text body, see
11524    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
11525    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
11526    refs listed are not right).</li>
11527
11528 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
11529
11530 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
11531    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
11532
11533 </ul>
11534
11535 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
11536 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
11537 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
11538
11539 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
11540
11541       </div>
11542       <div class="tags">
11543
11544
11545         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
11546
11547
11548       </div>
11549     </div>
11550     <div class="padding"></div>
11551
11552     <div class="entry">
11553       <div class="title">
11554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
11555       </div>
11556       <div class="date">
11557         21st July 2012
11558       </div>
11559       <div class="body">
11560         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
11561 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
11562 norwegian version</a> of the book
11563 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
11564 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
11565 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
11566 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
11567 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11568
11569 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
11570 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
11571 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
11572 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
11573 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
11574 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
11575 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
11576 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
11577 print. :)</p>
11578
11579 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
11580 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
11581 language.</p>
11582
11583       </div>
11584       <div class="tags">
11585
11586
11587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
11588
11589
11590       </div>
11591     </div>
11592     <div class="padding"></div>
11593
11594     <div class="entry">
11595       <div class="title">
11596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
11597       </div>
11598       <div class="date">
11599         16th July 2012
11600       </div>
11601       <div class="body">
11602         <p>I am currently working on a
11603 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
11604 to translate</a> the book
11605 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
11606 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
11607 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
11608 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
11609 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
11610 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
11611 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
11612
11613 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
11614 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
11615 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
11616 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
11617 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
11618 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
11619 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
11620 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
11621 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
11622
11623       </div>
11624       <div class="tags">
11625
11626
11627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
11628
11629
11630       </div>
11631     </div>
11632     <div class="padding"></div>
11633
11634     <div class="entry">
11635       <div class="title">
11636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
11637       </div>
11638       <div class="date">
11639          9th July 2012
11640       </div>
11641       <div class="body">
11642         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11643 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
11644 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
11645 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
11646 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
11647 to adjust and scale the just released
11648 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11649 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
11650 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
11651
11652 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11653
11654 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
11655 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
11656 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
11657 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
11658 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
11659 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
11660 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
11661 perspective when working with IT.</p>
11662
11663 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11664 project?</strong></p>
11665
11666 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
11667 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
11668 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
11669 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
11670 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
11671 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
11672
11673 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11674 Edu?</strong></p>
11675
11676 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
11677 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
11678 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
11679 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
11680 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
11681 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
11682 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
11683 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
11684 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
11685 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
11686 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
11687 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
11688 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
11689 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
11690 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
11691 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
11692 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
11693 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
11694 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
11695 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
11696 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
11697 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
11698 quicker to update.
11699
11700 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11701 Edu?</strong></p>
11702
11703 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
11704 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
11705 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
11706 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
11707 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
11708 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
11709
11710 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
11711 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
11712 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
11713 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
11714 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
11715 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
11716 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
11717 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
11718 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
11719 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
11720 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
11721 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
11722 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
11723 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
11724 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
11725
11726 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
11727 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
11728 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
11729 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
11730 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
11731 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
11732 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
11733 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
11734
11735 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
11736 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
11737 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
11738 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
11739 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
11740 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
11741 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
11742 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
11743 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
11744 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
11745 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
11746 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
11747 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
11748 sound file.</p>
11749
11750 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
11751 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
11752 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
11753 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
11754 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
11755 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
11756 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
11757 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
11758 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
11759
11760 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11761
11762 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
11763 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
11764 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
11765 )</p>
11766
11767 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11768 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11769
11770 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
11771 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
11772 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
11773 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
11774 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
11775 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
11776 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
11777 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
11778 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
11779 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
11780 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
11781 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
11782 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
11783 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
11784 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
11785
11786 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
11787 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
11788 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
11789 management with Airtime</a>,
11790 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
11791 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
11792 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
11793 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
11794 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
11795
11796       </div>
11797       <div class="tags">
11798
11799
11800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11801
11802
11803       </div>
11804     </div>
11805     <div class="padding"></div>
11806
11807     <div class="entry">
11808       <div class="title">
11809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
11810       </div>
11811       <div class="date">
11812          8th July 2012
11813       </div>
11814       <div class="body">
11815         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
11816 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
11817 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
11818 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
11819 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
11820 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
11821 Steinberg in his blog post
11822 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
11823 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
11824 spending of your tax money.</p>
11825
11826 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
11827 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
11828 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
11829 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
11830 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
11831 purchases.</p>
11832
11833       </div>
11834       <div class="tags">
11835
11836
11837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11838
11839
11840       </div>
11841     </div>
11842     <div class="padding"></div>
11843
11844     <div class="entry">
11845       <div class="title">
11846         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
11847       </div>
11848       <div class="date">
11849          7th July 2012
11850       </div>
11851       <div class="body">
11852         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11853 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
11854 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
11855 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
11856 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
11857 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
11858 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
11859 receive.  The software is
11860
11861 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
11862 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
11863 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
11864 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
11865 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
11866 Windows</a>.</p>
11867
11868 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
11869 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
11870
11871 <p><ul>
11872
11873   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
11874     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
11875
11876   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
11877     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
11878     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
11879     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
11880     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
11881     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
11882     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
11883     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
11884     </li>
11885
11886   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
11887     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
11888
11889   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
11890     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
11891
11892   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
11893     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
11894
11895   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
11896
11897   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
11898     formats </li>
11899
11900   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
11901     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
11902     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
11903     (as separate sets)</li>
11904
11905   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
11906     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
11907     percentage)</li>
11908
11909   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
11910     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
11911     memory):
11912     <ul>
11913       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
11914       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
11915       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
11916       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
11917       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
11918       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
11919       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
11920       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
11921       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
11922       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
11923           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
11924           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
11925           activity)</li>
11926       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
11927       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
11928     </ul></li>
11929
11930   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
11931     <ul>
11932       <li>Break periods</li>
11933       <li>For teacher(s):
11934         <ul>
11935           <li>Not available periods</li>
11936           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
11937           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11938           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11939           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11940           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11941
11942           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11943             days per week</li>
11944         </ul></li>
11945       <li>For students (sets):
11946         <ul>
11947           <li>Not available periods</li>
11948           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
11949           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11950           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11951           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11952           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11953
11954           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11955             days per week</li>
11956         </ul></li>
11957       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
11958         <ul>
11959           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
11960           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
11961           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
11962           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
11963           <li>End(s) students day</li>
11964           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
11965           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
11966             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
11967           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
11968           <li>Not overlapping</li>
11969           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
11970           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
11971         </ul></li>
11972     </ul></li>
11973
11974   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
11975     <ul>
11976       <li>Room not available periods</li>
11977       <li>For teacher(s):
11978         <ul>
11979           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11980           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11981           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11982         </ul>
11983       </li>
11984
11985       <li>For students (sets):
11986         <ul>
11987           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11988           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11989           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11990         </ul>
11991       </li>
11992       <li>Preferred room(s):
11993         <ul>
11994           <li>For a subject</li>
11995           <li>For an activity tag</li>
11996           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
11997           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
11998         </ul>
11999       </li>
12000
12001       <li>For a set of activities:
12002         <ul>
12003           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
12004         </ul>
12005       </li>
12006     </ul>
12007   </li>
12008 </ul></p>
12009
12010 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
12011 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
12012 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
12013 manually, check it out.
12014
12015 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
12016 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
12017 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
12018 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
12019 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
12020 section</a>.</p>
12021
12022       </div>
12023       <div class="tags">
12024
12025
12026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12027
12028
12029       </div>
12030     </div>
12031     <div class="padding"></div>
12032
12033     <div class="entry">
12034       <div class="title">
12035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
12036       </div>
12037       <div class="date">
12038          3rd July 2012
12039       </div>
12040       <div class="body">
12041         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
12042 project (Norwegian version of
12043 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
12044 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
12045 a problem with the municipalities using
12046 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
12047 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
12048 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
12049 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
12050 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
12051 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
12052 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
12053 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
12054 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
12055 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
12056 the From: header.</p>
12057
12058 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
12059 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
12060 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
12061 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
12062 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
12063 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
12064 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
12065 behaviour.</p>
12066
12067 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
12068 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
12069 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
12070 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
12071 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
12072 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12073 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
12074
12075       </div>
12076       <div class="tags">
12077
12078
12079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12080
12081
12082       </div>
12083     </div>
12084     <div class="padding"></div>
12085
12086     <div class="entry">
12087       <div class="title">
12088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
12089       </div>
12090       <div class="date">
12091         26th June 2012
12092       </div>
12093       <div class="body">
12094         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
12095 another interview with the people behind
12096 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12097 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
12098 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
12099 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
12100 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
12101 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12102 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12103
12104 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12105
12106 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
12107 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
12108 ICT in schools</p>
12109
12110 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12111 project?</strong></p>
12112
12113 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
12114 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
12115 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
12116 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
12117
12118 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12119 Edu?</strong></p>
12120
12121 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
12122 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
12123 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
12124 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
12125
12126 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12127 Edu?</strong></p>
12128
12129 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
12130 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
12131 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
12132 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
12133 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
12134 technologies in school.</p>
12135
12136 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12137
12138 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
12139 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
12140 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
12141
12142 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12143 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12144
12145 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
12146 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
12147 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
12148 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
12149
12150 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
12151 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
12152 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
12153
12154 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
12155 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
12156 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
12157 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
12158 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
12159 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
12160 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
12161 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
12162 working there.</p>
12163
12164       </div>
12165       <div class="tags">
12166
12167
12168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12169
12170
12171       </div>
12172     </div>
12173     <div class="padding"></div>
12174
12175     <div class="entry">
12176       <div class="title">
12177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12178       </div>
12179       <div class="date">
12180         24th June 2012
12181       </div>
12182       <div class="body">
12183         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12184 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12185 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12186 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12187 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12188 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12189 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12190 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12191 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12192 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12193 missing in my book.</p>
12194
12195 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12196 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12197 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12198 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12199 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12200 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12201 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12202
12203       </div>
12204       <div class="tags">
12205
12206
12207         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/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12208
12209
12210       </div>
12211     </div>
12212     <div class="padding"></div>
12213
12214     <div class="entry">
12215       <div class="title">
12216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
12217       </div>
12218       <div class="date">
12219         11th June 2012
12220       </div>
12221       <div class="body">
12222         <p>During my work on
12223 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
12224 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
12225 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
12226 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
12227 explanation.</p>
12228
12229 <p><ul>
12230
12231 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
12232 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
12233 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
12234 system depend on tasksel tasks in
12235 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
12236 installation.</li>
12237
12238 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
12239 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
12240 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
12241 at least try to enable it for these services:
12242 <ul>
12243
12244   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
12245     quotas.</li>
12246   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
12247   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
12248   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
12249   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
12250   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
12251
12252 </ul></li>
12253
12254 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
12255 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
12256 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
12257 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
12258
12259 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
12260 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
12261 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
12262
12263 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
12264 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
12265 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
12266 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
12267 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
12268 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
12269
12270 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
12271 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
12272 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
12273 in Wheezy.
12274
12275 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
12276 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
12277 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
12278
12279 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
12280 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
12281 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
12282 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
12283
12284 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
12285 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
12286 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
12287 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
12288
12289 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
12290 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
12291 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
12292
12293 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
12294 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
12295 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
12296
12297 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
12298 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
12299 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
12300 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
12301 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
12302
12303 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
12304 <ul>
12305
12306 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
12307 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
12308 <li>and probably more?</li>
12309 </ul></li>
12310
12311 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
12312 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
12313 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
12314 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
12315 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
12316 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
12317 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
12318 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
12319
12320
12321 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
12322 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
12323 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
12324 use.</li>
12325
12326 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
12327 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
12328 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
12329 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
12330 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
12331
12332 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
12333 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
12334 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
12335 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
12336 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
12337 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
12338
12339 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
12340 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
12341 There are at least three implementations,
12342 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
12343 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
12344 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
12345 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
12346 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
12347 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
12348 given room.</li>
12349
12350 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
12351 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
12352 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
12353 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
12354 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
12355 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
12356 investigated.</li>
12357
12358 </ul></p>
12359
12360 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
12361 version.</p>
12362
12363       </div>
12364       <div class="tags">
12365
12366
12367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12368
12369
12370       </div>
12371     </div>
12372     <div class="padding"></div>
12373
12374     <div class="entry">
12375       <div class="title">
12376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
12377       </div>
12378       <div class="date">
12379          9th June 2012
12380       </div>
12381       <div class="body">
12382         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
12383 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
12384 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
12385 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
12386 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
12387 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
12388 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
12389 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
12390 be willing to pay for.</p>
12391
12392 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
12393 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
12394 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
12395 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
12396 Orwell</a>.</p>
12397
12398       </div>
12399       <div class="tags">
12400
12401
12402         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
12403
12404
12405       </div>
12406     </div>
12407     <div class="padding"></div>
12408
12409     <div class="entry">
12410       <div class="title">
12411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
12412       </div>
12413       <div class="date">
12414          6th June 2012
12415       </div>
12416       <div class="body">
12417         <p>A few days ago
12418 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
12419 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
12420 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
12421 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
12422 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
12423 code for HP, Dell and IBM
12424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
12425 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
12426 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
12427 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
12428 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
12429
12430 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
12431 output:
12432
12433 <blockquote><pre>
12434 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
12435 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
12436 %
12437 </pre></blockquote>
12438
12439 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
12440 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
12441 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
12442
12443       </div>
12444       <div class="tags">
12445
12446
12447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12448
12449
12450       </div>
12451     </div>
12452     <div class="padding"></div>
12453
12454     <div class="entry">
12455       <div class="title">
12456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
12457       </div>
12458       <div class="date">
12459          2nd June 2012
12460       </div>
12461       <div class="body">
12462         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
12463 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12464 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
12465 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
12466 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12467 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12468
12469 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12470
12471 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
12472 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
12473 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
12474 by Angela).</p>
12475
12476 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
12477 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
12478 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
12479 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
12480 becoming an osteopath.</p>
12481
12482 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
12483 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
12484 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
12485 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
12486 skills with communication skills.</p>
12487
12488 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12489 project?</strong></p>
12490
12491 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
12492 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
12493 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
12494 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
12495 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
12496
12497 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
12498 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
12499 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
12500 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
12501 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
12502 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
12503 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
12504 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
12505 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
12506
12507 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
12508 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
12509 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
12510
12511 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
12512
12513 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
12514 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
12515 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
12516 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
12517 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
12518 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
12519 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
12520 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
12521 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
12522 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
12523 point.</p>
12524
12525 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
12526 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
12527 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
12528 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
12529 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
12530 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
12531
12532 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
12533 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
12534 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
12535 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
12536 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
12537 spare time.</p>
12538
12539 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
12540 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
12541 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
12542 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
12543 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
12544
12545 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
12546 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
12547 avoidance do exist.</p>
12548
12549 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
12550 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
12551 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
12552 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
12553 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
12554 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
12555 and probably a gain for all.</p>
12556
12557 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12558 Edu?</strong></p>
12559
12560 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
12561 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
12562 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
12563 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
12564 project communication, honest communication within the group of
12565 developers, etc.</p>
12566
12567 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12568 Edu?</strong></p>
12569
12570 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
12571
12572 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
12573 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
12574 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
12575 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
12576 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
12577 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
12578 contribute).</p>
12579
12580 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
12581 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
12582 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
12583 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
12584 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
12585 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
12586 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
12587 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
12588 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
12589 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
12590
12591 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12592
12593 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
12594
12595 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
12596 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
12597 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
12598
12599 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
12600 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
12601 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
12602 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
12603
12604 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
12605 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
12606 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
12607 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
12608 whiteboard.</p>
12609
12610 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
12611
12612 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12613 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12614
12615 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
12616 enrol people.</p>
12617
12618       </div>
12619       <div class="tags">
12620
12621
12622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12623
12624
12625       </div>
12626     </div>
12627     <div class="padding"></div>
12628
12629     <div class="entry">
12630       <div class="title">
12631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
12632       </div>
12633       <div class="date">
12634          1st June 2012
12635       </div>
12636       <div class="body">
12637         <p>A few years ago I wrote
12638 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
12639 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
12640 I have learned from colleges here at the
12641 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
12642 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
12643 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
12644 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
12645 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
12646
12647 <p><pre>
12648 use strict;
12649 use warnings;
12650 use SOAP::Lite;
12651 use Data::Dumper;
12652 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
12653 my $App = 'test';
12654 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
12655 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
12656 my $s = SOAP::Lite
12657     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
12658     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
12659     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
12660     ;
12661 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
12662     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
12663     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
12664     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
12665 );
12666 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
12667 </pre></p>
12668
12669 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
12670
12671 <p><pre>
12672 $VAR1 = {
12673           'Asset' => {
12674                      'Entitlements' => {
12675                                        'EntitlementData' => [
12676                                                             {
12677                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12678                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12679                                                               'Provider' => '',
12680                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12681                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12682                                                             },
12683                                                             {
12684                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12685                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
12686                                                               'Provider' => '',
12687                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12688                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12689                                                             },
12690                                                             {
12691                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12692                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
12693                                                               'Provider' => '',
12694                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12695                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12696                                                             }
12697                                                           ]
12698                                      },
12699                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
12700                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
12701                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
12702                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
12703                                           'Buid' => '2323',
12704                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
12705                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
12706                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
12707                                         }
12708                    }
12709         };
12710 </pre></p>
12711
12712 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
12713 service outside the
12714 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
12715 documentation</a>, and according to
12716 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
12717 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
12718 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
12719
12720 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
12721 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
12722
12723       </div>
12724       <div class="tags">
12725
12726
12727         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12728
12729
12730       </div>
12731     </div>
12732     <div class="padding"></div>
12733
12734     <div class="entry">
12735       <div class="title">
12736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
12737       </div>
12738       <div class="date">
12739         31st May 2012
12740       </div>
12741       <div class="body">
12742         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
12743 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
12744 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
12745 running Debian Squeeze, where
12746 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
12747 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
12748 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
12749 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
12750 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
12751 another day.</p>
12752
12753 <p>After calibration, I get a
12754 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
12755 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
12756 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
12757 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
12758 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
12759 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
12760 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
12761 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
12762 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
12763 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
12764 and a simple</p>
12765
12766 <p><pre>
12767 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
12768 </pre></p>
12769
12770 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
12771 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
12772 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
12773 enough for now.</p>
12774
12775       </div>
12776       <div class="tags">
12777
12778
12779         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12780
12781
12782       </div>
12783     </div>
12784     <div class="padding"></div>
12785
12786     <div class="entry">
12787       <div class="title">
12788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
12789       </div>
12790       <div class="date">
12791         27th May 2012
12792       </div>
12793       <div class="body">
12794         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
12795 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12796 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
12797 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
12798 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
12799 since then, helping to make sure the
12800 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12801 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
12802
12803 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12804
12805 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
12806 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
12807 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
12808 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
12809 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
12810 our computer network.</p>
12811
12812 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
12813 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
12814 (4 months).</p>
12815
12816 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12817 project?</strong></p>
12818
12819 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
12820 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
12821 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
12822 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
12823 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
12824 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
12825 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
12826 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
12827 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
12828 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
12829 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
12830 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
12831 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
12832 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
12833
12834 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12835 Edu?</strong></p>
12836
12837 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
12838 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
12839 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
12840 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
12841 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
12842 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
12843 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
12844 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
12845
12846 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12847 Edu?</strong></p>
12848
12849 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
12850 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
12851 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
12852 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
12853 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
12854 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
12855 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
12856 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
12857 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
12858 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
12859 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
12860 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
12861
12862 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12863
12864 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
12865 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
12866 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
12867
12868 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12869 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12870
12871 <p><ol>
12872
12873 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
12874 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
12875 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
12876 developing.</li>
12877
12878 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
12879 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
12880 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
12881 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
12882 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
12883
12884 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
12885 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
12886 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
12887
12888 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
12889 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
12890 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
12891 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
12892
12893 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
12894 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
12895 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
12896
12897 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
12898
12899 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
12900 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
12901 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
12902 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
12903
12904 </ol></p>
12905
12906       </div>
12907       <div class="tags">
12908
12909
12910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12911
12912
12913       </div>
12914     </div>
12915     <div class="padding"></div>
12916
12917     <div class="entry">
12918       <div class="title">
12919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
12920       </div>
12921       <div class="date">
12922         26th May 2012
12923       </div>
12924       <div class="body">
12925         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
12926 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
12927 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
12928 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
12929 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
12930
12931 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
12932 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
12933 comment:</p>
12934
12935 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
12936 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
12937 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
12938 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
12939 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
12940 </blockquote></p>
12941
12942 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
12943 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
12944 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
12945 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
12946 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
12947 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
12948 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
12949 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
12950 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
12951 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
12952 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
12953 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
12954 of wasted effort.</p>
12955
12956 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
12957 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
12958 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
12959
12960 <p>See
12961 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
12962 and
12963 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
12964 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
12965 </blockquote></p>
12966
12967       </div>
12968       <div class="tags">
12969
12970
12971         Tags: <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>.
12972
12973
12974       </div>
12975     </div>
12976     <div class="padding"></div>
12977
12978     <div class="entry">
12979       <div class="title">
12980         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
12981       </div>
12982       <div class="date">
12983         18th May 2012
12984       </div>
12985       <div class="body">
12986         <p>In january, I
12987 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
12988 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
12989 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
12990 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
12991 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
12992 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
12993 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
12994 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
12995 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
12996 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
12997
12998 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
12999 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
13000 drivers. :)</p>
13001
13002       </div>
13003       <div class="tags">
13004
13005
13006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13007
13008
13009       </div>
13010     </div>
13011     <div class="padding"></div>
13012
13013     <div class="entry">
13014       <div class="title">
13015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
13016       </div>
13017       <div class="date">
13018         13th May 2012
13019       </div>
13020       <div class="body">
13021         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
13022 publish another interview with the people behind
13023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13024 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
13025 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
13026 details get right before release.
13027
13028 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13029
13030 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
13031 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
13032 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
13033 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
13034 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
13035 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
13036 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
13037 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
13038
13039 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
13040 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
13041 home since 2006.</p>
13042
13043 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13044 project?</strong></p>
13045
13046 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
13047 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
13048 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
13049 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
13050 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
13051 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
13052
13053 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
13054 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
13055 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
13056 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
13057 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
13058 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
13059 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
13060 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
13061 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
13062 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
13063 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
13064 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
13065 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
13066 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
13067 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
13068 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
13069
13070 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13071 Edu?</strong></p>
13072
13073 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
13074 for me as today.</p>
13075
13076 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
13077
13078 <p><ul>
13079
13080 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
13081 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
13082
13083 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
13084 cost.</li>
13085
13086 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
13087 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
13088 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
13089 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
13090 server</li>
13091
13092 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
13093 school.</li>
13094
13095 </ul></p>
13096
13097 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
13098 came up in this way:</p>
13099
13100 <p><ul>
13101
13102 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
13103 now.</li>
13104
13105 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
13106 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
13107 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
13108
13109 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
13110 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
13111 interfaces used in the past.</li>
13112
13113 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
13114 different needs.</li>
13115
13116 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
13117
13118 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
13119 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
13120 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
13121
13122 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
13123 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
13124
13125 </ul></p>
13126
13127 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13128 Edu?</strong></p>
13129
13130 <p><ul>
13131
13132 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
13133 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
13134 whole municipality areas.</li>
13135
13136 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
13137 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
13138 politicians.</li>
13139
13140 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
13141
13142 </ul></p>
13143
13144 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13145
13146 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
13147 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
13148 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
13149 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
13150 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
13151 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
13152
13153 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
13154 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
13155 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
13156 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
13157 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
13158
13159 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13160 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13161
13162 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
13163 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
13164 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
13165
13166       </div>
13167       <div class="tags">
13168
13169
13170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13171
13172
13173       </div>
13174     </div>
13175     <div class="padding"></div>
13176
13177     <div class="entry">
13178       <div class="title">
13179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
13180       </div>
13181       <div class="date">
13182         30th April 2012
13183       </div>
13184       <div class="body">
13185         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
13186 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
13187
13188 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
13189 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
13190 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
13191 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
13192 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
13193 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
13194 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
13195 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
13196 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
13197 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
13198 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
13199 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
13200 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
13201 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
13202 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
13203 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
13204
13205 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
13206 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
13207 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
13208 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
13209 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
13210 finally found a Danish supplier
13211 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
13212 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
13213 days ago.</p>
13214
13215 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
13216 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
13217 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
13218 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
13219 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
13220 toys.</p>
13221
13222       </div>
13223       <div class="tags">
13224
13225
13226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13227
13228
13229       </div>
13230     </div>
13231     <div class="padding"></div>
13232
13233     <div class="entry">
13234       <div class="title">
13235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
13236       </div>
13237       <div class="date">
13238         26th April 2012
13239       </div>
13240       <div class="body">
13241         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
13242 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
13243 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
13244 that the video editor application included with
13245 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
13246 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
13247 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
13248
13249 <p><blockquote>
13250 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
13251 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
13252 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
13253 </blockquote></p>
13254
13255 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
13256
13257 <p><blockquote>
13258 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
13259 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
13260 </blockquote></p>
13261
13262 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
13263 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
13264 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
13265 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
13266 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
13267 video.  AMR is
13268 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
13269 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
13270 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
13271 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
13272 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
13273 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
13274 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
13275
13276 <p>I know why I prefer
13277 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
13278 standards</a> also for video.</p>
13279
13280       </div>
13281       <div class="tags">
13282
13283
13284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
13285
13286
13287       </div>
13288     </div>
13289     <div class="padding"></div>
13290
13291     <div class="entry">
13292       <div class="title">
13293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
13294       </div>
13295       <div class="date">
13296         19th April 2012
13297       </div>
13298       <div class="body">
13299         <p>Here in Norway, the
13300 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
13301 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
13302 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
13303 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
13304 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
13305 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
13306 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
13307 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
13308 on the same level.</p>
13309
13310 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
13311 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
13312 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
13313 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
13314 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
13315 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
13316 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
13317 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
13318 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
13319 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
13320 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
13321 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
13322 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
13323 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
13324 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
13325 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
13326 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
13327 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
13328
13329 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
13330 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
13331 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
13332 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
13333 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
13334 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
13335 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
13336 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
13337
13338 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
13339 from Simon Phipps
13340 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
13341 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
13342
13343 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
13344 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
13345 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
13346 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
13347 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
13348 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
13349 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
13350 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
13351 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
13352
13353       </div>
13354       <div class="tags">
13355
13356
13357         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13358
13359
13360       </div>
13361     </div>
13362     <div class="padding"></div>
13363
13364     <div class="entry">
13365       <div class="title">
13366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
13367       </div>
13368       <div class="date">
13369         15th April 2012
13370       </div>
13371       <div class="body">
13372         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13373 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
13374 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
13375 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
13376 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
13377 up in the recently released
13378 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13379 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13380
13381 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13382
13383 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
13384 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
13385 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
13386 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
13387 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
13388 information technology and science/technology.</p>
13389
13390 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13391 project?</strong></p>
13392
13393 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
13394 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
13395 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
13396 contributing.</p>
13397
13398 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13399 Edu?</strong></p>
13400
13401 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
13402 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
13403 Debian Project!</p>
13404
13405 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13406 Edu?</strong></p>
13407
13408 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
13409 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
13410 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
13411 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
13412 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
13413 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
13414 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
13415
13416 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
13417 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
13418
13419 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13420
13421 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
13422 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
13423 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
13424 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
13425
13426 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13427 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13428
13429 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
13430 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
13431 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
13432 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
13433 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
13434 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
13435 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
13436
13437 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
13438 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
13439 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
13440 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
13441 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
13442 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
13443 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
13444 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
13445
13446       </div>
13447       <div class="tags">
13448
13449
13450         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13451
13452
13453       </div>
13454     </div>
13455     <div class="padding"></div>
13456
13457     <div class="entry">
13458       <div class="title">
13459         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
13460       </div>
13461       <div class="date">
13462          8th April 2012
13463       </div>
13464       <div class="body">
13465         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
13466 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
13467 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
13468 contributor to the
13469 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
13470 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
13471
13472 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13473
13474 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
13475 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
13476
13477 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13478 project?</strong></p>
13479
13480 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
13481 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
13482 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
13483 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
13484 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
13485 "localisation".</p>
13486
13487 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13488 Edu?</strong></p>
13489
13490 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13491 Edu?</strong></p>
13492
13493 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
13494 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
13495 education system.</p>
13496
13497 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
13498 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
13499 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
13500 money on the latest hardware.</p>
13501
13502 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13503
13504 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
13505 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
13506 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
13507
13508 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13509 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13510
13511 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
13512 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
13513 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
13514
13515       </div>
13516       <div class="tags">
13517
13518
13519         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13520
13521
13522       </div>
13523     </div>
13524     <div class="padding"></div>
13525
13526     <div class="entry">
13527       <div class="title">
13528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
13529       </div>
13530       <div class="date">
13531          6th April 2012
13532       </div>
13533       <div class="body">
13534         <p>Recently I have spent time with
13535 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
13536 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13537 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
13538 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
13539 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
13540 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
13541 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
13542 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
13543
13544 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
13545 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
13546 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
13547 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
13548 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
13549 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
13550 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
13551 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
13552
13553 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
13554 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
13555 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
13556 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
13557 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
13558 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
13559 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
13560 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
13561
13562 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
13563 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
13564 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
13565 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
13566 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
13567 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
13568 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
13569 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
13570 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
13571 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
13572
13573 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
13574 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
13575 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
13576 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
13577
13578 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
13579 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
13580
13581       </div>
13582       <div class="tags">
13583
13584
13585         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13586
13587
13588       </div>
13589     </div>
13590     <div class="padding"></div>
13591
13592     <div class="entry">
13593       <div class="title">
13594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
13595       </div>
13596       <div class="date">
13597          5th April 2012
13598       </div>
13599       <div class="body">
13600         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
13601 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
13602 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
13603 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
13604 for schools.  Check out his article
13605 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
13606 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
13607
13608       </div>
13609       <div class="tags">
13610
13611
13612         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13613
13614
13615       </div>
13616     </div>
13617     <div class="padding"></div>
13618
13619     <div class="entry">
13620       <div class="title">
13621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
13622       </div>
13623       <div class="date">
13624          1st April 2012
13625       </div>
13626       <div class="body">
13627         <p>Germany is a core area for the
13628 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13629 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
13630 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
13631
13632 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13633
13634 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
13635 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
13636 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
13637 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
13638 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
13639 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
13640 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
13641 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
13642
13643 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
13644 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
13645 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
13646 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
13647 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
13648 the end of April this year.</p>
13649
13650 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13651 project?</strong></p>
13652
13653 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
13654 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
13655 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
13656 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
13657 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
13658 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
13659 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
13660 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
13661 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
13662 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
13663 Skolelinux.</p>
13664
13665 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
13666 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
13667 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
13668 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
13669 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
13670 the admin teachers.</p>
13671
13672 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13673 Edu?</strong></p>
13674
13675 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
13676 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
13677 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
13678
13679 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
13680 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
13681 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
13682 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
13683 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
13684
13685 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13686 Edu?</strong></p>
13687
13688 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
13689
13690 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13691
13692 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
13693 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
13694 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
13695 LibreOffice.</p>
13696
13697 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13698 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13699
13700 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
13701 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
13702 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
13703
13704       </div>
13705       <div class="tags">
13706
13707
13708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13709
13710
13711       </div>
13712     </div>
13713     <div class="padding"></div>
13714
13715     <div class="entry">
13716       <div class="title">
13717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
13718       </div>
13719       <div class="date">
13720         25th March 2012
13721       </div>
13722       <div class="body">
13723         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13724
13725 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
13726 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
13727 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
13728 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
13729 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
13730 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
13731 and download as a
13732 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
13733 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13734
13735 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13736   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
13737     <p>Download video as
13738       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13739 </video></p>
13740
13741       </div>
13742       <div class="tags">
13743
13744
13745         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13746
13747
13748       </div>
13749     </div>
13750     <div class="padding"></div>
13751
13752     <div class="entry">
13753       <div class="title">
13754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
13755       </div>
13756       <div class="date">
13757         19th March 2012
13758       </div>
13759       <div class="body">
13760         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13761 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
13762 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13763 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
13764 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
13765
13766 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13767
13768 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
13769 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
13770 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
13771 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
13772 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
13773 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
13774 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
13775 installations.</p>
13776
13777 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13778 project?</strong></p>
13779
13780 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
13781 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
13782 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
13783 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
13784 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
13785 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
13786 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
13787 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
13788 these things we decided to try it.</p>
13789
13790 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13791 Edu?</strong></p>
13792
13793 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
13794 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
13795 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
13796 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
13797 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
13798 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
13799 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
13800 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
13801
13802 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13803 Edu?</strong></p>
13804
13805 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
13806 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
13807 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
13808 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
13809 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
13810
13811 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13812
13813 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
13814 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
13815 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
13816 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
13817 that counts...)</p>
13818
13819 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13820 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13821
13822 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
13823 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
13824 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
13825 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
13826 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
13827 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
13828 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
13829 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
13830 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
13831 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
13832 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
13833
13834 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
13835 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
13836 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
13837
13838       </div>
13839       <div class="tags">
13840
13841
13842         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13843
13844
13845       </div>
13846     </div>
13847     <div class="padding"></div>
13848
13849     <div class="entry">
13850       <div class="title">
13851         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
13852       </div>
13853       <div class="date">
13854         16th March 2012
13855       </div>
13856       <div class="body">
13857         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
13858 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
13859 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
13860 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
13861
13862 <ol>
13863
13864 <li>The documentation is written in a
13865 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
13866 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
13867 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
13868 docbook XML.</li>
13869
13870 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
13871 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
13872 with the translated text.</li>
13873
13874 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
13875 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
13876 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
13877 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
13878 images.</li>
13879
13880 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
13881 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
13882
13883 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
13884 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
13885
13886 </ol>
13887
13888 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
13889 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
13890 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
13891 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
13892 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
13893
13894 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
13895 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
13896 package</a>.</p>
13897
13898       </div>
13899       <div class="tags">
13900
13901
13902         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13903
13904
13905       </div>
13906     </div>
13907     <div class="padding"></div>
13908
13909     <div class="entry">
13910       <div class="title">
13911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
13912       </div>
13913       <div class="date">
13914         11th March 2012
13915       </div>
13916       <div class="body">
13917         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
13918 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
13919 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13920 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
13921 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
13922 you have not done so already.</p>
13923
13924 <p>I plan to present the new version at
13925 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
13926 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
13927 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
13928
13929       </div>
13930       <div class="tags">
13931
13932
13933         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13934
13935
13936       </div>
13937     </div>
13938     <div class="padding"></div>
13939
13940     <div class="entry">
13941       <div class="title">
13942         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
13943       </div>
13944       <div class="date">
13945          9th March 2012
13946       </div>
13947       <div class="body">
13948         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
13949 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
13950 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13951 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
13952 more international audience.</p>
13953
13954 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13955 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
13956 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
13957 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
13958 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
13959 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
13960 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
13961
13962
13963 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13964
13965 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
13966 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
13967 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
13968 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
13969 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
13970 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
13971 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
13972 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
13973 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
13974 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
13975 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
13976
13977 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13978 project?</strong></p>
13979
13980 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
13981 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
13982 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
13983 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
13984 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
13985 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
13986 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
13987 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
13988 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
13989 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
13990 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
13991 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
13992 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
13993
13994 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13995 Edu?</strong></p>
13996
13997 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
13998 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
13999 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
14000 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
14001 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
14002 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
14003 Japan.</p>
14004
14005 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14006 Edu?</strong></p>
14007
14008 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
14009 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
14010 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
14011 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
14012 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
14013 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
14014 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
14015 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
14016 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
14017 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
14018 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
14019 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
14020 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
14021 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
14022 help.</p>
14023
14024 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14025
14026 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
14027 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
14028 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
14029 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
14030 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
14031 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
14032 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
14033 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
14034 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
14035 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
14036 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
14037
14038 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14039 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14040
14041 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
14042 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
14043 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
14044 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
14045 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
14046 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
14047 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
14048 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
14049 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
14050 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
14051 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
14052 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
14053
14054       </div>
14055       <div class="tags">
14056
14057
14058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14059
14060
14061       </div>
14062     </div>
14063     <div class="padding"></div>
14064
14065     <div class="entry">
14066       <div class="title">
14067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
14068       </div>
14069       <div class="date">
14070          7th March 2012
14071       </div>
14072       <div class="body">
14073         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14074
14075 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
14076 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
14077 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
14078 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
14079 download as a
14080 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
14081 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14082
14083 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14084   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
14085     <p>Download video as
14086       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14087 </video></p>
14088
14089       </div>
14090       <div class="tags">
14091
14092
14093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14094
14095
14096       </div>
14097     </div>
14098     <div class="padding"></div>
14099
14100     <div class="entry">
14101       <div class="title">
14102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14103       </div>
14104       <div class="date">
14105          4th March 2012
14106       </div>
14107       <div class="body">
14108         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
14109 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14110 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14111 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
14112 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
14113 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14114
14115       </div>
14116       <div class="tags">
14117
14118
14119         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14120
14121
14122       </div>
14123     </div>
14124     <div class="padding"></div>
14125
14126     <div class="entry">
14127       <div class="title">
14128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
14129       </div>
14130       <div class="date">
14131          3rd March 2012
14132       </div>
14133       <div class="body">
14134         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
14135 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
14136 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
14137 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
14138 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
14139 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
14140 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
14141 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
14142 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
14143 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
14144 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
14145 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
14146 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
14147 year...</p>
14148
14149 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
14150 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
14151 name,
14152 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
14153 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
14154 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
14155 mean). I've been following
14156 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
14157 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
14158 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
14159 Check it out. :)</p>
14160
14161       </div>
14162       <div class="tags">
14163
14164
14165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14166
14167
14168       </div>
14169     </div>
14170     <div class="padding"></div>
14171
14172     <div class="entry">
14173       <div class="title">
14174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14175       </div>
14176       <div class="date">
14177         27th February 2012
14178       </div>
14179       <div class="body">
14180         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
14181 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14182 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
14183 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
14184 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
14185 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
14186 need a software solution for your school.</p>
14187
14188       </div>
14189       <div class="tags">
14190
14191
14192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14193
14194
14195       </div>
14196     </div>
14197     <div class="padding"></div>
14198
14199     <div class="entry">
14200       <div class="title">
14201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14202       </div>
14203       <div class="date">
14204         19th February 2012
14205       </div>
14206       <div class="body">
14207         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
14208 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
14209 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14210 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14211 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
14212 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
14213 solution for your school.</p>
14214
14215       </div>
14216       <div class="tags">
14217
14218
14219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14220
14221
14222       </div>
14223     </div>
14224     <div class="padding"></div>
14225
14226     <div class="entry">
14227       <div class="title">
14228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
14229       </div>
14230       <div class="date">
14231         14th February 2012
14232       </div>
14233       <div class="body">
14234         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
14235 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
14236 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
14237 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
14238 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
14239 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
14240 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
14241 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
14242 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
14243
14244 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
14245 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
14246 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
14247 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
14248 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
14249
14250 <blockquote><pre>
14251 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
14252 do
14253     printf "Failed disk $d: "
14254     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
14255 done
14256 </blockquote></pre>
14257
14258 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
14259 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
14260
14261 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
14262
14263 <blockquote><pre>
14264 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14265 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
14266 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
14267 </blockquote></pre>
14268
14269 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
14270 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
14271 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
14272 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
14273 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
14274 mounted inside my box.</p>
14275
14276 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
14277 Software RAID in the
14278 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
14279 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
14280 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
14281 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
14282 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
14283 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
14284
14285       </div>
14286       <div class="tags">
14287
14288
14289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
14290
14291
14292       </div>
14293     </div>
14294     <div class="padding"></div>
14295
14296     <div class="entry">
14297       <div class="title">
14298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14299       </div>
14300       <div class="date">
14301         13th February 2012
14302       </div>
14303       <div class="body">
14304         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
14305 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
14306 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
14307 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
14308 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
14309 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
14310 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
14311 change the global proxy setting by editing
14312 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
14313 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
14314
14315 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
14316 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
14317 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
14318
14319 <blockquote><pre>
14320 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
14321 {
14322    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
14323        isPlainHostName(host) ||
14324        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
14325       return "DIRECT";
14326    else
14327       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
14328 }
14329 </pre></blockquote>
14330
14331 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
14332
14333 <blockquote><pre>
14334 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14335 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
14336 </pre></blockquote>
14337
14338 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
14339 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
14340 would be used for
14341 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
14342 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
14343 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
14344 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
14345 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
14346 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
14347 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
14348 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
14349 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
14350 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
14351
14352 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
14353 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
14354 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
14355 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
14356 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
14357 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
14358
14359 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
14360 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
14361 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
14362 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
14363 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
14364 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
14365 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
14366 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
14367 the network setup changes.</p>
14368
14369 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
14370 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
14371 draft</a> and a
14372 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
14373 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
14374
14375       </div>
14376       <div class="tags">
14377
14378
14379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14380
14381
14382       </div>
14383     </div>
14384     <div class="padding"></div>
14385
14386     <div class="entry">
14387       <div class="title">
14388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
14389       </div>
14390       <div class="date">
14391          5th February 2012
14392       </div>
14393       <div class="body">
14394         <p>Since the Lenny version of
14395 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
14396 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
14397 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
14398 in the morning.  This is done using the
14399 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
14400
14401 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
14402 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
14403 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
14404 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
14405 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
14406 the
14407 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
14408 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
14409 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
14410 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
14411 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
14412
14413 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
14414 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
14415 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
14416 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
14417 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
14418 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
14419 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
14420
14421 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
14422 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
14423 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
14424 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
14425 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
14426
14427       </div>
14428       <div class="tags">
14429
14430
14431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14432
14433
14434       </div>
14435     </div>
14436     <div class="padding"></div>
14437
14438     <div class="entry">
14439       <div class="title">
14440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14441       </div>
14442       <div class="date">
14443          4th February 2012
14444       </div>
14445       <div class="body">
14446         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
14447 publish the third beta version of
14448 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14449 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
14450 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
14451 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
14452 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14453 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
14454 on the project announcement list.</p>
14455
14456 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
14457 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
14458
14459 <ul>
14460
14461 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
14462   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
14463   the installation.</li>
14464
14465 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
14466   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
14467
14468 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
14469   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
14470   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
14471
14472 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
14473   for the local system administrator is created during installation
14474   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
14475   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
14476   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
14477   up to date on the system.</li>
14478
14479 </ul>
14480
14481 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
14482 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
14483 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
14484 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
14485
14486 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
14487 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
14488 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
14489 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
14490 will see you there?</p>
14491
14492       </div>
14493       <div class="tags">
14494
14495
14496         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14497
14498
14499       </div>
14500     </div>
14501     <div class="padding"></div>
14502
14503     <div class="entry">
14504       <div class="title">
14505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14506       </div>
14507       <div class="date">
14508         27th January 2012
14509       </div>
14510       <div class="body">
14511         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
14512 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
14513 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
14514 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
14515 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
14516 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
14517 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
14518
14519 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
14520 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
14521 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
14522 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
14523 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
14524 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
14525 not taken care of by this.</p>
14526
14527 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
14528 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
14529 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
14530 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
14531 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
14532 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
14533 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
14534 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
14535 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
14536 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
14537 firmware packages.</p>
14538
14539 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
14540 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
14541 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
14542 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
14543 initrd with extra firmware, the
14544 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
14545 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
14546 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
14547
14548 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
14549 network cards working.  For this,
14550 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
14551 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
14552 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
14553
14554 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
14555 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
14556 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
14557
14558 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
14559 try.</p>
14560
14561       </div>
14562       <div class="tags">
14563
14564
14565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14566
14567
14568       </div>
14569     </div>
14570     <div class="padding"></div>
14571
14572     <div class="entry">
14573       <div class="title">
14574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14575       </div>
14576       <div class="date">
14577         25th January 2012
14578       </div>
14579       <div class="body">
14580         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
14581 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
14582 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
14583 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
14584 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
14585
14586 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
14587 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
14588 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
14589 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
14590 this is done, log on to the central server and run
14591 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
14592 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
14593 will look similar to this:</p>
14594
14595 <p><blockquote><pre>
14596 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
14597 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
14598 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
14599
14600 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
14601
14602 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14603 enter password: *******
14604 %
14605 </pre></blockquote></p>
14606
14607 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
14608 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
14609 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
14610 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
14611 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
14612 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
14613 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
14614 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
14615 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
14616 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
14617 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
14618 automatically.</p>
14619
14620 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
14621 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
14622
14623 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
14624 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
14625 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
14626
14627       </div>
14628       <div class="tags">
14629
14630
14631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
14632
14633
14634       </div>
14635     </div>
14636     <div class="padding"></div>
14637
14638     <div class="entry">
14639       <div class="title">
14640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
14641       </div>
14642       <div class="date">
14643         10th January 2012
14644       </div>
14645       <div class="body">
14646         <p>In the Squeeze version of
14647 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
14648 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
14649 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
14650 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
14651 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
14652 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
14653 first time.</p>
14654
14655 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
14656 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
14657 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
14658 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
14659
14660 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
14661 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
14662 new setting.</p>
14663
14664 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
14665 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
14666 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
14667
14668       </div>
14669       <div class="tags">
14670
14671
14672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14673
14674
14675       </div>
14676     </div>
14677     <div class="padding"></div>
14678
14679     <div class="entry">
14680       <div class="title">
14681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
14682       </div>
14683       <div class="date">
14684          7th January 2012
14685       </div>
14686       <div class="body">
14687         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
14688 the second beta version of
14689 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
14690 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
14691 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
14692 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
14693 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14694 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
14695 on the project announcement list.</p>
14696
14697       </div>
14698       <div class="tags">
14699
14700
14701         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14702
14703
14704       </div>
14705     </div>
14706     <div class="padding"></div>
14707
14708     <div class="entry">
14709       <div class="title">
14710         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
14711       </div>
14712       <div class="date">
14713          3rd January 2012
14714       </div>
14715       <div class="body">
14716         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
14717 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
14718 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
14719 interesting.</p>
14720
14721 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
14722 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
14723 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
14724 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
14725 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
14726 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
14727 wrap up its tasks.</p>
14728
14729 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
14730 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
14731 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
14732 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
14733 because I was typing.</P>
14734
14735 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
14736 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
14737 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
14738 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
14739 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
14740 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
14741 generate entropy.</p>
14742
14743 <p>The fix is in
14744 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
14745 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
14746 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
14747 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
14748
14749       </div>
14750       <div class="tags">
14751
14752
14753         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14754
14755
14756       </div>
14757     </div>
14758     <div class="padding"></div>
14759
14760     <div class="entry">
14761       <div class="title">
14762         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
14763       </div>
14764       <div class="date">
14765         21st November 2011
14766       </div>
14767       <div class="body">
14768         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
14769 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
14770 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
14771 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
14772 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
14773 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
14774 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
14775 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
14776 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
14777 the tools to do so.</p>
14778
14779 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
14780 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
14781 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
14782 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
14783
14784 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
14785 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
14786 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
14787 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
14788 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
14789 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
14790 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
14791 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
14792
14793 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
14794 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
14795 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
14796
14797 <p><pre>
14798 #!/usr/bin/perl
14799 use strict;
14800 use warnings;
14801 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
14802 BEGIN {
14803     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
14804     my %rhelmodules = (
14805         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
14806         );
14807     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
14808         eval "use $module;";
14809         if ($@) {
14810             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
14811             system("yum install -y $pkg");
14812             eval "use $module;";
14813         }
14814     }
14815 }
14816 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
14817
14818 upgrade_dell();
14819
14820 exit 0;
14821
14822 sub run_firmware_script {
14823     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
14824     unless ($script) {
14825         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
14826         exit 1
14827     }
14828     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
14829
14830     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
14831         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
14832     } else {
14833         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
14834     }
14835 }
14836
14837 sub run_firmware_scripts {
14838     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
14839     # Run firmware packages
14840     for my $dir (@dirs) {
14841         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
14842         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
14843         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
14844             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
14845             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
14846         }
14847         closedir $dh;
14848     }
14849 }
14850
14851 sub download {
14852     my $url = shift;
14853     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
14854     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
14855 }
14856
14857 sub upgrade_dell {
14858     my @dirs;
14859     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14860     chomp $product;
14861
14862     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
14863
14864         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
14865         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
14866
14867         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
14868             CLEANUP => 1
14869             );
14870         chdir($tmpdir);
14871         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
14872         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
14873         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
14874         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
14875         my $fwopts = "-q";
14876         if (@paths) {
14877             for my $url (@paths) {
14878                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
14879             }
14880             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
14881         } else {
14882             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14883             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14884         }
14885         chdir('/');
14886     } else {
14887         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14888         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14889     }
14890 }
14891
14892 sub fetch_dell_fw {
14893     my $path = shift;
14894     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
14895     download($url);
14896 }
14897
14898 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
14899 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
14900 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
14901 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
14902     my $filename = shift;
14903
14904     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14905     chomp $product;
14906     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
14907
14908     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
14909
14910     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
14911     my @paths;
14912     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
14913         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
14914         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
14915         my $oscode;
14916         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
14917             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
14918         } else {
14919             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
14920         }
14921         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
14922         {
14923             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
14924         }
14925     }
14926     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
14927         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
14928
14929         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
14930         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
14931
14932         my $cpath = $component->{path};
14933         for my $path (@paths) {
14934             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
14935                 push(@paths, $cpath);
14936             }
14937         }
14938     }
14939     return @paths;
14940 }
14941 </pre>
14942
14943 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
14944 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
14945 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
14946 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
14947 outdated.</p>
14948
14949       </div>
14950       <div class="tags">
14951
14952
14953         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>.
14954
14955
14956       </div>
14957     </div>
14958     <div class="padding"></div>
14959
14960     <div class="entry">
14961       <div class="title">
14962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
14963       </div>
14964       <div class="date">
14965          7th October 2011
14966       </div>
14967       <div class="body">
14968         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
14969 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
14970 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
14971 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
14972 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
14973 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
14974 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
14975 models.</p>
14976
14977 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
14978 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
14979 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
14980 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
14981
14982 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
14983 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
14984 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
14985 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
14986 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
14987 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
14988 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
14989 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
14990 distributed.</p>
14991
14992 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
14993
14994 <ul>
14995
14996 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
14997   other relevant equipment.</li>
14998
14999 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
15000
15001 </ul>
15002
15003 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
15004 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
15005 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
15006 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
15007 books available.</p>
15008
15009 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
15010 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
15011 libraries. :)</p>
15012
15013       </div>
15014       <div class="tags">
15015
15016
15017         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15018
15019
15020       </div>
15021     </div>
15022     <div class="padding"></div>
15023
15024     <div class="entry">
15025       <div class="title">
15026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
15027       </div>
15028       <div class="date">
15029         17th September 2011
15030       </div>
15031       <div class="body">
15032         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
15033 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
15034 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
15035 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
15036 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
15037 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
15038 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
15039 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
15040
15041 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
15042
15043 <blockquote><pre>
15044 #!/bin/sh
15045 # apt-get install lsdvd
15046 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15047 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
15048 </pre></blockquote>
15049
15050 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
15051 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
15052 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
15053 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
15054
15055 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
15056 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
15057 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
15058 back as an ISO.
15059
15060 <blockquote><pre>
15061 #!/bin/sh
15062 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
15063 set -e
15064 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
15065 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
15066 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
15067 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
15068 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
15069 </pre></blockquote>
15070
15071 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
15072
15073 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
15074 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
15075 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
15076 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
15077 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
15078
15079 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
15080 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
15081 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
15082 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
15083 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
15084 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
15085
15086       </div>
15087       <div class="tags">
15088
15089
15090         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15091
15092
15093       </div>
15094     </div>
15095     <div class="padding"></div>
15096
15097     <div class="entry">
15098       <div class="title">
15099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
15100       </div>
15101       <div class="date">
15102          4th August 2011
15103       </div>
15104       <div class="body">
15105         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
15106 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
15107 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
15108 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
15109 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
15110 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
15111 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
15112 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
15113 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
15114
15115 <p><blockquote>
15116 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
15117 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
15118 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
15119 </blockquote></p>
15120
15121 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
15122 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
15123 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
15124 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
15125 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
15126 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
15127 hard to explain.</p>
15128
15129 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
15130 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
15131 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
15132 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
15133 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
15134 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
15135 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
15136 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
15137 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
15138 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
15139 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
15140 mode).</p>
15141
15142 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
15143 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
15144 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
15145 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
15146 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
15147 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
15148 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
15149 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
15150 after visiting single user mode.</p>
15151
15152 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
15153 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
15154 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
15155 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
15156 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
15157 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
15158 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
15159 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
15160
15161 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
15162 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
15163 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
15164
15165       </div>
15166       <div class="tags">
15167
15168
15169         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>.
15170
15171
15172       </div>
15173     </div>
15174     <div class="padding"></div>
15175
15176     <div class="entry">
15177       <div class="title">
15178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
15179       </div>
15180       <div class="date">
15181         30th July 2011
15182       </div>
15183       <div class="body">
15184         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
15185 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
15186 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
15187 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
15188 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
15189 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
15190 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
15191 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
15192 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
15193 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
15194 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
15195 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
15196 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
15197
15198 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
15199 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
15200 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
15201 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
15202 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
15203 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
15204 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
15205 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
15206 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
15207
15208 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
15209 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
15210 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
15211 is presented.</p>
15212
15213 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
15214 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
15215 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
15216 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
15217 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
15218 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
15219 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
15220 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
15221 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
15222 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
15223 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
15224 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
15225 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
15226 find time to push this forward.</p>
15227
15228       </div>
15229       <div class="tags">
15230
15231
15232         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>.
15233
15234
15235       </div>
15236     </div>
15237     <div class="padding"></div>
15238
15239     <div class="entry">
15240       <div class="title">
15241         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
15242       </div>
15243       <div class="date">
15244         29th July 2011
15245       </div>
15246       <div class="body">
15247         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
15248 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
15249 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
15250 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
15251 issues.</p>
15252
15253 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
15254 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
15255 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
15256
15257 <ol>
15258
15259 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
15260 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
15261 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
15262 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
15263 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
15264 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
15265 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
15266 Debian.</li>
15267
15268 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
15269 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
15270 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
15271 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
15272 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
15273 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
15274 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
15275 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
15276 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
15277 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
15278 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
15279 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
15280 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
15281
15282 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
15283 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
15284 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
15285 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
15286 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
15287 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
15288 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
15289 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
15290 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
15291 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
15292
15293 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
15294 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
15295 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
15296 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
15297 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
15298 latter behaviour.</li>
15299
15300 </ol>
15301
15302 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
15303 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
15304 it do not matter much.</p>
15305
15306 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
15307 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
15308 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
15309
15310       </div>
15311       <div class="tags">
15312
15313
15314         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/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15315
15316
15317       </div>
15318     </div>
15319     <div class="padding"></div>
15320
15321     <div class="entry">
15322       <div class="title">
15323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
15324       </div>
15325       <div class="date">
15326         26th July 2011
15327       </div>
15328       <div class="body">
15329         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
15330 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
15331 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
15332 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
15333 security support for a few years.</p>
15334
15335 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
15336 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
15337 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
15338 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
15339 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
15340 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
15341 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
15342 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
15343 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
15344 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
15345 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
15346 easier in the future.</p>
15347
15348 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
15349 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
15350 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
15351 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
15352 do not have time for.</p>
15353
15354       </div>
15355       <div class="tags">
15356
15357
15358         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/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
15359
15360
15361       </div>
15362     </div>
15363     <div class="padding"></div>
15364
15365     <div class="entry">
15366       <div class="title">
15367         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
15368       </div>
15369       <div class="date">
15370         20th June 2011
15371       </div>
15372       <div class="body">
15373         <p>Reading
15374 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
15375 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
15376 parts of the
15377 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
15378 and
15379 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
15380 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
15381 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
15382 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
15383
15384       </div>
15385       <div class="tags">
15386
15387
15388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
15389
15390
15391       </div>
15392     </div>
15393     <div class="padding"></div>
15394
15395     <div class="entry">
15396       <div class="title">
15397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
15398       </div>
15399       <div class="date">
15400         30th April 2011
15401       </div>
15402       <div class="body">
15403         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
15404 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
15405 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
15406 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
15407 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
15408 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
15409 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
15410 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
15411 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
15412 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
15413
15414 <p>Where is it?  Visit
15415 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
15416 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
15417 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
15418 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
15419
15420       </div>
15421       <div class="tags">
15422
15423
15424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
15425
15426
15427       </div>
15428     </div>
15429     <div class="padding"></div>
15430
15431     <div class="entry">
15432       <div class="title">
15433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
15434       </div>
15435       <div class="date">
15436         29th April 2011
15437       </div>
15438       <div class="body">
15439         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
15440 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
15441 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
15442 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
15443 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
15444 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
15445 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
15446 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
15447 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
15448 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
15449 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
15450 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
15451 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
15452
15453 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
15454 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
15455 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
15456 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
15457 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
15458 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
15459 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
15460 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
15461 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
15462 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
15463 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
15464 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
15465 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
15466
15467 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
15468 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
15469 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
15470 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
15471 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
15472 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
15473 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
15474 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
15475 it.</p>
15476
15477 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
15478 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
15479 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
15480 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
15481 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
15482 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
15483 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
15484
15485 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
15486 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
15487 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
15488 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
15489 and range= options.</p>
15490
15491 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
15492 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
15493 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
15494 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
15495 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
15496 to best handle this.  I've noticed
15497 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
15498 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
15499 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
15500 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
15501
15502 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
15503 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
15504 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
15505 discussions instead of only
15506 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
15507 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
15508 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
15509 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
15510 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
15511 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
15512
15513       </div>
15514       <div class="tags">
15515
15516
15517         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
15518
15519
15520       </div>
15521     </div>
15522     <div class="padding"></div>
15523
15524     <div class="entry">
15525       <div class="title">
15526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
15527       </div>
15528       <div class="date">
15529          6th April 2011
15530       </div>
15531       <div class="body">
15532         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
15533 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
15534 A few days ago the project
15535 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
15536 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
15537 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
15538 into Gnash.</p>
15539
15540       </div>
15541       <div class="tags">
15542
15543
15544         Tags: <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>.
15545
15546
15547       </div>
15548     </div>
15549     <div class="padding"></div>
15550
15551     <div class="entry">
15552       <div class="title">
15553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
15554       </div>
15555       <div class="date">
15556          3rd April 2011
15557       </div>
15558       <div class="body">
15559         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
15560 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
15561 update in English.</p>
15562
15563 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
15564 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
15565 of the British service
15566 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
15567 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
15568 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
15569 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
15570 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
15571 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
15572 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
15573 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
15574 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
15575 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
15576 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
15577 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
15578 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
15579
15580 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
15581 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
15582 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
15583 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
15584 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
15585 public infrastructure.</p>
15586
15587 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
15588 such service?</p>
15589
15590       </div>
15591       <div class="tags">
15592
15593
15594         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/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
15595
15596
15597       </div>
15598     </div>
15599     <div class="padding"></div>
15600
15601     <div class="entry">
15602       <div class="title">
15603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
15604       </div>
15605       <div class="date">
15606         28th January 2011
15607       </div>
15608       <div class="body">
15609         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
15610 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
15611 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
15612 available on the Internet, and check our locally
15613 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
15614 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
15615 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
15616 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
15617 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
15618 out which security holes were present in our free software
15619 collection.</p>
15620
15621 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
15622 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
15623 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
15624 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
15625 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
15626 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
15627 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
15628 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
15629 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
15630 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
15631 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
15632 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
15633 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
15634 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
15635 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
15636 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
15637
15638 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
15639 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
15640 check out, one could look up
15641 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
15642 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
15643 The most recent one is
15644 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
15645 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
15646 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
15647
15648 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
15649 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
15650 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
15651 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
15652 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
15653 security issues out.</p>
15654
15655 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
15656 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
15657 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
15658 RHEL is providing
15659 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
15660 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
15661 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
15662
15663 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
15664 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
15665 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
15666 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
15667 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
15668 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
15669 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
15670 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
15671 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
15672 established soon.</p>
15673
15674 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
15675 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
15676 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
15677 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
15678 for their packages.</p>
15679
15680       </div>
15681       <div class="tags">
15682
15683
15684         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/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15685
15686
15687       </div>
15688     </div>
15689     <div class="padding"></div>
15690
15691     <div class="entry">
15692       <div class="title">
15693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
15694       </div>
15695       <div class="date">
15696         23rd January 2011
15697       </div>
15698       <div class="body">
15699         <p>In the
15700 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
15701 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
15702 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
15703 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
15704 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
15705 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
15706 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
15707 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
15708 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
15709 one of my machines like this:</p>
15710
15711 <pre>
15712 loaded modules:
15713 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
15714 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
15715 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
15716 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
15717 10de:03ec pata_amd
15718 10de:03f6 sata_nv
15719 1022:1103 k8temp
15720 109e:036e bttv
15721 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
15722 11ab:4364 sky2
15723 </pre>
15724
15725 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
15726 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
15727
15728 <pre>
15729 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
15730     echo loaded pci modules:
15731     (
15732         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
15733         for address in * ; do
15734             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15735                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15736                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15737                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15738                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
15739                     echo "$id $module"
15740                 fi
15741             fi
15742         done
15743     )
15744     echo
15745 fi
15746 </pre>
15747
15748 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
15749 mappings:</p>
15750
15751 <pre>
15752 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
15753     echo loaded usb modules:
15754     (
15755         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
15756         for address in * ; do
15757             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15758                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15759                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15760                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15761                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
15762                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
15763                         echo "$id $module"
15764                     fi
15765                 fi
15766             fi
15767         done
15768     )
15769     echo
15770 fi
15771 </pre>
15772
15773 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
15774 well.</p>
15775
15776       </div>
15777       <div class="tags">
15778
15779
15780         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>.
15781
15782
15783       </div>
15784     </div>
15785     <div class="padding"></div>
15786
15787     <div class="entry">
15788       <div class="title">
15789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
15790       </div>
15791       <div class="date">
15792         16th January 2011
15793       </div>
15794       <div class="body">
15795         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
15796 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
15797 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
15798 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
15799 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
15800 the Wikipedia article on
15801 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
15802 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
15803 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
15804 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
15805 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
15806 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
15807 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
15808 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
15809 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
15810 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
15811 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
15812 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
15813
15814 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
15815 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
15816 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
15817 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
15818 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
15819 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
15820 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
15821 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
15822 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
15823 from last week</a>.</p>
15824
15825 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
15826 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
15827 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
15828 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
15829 was without royalties and license terms, check out
15830 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15831 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
15832
15833 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
15834 available from
15835 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
15836 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
15837 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
15838
15839 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
15840 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
15841 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
15842 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
15843
15844       </div>
15845       <div class="tags">
15846
15847
15848         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15849
15850
15851       </div>
15852     </div>
15853     <div class="padding"></div>
15854
15855     <div class="entry">
15856       <div class="title">
15857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
15858       </div>
15859       <div class="date">
15860         12th January 2011
15861       </div>
15862       <div class="body">
15863         <p>Today I discovered
15864 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
15865 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
15866 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
15867 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
15868 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
15869 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
15870 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
15871 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15872 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
15873 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
15874 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
15875 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
15876 on the Google announcement is available from
15877 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
15878 A good read. :)</p>
15879
15880 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
15881 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
15882 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
15883 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
15884 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
15885 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
15886 browsers support H.264, and others support
15887 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
15888 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
15889 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
15890 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
15891 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
15892 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
15893 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
15894 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
15895
15896 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
15897 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
15898 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
15899 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
15900 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
15901 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
15902 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
15903
15904 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
15905 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
15906 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
15907 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
15908 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
15909 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
15910 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
15911
15912 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
15913 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
15914 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
15915 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
15916 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
15917 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
15918 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
15919
15920 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
15921 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
15922 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
15923 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
15924 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
15925 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
15926 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
15927 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
15928 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
15929 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
15930 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
15931 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
15932 I guess time will tell.</p>
15933
15934 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
15935 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
15936 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
15937
15938       </div>
15939       <div class="tags">
15940
15941
15942         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15943
15944
15945       </div>
15946     </div>
15947     <div class="padding"></div>
15948
15949     <div class="entry">
15950       <div class="title">
15951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
15952       </div>
15953       <div class="date">
15954         30th December 2010
15955       </div>
15956       <div class="body">
15957         <p>After trying to
15958 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
15959 Ogg Theora</a> to
15960 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
15961 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
15962 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
15963 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
15964 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
15965 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
15966 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
15967
15968 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
15969 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
15970 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
15971 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
15972 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
15973 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
15974 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
15975
15976 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
15977 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
15978
15979       </div>
15980       <div class="tags">
15981
15982
15983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
15984
15985
15986       </div>
15987     </div>
15988     <div class="padding"></div>
15989
15990     <div class="entry">
15991       <div class="title">
15992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
15993       </div>
15994       <div class="date">
15995         27th December 2010
15996       </div>
15997       <div class="body">
15998         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
15999 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
16000 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
16001 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
16002 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
16003 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
16004 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
16005 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
16006
16007 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
16008 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
16009 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
16010 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
16011 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
16012 page</a>.</p>
16013
16014 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
16015 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
16016 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
16017 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
16018 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
16019 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
16020 specification on equal terms.</p>
16021
16022 <blockquote>
16023
16024 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
16025 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
16026 open standard:</p>
16027
16028 <ul>
16029
16030 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16031 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16032 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
16033 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
16034
16035 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16036 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
16037 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
16038 nominal fee.</li>
16039
16040 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
16041 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
16042 free basis.</li>
16043
16044 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16045
16046 </ul>
16047 </blockquote>
16048
16049 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
16050 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
16051 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
16052 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
16053 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
16054 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
16055 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
16056
16057 <blockquote>
16058
16059 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
16060
16061 <ol>
16062
16063 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
16064 tilgængelig.</li>
16065
16066 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
16067 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
16068
16069 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
16070 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
16071
16072 </ol>
16073
16074 </blockquote>
16075
16076 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
16077 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
16078
16079 <blockquote>
16080
16081 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
16082
16083 <ol>
16084
16085 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
16086 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
16087
16088 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
16089 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
16090 Standard themselves;</li>
16091
16092 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
16093 any party or in any business model;</li>
16094
16095 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
16096 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
16097 parties;</li>
16098
16099 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
16100 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
16101 parties.</li>
16102
16103 </ol>
16104
16105 </blockquote>
16106
16107 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
16108 its
16109 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
16110 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
16111
16112 <blockquote>
16113 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
16114
16115 <ul>
16116
16117 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
16118   democratic:
16119
16120          <ul>
16121
16122          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
16123             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
16124             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
16125             and managed.</li>
16126
16127          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
16128             method, can be changed through input from all
16129             participants.</li>
16130
16131          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
16132             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
16133
16134          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
16135             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
16136
16137          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
16138             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
16139             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
16140
16141          </ul>
16142
16143 </li>
16144
16145 </ul>
16146
16147 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
16148 <ul>
16149
16150 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
16151   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
16152   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
16153   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
16154   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
16155
16156 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
16157   a technical or economic barriers</li>
16158
16159 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
16160   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
16161   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
16162   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
16163   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
16164   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
16165   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
16166   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
16167   intended to function.</li>
16168
16169 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
16170   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
16171   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
16172
16173 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
16174   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
16175   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
16176   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
16177   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
16178   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
16179   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
16180   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
16181
16182       <ul>
16183
16184       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
16185         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
16186         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
16187
16188       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
16189         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
16190         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
16191         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
16192
16193       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
16194         licensor</li>
16195
16196       </ul>
16197 </li>
16198
16199 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
16200   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
16201   or restricted licensing terms</li>
16202
16203 </ul>
16204
16205 </blockquote>
16206
16207 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
16208 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
16209 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
16210 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
16211 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
16212 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
16213 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
16214 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
16215 Standards.</p>
16216
16217       </div>
16218       <div class="tags">
16219
16220
16221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
16222
16223
16224       </div>
16225     </div>
16226     <div class="padding"></div>
16227
16228     <div class="entry">
16229       <div class="title">
16230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
16231       </div>
16232       <div class="date">
16233         25th December 2010
16234       </div>
16235       <div class="body">
16236         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
16237 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
16238
16239 <blockquote>
16240
16241 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
16242 as follows:</p>
16243
16244 <ol>
16245
16246 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
16247 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
16248 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
16249
16250 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
16251 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
16252 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
16253 parties.</li>
16254
16255 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
16256 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
16257 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
16258
16259 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
16260 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
16261
16262 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
16263
16264 </ol>
16265
16266 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
16267 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
16268 products based on the standard.</p>
16269 </blockquote>
16270
16271 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
16272 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
16273 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
16274 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
16275 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
16276 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
16277 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
16278 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
16279
16280 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
16281
16282 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
16283 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
16284 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
16285 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
16286 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
16287 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
16288 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
16289 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
16290 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
16291 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
16292 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
16293 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
16294 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
16295 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
16296
16297 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
16298
16299 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
16300 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
16301 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
16302 documentation indicating this.</p>
16303
16304 <p>According to
16305 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
16306 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
16307 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
16308 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
16309 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
16310 report is correct.</p>
16311
16312 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
16313
16314 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
16315 container format</a> and both the
16316 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
16317 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
16318 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
16319
16320 <blockquote>
16321
16322 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
16323 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
16324 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
16325 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
16326 specification compliance.
16327
16328 </blockquote>
16329
16330 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
16331 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
16332 this is the term:<p>
16333
16334 <blockquote>
16335
16336 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
16337 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
16338 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
16339 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
16340 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
16341 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
16342 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
16343 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
16344 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
16345 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
16346 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
16347 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
16348
16349 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
16350 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
16351 </blockquote>
16352
16353 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
16354 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
16355 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
16356 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
16357 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
16358
16359 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
16360
16361 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
16362 Theora format.
16363 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
16364 and
16365 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
16366 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
16367 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
16368 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
16369 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
16370 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
16371 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
16372 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
16373
16374 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
16375
16376 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
16377
16378 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16379
16380 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
16381 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
16382 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
16383 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
16384 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
16385 this.</p>
16386
16387 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
16388 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
16389
16390       </div>
16391       <div class="tags">
16392
16393
16394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16395
16396
16397       </div>
16398     </div>
16399     <div class="padding"></div>
16400
16401     <div class="entry">
16402       <div class="title">
16403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
16404       </div>
16405       <div class="date">
16406         25th December 2010
16407       </div>
16408       <div class="body">
16409         <p>A few days ago
16410 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
16411 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
16412 2.0 of
16413 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
16414 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
16415 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
16416 Nothing very surprising there, given
16417 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
16418 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
16419 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
16420 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
16421 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
16422 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
16423 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
16424 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
16425 standard definition from its content.</p>
16426
16427 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
16428 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
16429 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
16430 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
16431 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
16432 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
16433 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
16434 background information about that story is available in
16435 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
16436 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
16437
16438 <blockquote>
16439 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
16440 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
16441 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
16442
16443 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
16444
16445 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
16446
16447 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
16448
16449 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
16450
16451 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
16452
16453 <p>
16454 <ul>
16455 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
16456 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
16457 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
16458 </ul>
16459 </p>
16460
16461 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
16462
16463 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
16464
16465 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
16466
16467 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
16468
16469 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
16470
16471
16472 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
16473 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
16474 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
16475 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
16476 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
16477 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
16478
16479 </p>
16480
16481 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
16482
16483 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
16484
16485 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
16486
16487 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
16488
16489 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
16490
16491 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
16492
16493 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
16494
16495 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
16496
16497 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
16498
16499 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
16500
16501 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
16502
16503 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
16504
16505 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
16506
16507 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
16508
16509 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
16510
16511 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
16512
16513 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
16514
16515 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
16516
16517 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
16518
16519 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
16520
16521 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
16522
16523 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
16524
16525 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
16526
16527 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
16528
16529 <p>On security:</p>
16530
16531 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
16532
16533 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
16534
16535 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
16536
16537 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
16538
16539 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
16540
16541 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
16542
16543 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
16544
16545 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
16546
16547 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
16548
16549 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
16550
16551 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
16552
16553 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
16554
16555 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
16556
16557 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
16558
16559 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
16560
16561 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
16562
16563 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
16564
16565 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
16566
16567 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
16568
16569 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
16570
16571 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
16572
16573 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
16574
16575 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
16576
16577 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
16578
16579 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
16580
16581 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
16582
16583 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
16584
16585 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
16586
16587 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
16588
16589 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
16590
16591 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
16592
16593 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
16594
16595 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
16596
16597 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
16598
16599 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
16600
16601 <p>Cordially,<br>
16602 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
16603 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
16604 </blockquote>
16605
16606       </div>
16607       <div class="tags">
16608
16609
16610         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
16611
16612
16613       </div>
16614     </div>
16615     <div class="padding"></div>
16616
16617     <div class="entry">
16618       <div class="title">
16619         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
16620       </div>
16621       <div class="date">
16622         25th December 2010
16623       </div>
16624       <div class="body">
16625         <p>Half a year ago I
16626 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
16627 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
16628 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
16629 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
16630
16631 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
16632 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
16633 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
16634 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
16635 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
16636 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
16637 got such a great test tool available.</p>
16638
16639       </div>
16640       <div class="tags">
16641
16642
16643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16644
16645
16646       </div>
16647     </div>
16648     <div class="padding"></div>
16649
16650     <div class="entry">
16651       <div class="title">
16652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
16653       </div>
16654       <div class="date">
16655         22nd December 2010
16656       </div>
16657       <div class="body">
16658         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
16659 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
16660 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
16661 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
16662 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
16663 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
16664 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
16665 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
16666 university.</p>
16667
16668 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
16669 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
16670 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
16671 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
16672 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
16673 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
16674 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
16675 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
16676
16677 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
16678 I perform on a new model.</p>
16679
16680 <ul>
16681
16682 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
16683 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
16684 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
16685
16686 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
16687 installation, X.org is working.</li>
16688
16689 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
16690 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
16691 reported by the program.</li>
16692
16693 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
16694 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
16695 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
16696 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
16697 normally test this by playing
16698 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
16699 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
16700
16701 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
16702 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16703
16704 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
16705 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16706
16707 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
16708 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
16709
16710 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
16711 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
16712 few.</li>
16713
16714 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
16715 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
16716 notice this.</li>
16717
16718 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
16719 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
16720 resume.</li>
16721
16722 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
16723 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
16724 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
16725 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
16726 not.</li>
16727
16728 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
16729 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
16730 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
16731 existence.</li>
16732
16733 </ul>
16734
16735 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
16736 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
16737 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
16738 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
16739 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
16740 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
16741 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
16742 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
16743
16744       </div>
16745       <div class="tags">
16746
16747
16748         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>.
16749
16750
16751       </div>
16752     </div>
16753     <div class="padding"></div>
16754
16755     <div class="entry">
16756       <div class="title">
16757         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
16758       </div>
16759       <div class="date">
16760         11th December 2010
16761       </div>
16762       <div class="body">
16763         <p>As I continue to explore
16764 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
16765 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
16766 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
16767
16768 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
16769 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
16770 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
16771 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
16772 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
16773 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
16774 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
16775 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
16776 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
16777 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
16778 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
16779 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
16780 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
16781 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
16782 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
16783 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
16784 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
16785 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
16786 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
16787 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
16788
16789 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
16790 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
16791 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
16792 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
16793 If the Skolelinux foundation
16794 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
16795 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
16796 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
16797 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
16798 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
16799 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
16800 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
16801 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
16802
16803 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
16804 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
16805 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
16806 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
16807 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
16808 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
16809 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
16810 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
16811 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
16812 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
16813 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
16814 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
16815 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
16816 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
16817 currencies.</p>
16818
16819 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
16820 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
16821 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
16822 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
16823 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
16824 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
16825 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
16826 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
16827 BitCoins.  Check out
16828 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
16829 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
16830 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
16831 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
16832 yet.</p>
16833
16834 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
16835 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
16836 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
16837 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
16838 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
16839
16840       </div>
16841       <div class="tags">
16842
16843
16844         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16845
16846
16847       </div>
16848     </div>
16849     <div class="padding"></div>
16850
16851     <div class="entry">
16852       <div class="title">
16853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
16854       </div>
16855       <div class="date">
16856         10th December 2010
16857       </div>
16858       <div class="body">
16859         <p>With this weeks lawless
16860 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
16861 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
16862 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
16863 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
16864 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
16865 A blog post from
16866 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
16867 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
16868 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
16869 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
16870 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
16871 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
16872 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
16873
16874 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
16875 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
16876 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
16877 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
16878 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
16879 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
16880 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
16881 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
16882 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
16883 Debian</a> soon.</p>
16884
16885 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
16886 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
16887 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
16888 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
16889 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
16890 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
16891 you can even get
16892 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
16893 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
16894 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
16895 on the current exchange rates.</p>
16896
16897 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
16898 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
16899 donations to the address
16900 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
16901
16902       </div>
16903       <div class="tags">
16904
16905
16906         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16907
16908
16909       </div>
16910     </div>
16911     <div class="padding"></div>
16912
16913     <div class="entry">
16914       <div class="title">
16915         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
16916       </div>
16917       <div class="date">
16918          9th December 2010
16919       </div>
16920       <div class="body">
16921         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
16922 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
16923 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
16924 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
16925 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
16926 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
16927 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
16928 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
16929 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
16930 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
16931 operational.</p>
16932
16933 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
16934 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
16935 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
16936 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
16937 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
16938 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
16939 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
16940
16941       </div>
16942       <div class="tags">
16943
16944
16945         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
16946
16947
16948       </div>
16949     </div>
16950     <div class="padding"></div>
16951
16952     <div class="entry">
16953       <div class="title">
16954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
16955       </div>
16956       <div class="date">
16957         29th November 2010
16958       </div>
16959       <div class="body">
16960         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16961 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
16962 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
16963 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
16964 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
16965 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16966
16967 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
16968 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
16969 will hold its
16970 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
16971 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
16972 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
16973 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
16974 vote this year.</p>
16975
16976       </div>
16977       <div class="tags">
16978
16979
16980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16981
16982
16983       </div>
16984     </div>
16985     <div class="padding"></div>
16986
16987     <div class="entry">
16988       <div class="title">
16989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
16990       </div>
16991       <div class="date">
16992         27th November 2010
16993       </div>
16994       <div class="body">
16995         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
16996 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
16997 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
16998 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
16999 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
17000 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
17001 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
17002 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
17003
17004 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
17005 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17006 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
17007 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
17008 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
17009 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
17010 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
17011 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
17012 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
17013 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
17014 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
17015
17016 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
17017 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
17018 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
17019 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
17020 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
17021 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
17022 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
17023 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
17024 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
17025 what is going on.</p>
17026
17027       </div>
17028       <div class="tags">
17029
17030
17031         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>.
17032
17033
17034       </div>
17035     </div>
17036     <div class="padding"></div>
17037
17038     <div class="entry">
17039       <div class="title">
17040         <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>
17041       </div>
17042       <div class="date">
17043         22nd November 2010
17044       </div>
17045       <div class="body">
17046         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
17047 upgrade testing of the
17048 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17049 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
17050 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
17051 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
17052
17053 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17054
17055 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17056
17057 <blockquote><p>
17058   apache2.2-bin
17059   aptdaemon
17060   baobab
17061   binfmt-support
17062   browser-plugin-gnash
17063   cheese-common
17064   cli-common
17065   cups-pk-helper
17066   dmz-cursor-theme
17067   empathy
17068   empathy-common
17069   freedesktop-sound-theme
17070   freeglut3
17071   gconf-defaults-service
17072   gdm-themes
17073   gedit-plugins
17074   geoclue
17075   geoclue-hostip
17076   geoclue-localnet
17077   geoclue-manual
17078   geoclue-yahoo
17079   gnash
17080   gnash-common
17081   gnome
17082   gnome-backgrounds
17083   gnome-cards-data
17084   gnome-codec-install
17085   gnome-core
17086   gnome-desktop-environment
17087   gnome-disk-utility
17088   gnome-screenshot
17089   gnome-search-tool
17090   gnome-session-canberra
17091   gnome-system-log
17092   gnome-themes-extras
17093   gnome-themes-more
17094   gnome-user-share
17095   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17096   gstreamer0.10-tools
17097   gtk2-engines
17098   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17099   gtk2-engines-smooth
17100   hamster-applet
17101   libapache2-mod-dnssd
17102   libapr1
17103   libaprutil1
17104   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
17105   libaprutil1-ldap
17106   libart2.0-cil
17107   libboost-date-time1.42.0
17108   libboost-python1.42.0
17109   libboost-thread1.42.0
17110   libchamplain-0.4-0
17111   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
17112   libcheese-gtk18
17113   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17114   libcryptui0
17115   libdiscid0
17116   libelf1
17117   libepc-1.0-2
17118   libepc-common
17119   libepc-ui-1.0-2
17120   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17121   libfreerdp0
17122   libgconf2.0-cil
17123   libgdata-common
17124   libgdata7
17125   libgdu-gtk0
17126   libgee2
17127   libgeoclue0
17128   libgexiv2-0
17129   libgif4
17130   libglade2.0-cil
17131   libglib2.0-cil
17132   libgmime2.4-cil
17133   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17134   libgnome2.24-cil
17135   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
17136   libgpod-common
17137   libgpod4
17138   libgtk2.0-cil
17139   libgtkglext1
17140   libgtksourceview2.0-common
17141   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17142   libmono-addins0.2-cil
17143   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
17144   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17145   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
17146   libmono-posix2.0-cil
17147   libmono-security2.0-cil
17148   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17149   libmono-system2.0-cil
17150   libmtp8
17151   libmusicbrainz3-6
17152   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
17153   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
17154   libopal3.6.8
17155   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
17156   libpt2.6.7
17157   libpython2.6
17158   librpm1
17159   librpmio1
17160   libsdl1.2debian
17161   libsrtp0
17162   libssh-4
17163   libtelepathy-farsight0
17164   libtelepathy-glib0
17165   libtidy-0.99-0
17166   media-player-info
17167   mesa-utils
17168   mono-2.0-gac
17169   mono-gac
17170   mono-runtime
17171   nautilus-sendto
17172   nautilus-sendto-empathy
17173   p7zip-full
17174   pkg-config
17175   python-aptdaemon
17176   python-aptdaemon-gtk
17177   python-axiom
17178   python-beautifulsoup
17179   python-bugbuddy
17180   python-clientform
17181   python-coherence
17182   python-configobj
17183   python-crypto
17184   python-cupshelpers
17185   python-elementtree
17186   python-epsilon
17187   python-evolution
17188   python-feedparser
17189   python-gdata
17190   python-gdbm
17191   python-gst0.10
17192   python-gtkglext1
17193   python-gtksourceview2
17194   python-httplib2
17195   python-louie
17196   python-mako
17197   python-markupsafe
17198   python-mechanize
17199   python-nevow
17200   python-notify
17201   python-opengl
17202   python-openssl
17203   python-pam
17204   python-pkg-resources
17205   python-pyasn1
17206   python-pysqlite2
17207   python-rdflib
17208   python-serial
17209   python-tagpy
17210   python-twisted-bin
17211   python-twisted-conch
17212   python-twisted-core
17213   python-twisted-web
17214   python-utidylib
17215   python-webkit
17216   python-xdg
17217   python-zope.interface
17218   remmina
17219   remmina-plugin-data
17220   remmina-plugin-rdp
17221   remmina-plugin-vnc
17222   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17223   rhythmbox-plugins
17224   rpm-common
17225   rpm2cpio
17226   seahorse-plugins
17227   shotwell
17228   software-center
17229   system-config-printer-udev
17230   telepathy-gabble
17231   telepathy-mission-control-5
17232   telepathy-salut
17233   tomboy
17234   totem
17235   totem-coherence
17236   totem-mozilla
17237   totem-plugins
17238   transmission-common
17239   xdg-user-dirs
17240   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
17241   xserver-xephyr
17242 </p></blockquote>
17243
17244 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17245
17246 <blockquote><p>
17247   cheese
17248   ekiga
17249   eog
17250   epiphany-extensions
17251   evolution-exchange
17252   fast-user-switch-applet
17253   file-roller
17254   gcalctool
17255   gconf-editor
17256   gdm
17257   gedit
17258   gedit-common
17259   gnome-games
17260   gnome-games-data
17261   gnome-nettool
17262   gnome-system-tools
17263   gnome-themes
17264   gnuchess
17265   gucharmap
17266   guile-1.8-libs
17267   libavahi-ui0
17268   libdmx1
17269   libgalago3
17270   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17271   libgtksourceview2.0-0
17272   liblircclient0
17273   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
17274   libspeexdsp1
17275   libsvga1
17276   rhythmbox
17277   seahorse
17278   sound-juicer
17279   system-config-printer
17280   totem-common
17281   transmission-gtk
17282   vinagre
17283   vino
17284 </p></blockquote>
17285
17286 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17287
17288 <blockquote><p>
17289   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17290 </p></blockquote>
17291
17292 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17293
17294 <blockquote><p>
17295 [nothing]
17296 </p></blockquote>
17297
17298 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17299
17300 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17301
17302 <blockquote><p>
17303   ksmserver
17304 </p></blockquote>
17305
17306 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17307
17308 <blockquote><p>
17309   kwin
17310   network-manager-kde
17311 </p></blockquote>
17312
17313 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17314
17315 <blockquote><p>
17316   arts
17317   dolphin
17318   freespacenotifier
17319   google-gadgets-gst
17320   google-gadgets-xul
17321   kappfinder
17322   kcalc
17323   kcharselect
17324   kde-core
17325   kde-plasma-desktop
17326   kde-standard
17327   kde-window-manager
17328   kdeartwork
17329   kdeartwork-emoticons
17330   kdeartwork-style
17331   kdeartwork-theme-icon
17332   kdebase
17333   kdebase-apps
17334   kdebase-workspace
17335   kdebase-workspace-bin
17336   kdebase-workspace-data
17337   kdeeject
17338   kdelibs
17339   kdeplasma-addons
17340   kdeutils
17341   kdewallpapers
17342   kdf
17343   kfloppy
17344   kgpg
17345   khelpcenter4
17346   kinfocenter
17347   konq-plugins-l10n
17348   konqueror-nsplugins
17349   kscreensaver
17350   kscreensaver-xsavers
17351   ktimer
17352   kwrite
17353   libgle3
17354   libkde4-ruby1.8
17355   libkonq5
17356   libkonq5-templates
17357   libnetpbm10
17358   libplasma-ruby
17359   libplasma-ruby1.8
17360   libqt4-ruby1.8
17361   marble-data
17362   marble-plugins
17363   netpbm
17364   nuvola-icon-theme
17365   plasma-dataengines-workspace
17366   plasma-desktop
17367   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
17368   plasma-runners-addons
17369   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
17370   plasma-scriptengine-python
17371   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
17372   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
17373   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
17374   plasma-scriptengines
17375   plasma-wallpapers-addons
17376   plasma-widget-folderview
17377   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17378   ruby
17379   sweeper
17380   update-notifier-kde
17381   xscreensaver-data-extra
17382   xscreensaver-gl
17383   xscreensaver-gl-extra
17384   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17385 </p></blockquote>
17386
17387 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17388
17389 <blockquote><p>
17390   ark
17391   google-gadgets-common
17392   google-gadgets-qt
17393   htdig
17394   kate
17395   kdebase-bin
17396   kdebase-data
17397   kdepasswd
17398   kfind
17399   klipper
17400   konq-plugins
17401   konqueror
17402   ksysguard
17403   ksysguardd
17404   libarchive1
17405   libcln6
17406   libeet1
17407   libeina-svn-06
17408   libggadget-1.0-0b
17409   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
17410   libgps19
17411   libkdecorations4
17412   libkephal4
17413   libkonq4
17414   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
17415   libkscreensaver5
17416   libksgrd4
17417   libksignalplotter4
17418   libkunitconversion4
17419   libkwineffects1a
17420   libmarblewidget4
17421   libntrack-qt4-1
17422   libntrack0
17423   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
17424   libplasmaclock4a
17425   libplasmagenericshell4
17426   libprocesscore4a
17427   libprocessui4a
17428   libqalculate5
17429   libqedje0a
17430   libqtruby4shared2
17431   libqzion0a
17432   libruby1.8
17433   libscim8c2a
17434   libsmokekdecore4-3
17435   libsmokekdeui4-3
17436   libsmokekfile3
17437   libsmokekhtml3
17438   libsmokekio3
17439   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
17440   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
17441   libsmokekparts3
17442   libsmokektexteditor3
17443   libsmokekutils3
17444   libsmokenepomuk3
17445   libsmokephonon3
17446   libsmokeplasma3
17447   libsmokeqtcore4-3
17448   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
17449   libsmokeqtgui4-3
17450   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
17451   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
17452   libsmokeqtscript4-3
17453   libsmokeqtsql4-3
17454   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
17455   libsmokeqttest4-3
17456   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
17457   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
17458   libsmokeqtxml4-3
17459   libsmokesolid3
17460   libsmokesoprano3
17461   libtaskmanager4a
17462   libtidy-0.99-0
17463   libweather-ion4a
17464   libxklavier16
17465   libxxf86misc1
17466   okteta
17467   oxygencursors
17468   plasma-dataengines-addons
17469   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
17470   plasma-widget-lancelot
17471   plasma-widgets-addons
17472   plasma-widgets-workspace
17473   polkit-kde-1
17474   ruby1.8
17475   systemsettings
17476   update-notifier-common
17477 </p></blockquote>
17478
17479 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
17480 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
17481 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
17482 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
17483
17484       </div>
17485       <div class="tags">
17486
17487
17488         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>.
17489
17490
17491       </div>
17492     </div>
17493     <div class="padding"></div>
17494
17495     <div class="entry">
17496       <div class="title">
17497         <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>
17498       </div>
17499       <div class="date">
17500         22nd November 2010
17501       </div>
17502       <div class="body">
17503         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
17504 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
17505 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
17506 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
17507 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
17508 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
17509 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
17510 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
17511 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
17512
17513 <p>I found
17514 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
17515 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
17516 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
17517 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
17518 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
17519 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
17520
17521 <pre>
17522 #!/bin/sh
17523
17524 # Based on
17525 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
17526
17527 set -e
17528 set -x
17529
17530 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
17531     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
17532     exit 1
17533 else
17534     host="$1"
17535 fi
17536
17537 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
17538     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
17539     exit 1
17540 fi
17541
17542 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
17543 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17544 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
17545 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
17546
17547 img=$host.img
17548 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
17549 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
17550
17551 parted $img mklabel msdos
17552 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
17553 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
17554 parted $img set 1 boot on
17555
17556 modprobe dm-mod
17557 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
17558 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
17559
17560 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
17561 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
17562 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
17563
17564 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
17565 losetup -d /dev/loop0
17566 </pre>
17567
17568 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
17569 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
17570
17571 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
17572 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
17573 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
17574 seem to work just fine.</p>
17575
17576       </div>
17577       <div class="tags">
17578
17579
17580         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>.
17581
17582
17583       </div>
17584     </div>
17585     <div class="padding"></div>
17586
17587     <div class="entry">
17588       <div class="title">
17589         <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>
17590       </div>
17591       <div class="date">
17592         20th November 2010
17593       </div>
17594       <div class="body">
17595         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
17596 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
17597 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
17598 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
17599
17600 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
17601 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
17602 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
17603
17604 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
17605
17606 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17607
17608 <blockquote><p>
17609   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
17610   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
17611   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
17612   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
17613   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
17614   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
17615   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
17616   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
17617   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
17618   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
17619   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
17620   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
17621   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
17622   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
17623   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
17624   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
17625   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
17626   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
17627   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
17628   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
17629   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
17630   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
17631   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
17632   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
17633   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
17634   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
17635   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
17636   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
17637   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
17638   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
17639   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
17640   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17641   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
17642   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
17643   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
17644   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
17645   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
17646   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
17647   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
17648   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
17649   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
17650   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
17651   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
17652   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
17653   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
17654   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
17655   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
17656   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
17657   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
17658   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
17659   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
17660   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
17661   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
17662   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
17663   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
17664   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
17665   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
17666   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
17667   zip
17668 </p></blockquote>
17669
17670 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
17671
17672 <blockquote><p>
17673   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
17674   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
17675   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
17676   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
17677   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
17678   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
17679   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
17680   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
17681   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
17682   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
17683   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
17684   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17685   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17686   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17687   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17688   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
17689   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17690   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
17691   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
17692   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
17693   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
17694   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
17695   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17696   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
17697   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
17698   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
17699   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
17700   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
17701   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
17702 </p></blockquote>
17703
17704 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17705
17706 <blockquote><p>
17707   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17708 </p></blockquote>
17709
17710 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17711
17712 <blockquote><p>
17713 [nothing]
17714 </p></blockquote>
17715
17716 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17717
17718 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17719
17720 <blockquote><p>
17721   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
17722   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17723   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
17724   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
17725   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
17726   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
17727   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17728   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
17729   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
17730   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17731   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
17732   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
17733   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
17734   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
17735   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
17736   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
17737   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
17738   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
17739   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
17740   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
17741   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
17742   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
17743   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
17744   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
17745   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
17746   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
17747   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
17748   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
17749   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
17750   ttf-sazanami-gothic
17751 </p></blockquote>
17752
17753 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17754
17755 <blockquote><p>
17756   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
17757   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
17758   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
17759   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
17760   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
17761   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
17762   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
17763   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
17764   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
17765   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
17766   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
17767   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
17768   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
17769   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
17770   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17771   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17772   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
17773   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
17774   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17775   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
17776   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17777   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
17778   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17779   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17780   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
17781   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
17782   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
17783   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
17784   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
17785   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
17786   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
17787   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
17788   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
17789 </p></blockquote>
17790
17791 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17792
17793 <blockquote><p>
17794   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
17795   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
17796   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
17797   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
17798   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17799   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
17800   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17801 </p></blockquote>
17802
17803 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17804
17805 <blockquote><p>
17806   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
17807 </p></blockquote>
17808
17809       </div>
17810       <div class="tags">
17811
17812
17813         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>.
17814
17815
17816       </div>
17817     </div>
17818     <div class="padding"></div>
17819
17820     <div class="entry">
17821       <div class="title">
17822         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
17823       </div>
17824       <div class="date">
17825         20th November 2010
17826       </div>
17827       <div class="body">
17828         <p>Answering
17829 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
17830 call from the Gnash project</a> for
17831 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
17832 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
17833 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
17834 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
17835 releases out more often.</p>
17836
17837 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
17838 I have considered setting up a <a
17839 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
17840 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
17841 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
17842 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
17843 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
17844 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
17845 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
17846 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
17847 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
17848 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
17849 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
17850 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
17851
17852       </div>
17853       <div class="tags">
17854
17855
17856         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>.
17857
17858
17859       </div>
17860     </div>
17861     <div class="padding"></div>
17862
17863     <div class="entry">
17864       <div class="title">
17865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
17866       </div>
17867       <div class="date">
17868          9th November 2010
17869       </div>
17870       <div class="body">
17871         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
17872
17873 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
17874 3D linked in from
17875 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
17876 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
17877
17878       </div>
17879       <div class="tags">
17880
17881
17882         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>.
17883
17884
17885       </div>
17886     </div>
17887     <div class="padding"></div>
17888
17889     <div class="entry">
17890       <div class="title">
17891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
17892       </div>
17893       <div class="date">
17894          7th November 2010
17895       </div>
17896       <div class="body">
17897         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
17898 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
17899 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
17900 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
17901 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
17902 working using this DVD.</p>
17903
17904 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
17905 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
17906 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
17907 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
17908 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
17909 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
17910 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
17911
17912 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
17913 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
17914 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
17915 Debian archive.</p>
17916
17917 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
17918 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
17919 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
17920 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
17921 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
17922 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
17923 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
17924 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
17925 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
17926 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
17927 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
17928 free X driver should work.</p>
17929
17930 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
17931 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
17932 DVD more useful again.</p>
17933
17934       </div>
17935       <div class="tags">
17936
17937
17938         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17939
17940
17941       </div>
17942     </div>
17943     <div class="padding"></div>
17944
17945     <div class="entry">
17946       <div class="title">
17947         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
17948       </div>
17949       <div class="date">
17950         24th October 2010
17951       </div>
17952       <div class="body">
17953         <p>Some updates.</p>
17954
17955 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
17956 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
17957 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
17958 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
17959 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
17960 :)</p>
17961
17962 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
17963 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
17964 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
17965 It is called
17966 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
17967 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
17968 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
17969 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
17970 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
17971 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
17972
17973 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
17974 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
17975 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
17976 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
17977 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
17978 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
17979 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
17980 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
17981 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
17982 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
17983
17984       </div>
17985       <div class="tags">
17986
17987
17988         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>.
17989
17990
17991       </div>
17992     </div>
17993     <div class="padding"></div>
17994
17995     <div class="entry">
17996       <div class="title">
17997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
17998       </div>
17999       <div class="date">
18000         19th October 2010
18001       </div>
18002       <div class="body">
18003         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
18004 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
18005 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
18006 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
18007 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
18008 AVM2 flash files.</p>
18009
18010 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
18011 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
18012 following text:</P>
18013
18014 <p><blockquote>
18015
18016   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
18017   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
18018
18019   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
18020
18021   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
18022
18023   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
18024   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
18025   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
18026   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
18027   days. The project web page is available from
18028   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
18029   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
18030   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
18031
18032   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
18033   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
18034   to get this to happen.</p>
18035
18036   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
18037   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
18038
18039 </blockquote></p>
18040
18041 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
18042 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
18043 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
18044 :)</p>
18045
18046       </div>
18047       <div class="tags">
18048
18049
18050         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
18051
18052
18053       </div>
18054     </div>
18055     <div class="padding"></div>
18056
18057     <div class="entry">
18058       <div class="title">
18059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
18060       </div>
18061       <div class="date">
18062          9th October 2010
18063       </div>
18064       <div class="body">
18065         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
18066 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
18067 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
18068 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
18069 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
18070 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
18071 robots.</p>
18072
18073 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
18074 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
18075 a few less important features too.</p>
18076
18077 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
18078 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
18079 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
18080 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
18081
18082 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
18083 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
18084 source or binary package:</p>
18085
18086 <p><ul>
18087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
18088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
18089 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
18090 </ul></p>
18091
18092 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
18093 please let me know.</p>
18094
18095       </div>
18096       <div class="tags">
18097
18098
18099         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
18100
18101
18102       </div>
18103     </div>
18104     <div class="padding"></div>
18105
18106     <div class="entry">
18107       <div class="title">
18108         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
18109       </div>
18110       <div class="date">
18111          3rd October 2010
18112       </div>
18113       <div class="body">
18114         <p><ul>
18115
18116 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
18117 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
18118
18119 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
18120 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
18121 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
18122
18123 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
18124 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
18125 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
18126 simple setup.
18127
18128 </ul></p>
18129
18130       </div>
18131       <div class="tags">
18132
18133
18134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18135
18136
18137       </div>
18138     </div>
18139     <div class="padding"></div>
18140
18141     <div class="entry">
18142       <div class="title">
18143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
18144       </div>
18145       <div class="date">
18146          9th September 2010
18147       </div>
18148       <div class="body">
18149         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
18150 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
18151 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
18152 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
18153 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
18154 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
18155 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
18156 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
18157 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
18158
18159 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
18160 written:</p>
18161
18162 <blockquote>
18163 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
18164 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
18165 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
18166 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
18167 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
18168
18169 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
18170 standard.</p>
18171 </blockquote>
18172
18173 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
18174 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
18175 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
18176 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
18177
18178 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
18179 read
18180 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
18181 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
18182 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
18183 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
18184 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
18185 the issue.  The solution is to support the
18186 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
18187 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
18188 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
18189
18190       </div>
18191       <div class="tags">
18192
18193
18194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
18195
18196
18197       </div>
18198     </div>
18199     <div class="padding"></div>
18200
18201     <div class="entry">
18202       <div class="title">
18203         <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>
18204       </div>
18205       <div class="date">
18206          4th September 2010
18207       </div>
18208       <div class="body">
18209         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
18210 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
18211 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
18212 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
18213 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
18214 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
18215 installed.</p>
18216
18217 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
18218 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
18219 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
18220 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
18221 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18222 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
18223 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
18224 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
18225 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
18226
18227 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
18228 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
18229 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
18230 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
18231 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
18232 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
18233 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
18234 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
18235 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
18236 pages they want to visit.</p>
18237
18238 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
18239 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
18240 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
18241 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
18242 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
18243 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
18244 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
18245 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
18246 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
18247 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
18248 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
18249
18250       </div>
18251       <div class="tags">
18252
18253
18254         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>.
18255
18256
18257       </div>
18258     </div>
18259     <div class="padding"></div>
18260
18261     <div class="entry">
18262       <div class="title">
18263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
18264       </div>
18265       <div class="date">
18266          1st September 2010
18267       </div>
18268       <div class="body">
18269         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
18270 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
18271 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
18272 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
18273 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
18274 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
18275 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
18276 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
18277 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
18278 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
18279 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
18280 drive around.</p>
18281
18282 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
18283 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
18284
18285 <p><pre>
18286 use Spykee;
18287 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
18288 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
18289 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
18290 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
18291 $spykee->left();
18292 sleep 2;
18293 $spykee->right();
18294 sleep 2;
18295 $spykee->forward();
18296 sleep 2;
18297 $spykee->back();
18298 sleep 2;
18299 $spykee->stop();
18300 </pre></p>
18301
18302 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
18303 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
18304 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
18305 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
18306 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
18307 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
18308 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
18309 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
18310 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
18311 going. :).</p>
18312
18313 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
18314 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
18315 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
18316 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
18317
18318       </div>
18319       <div class="tags">
18320
18321
18322         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
18323
18324
18325       </div>
18326     </div>
18327     <div class="padding"></div>
18328
18329     <div class="entry">
18330       <div class="title">
18331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
18332       </div>
18333       <div class="date">
18334         30th August 2010
18335       </div>
18336       <div class="body">
18337         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
18338 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
18339 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
18340 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
18341 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
18342 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
18343 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
18344
18345 <pre>
18346 % ln foo bar
18347 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
18348 %
18349 </pre>
18350
18351 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
18352 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
18353 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
18354 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
18355 nevertheless. :)</p>
18356
18357 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
18358 git from
18359 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
18360
18361       </div>
18362       <div class="tags">
18363
18364
18365         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18366
18367
18368       </div>
18369     </div>
18370     <div class="padding"></div>
18371
18372     <div class="entry">
18373       <div class="title">
18374         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
18375       </div>
18376       <div class="date">
18377         26th August 2010
18378       </div>
18379       <div class="body">
18380         <p>My file system sematics program
18381 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
18382 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
18383 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
18384 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
18385 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
18386 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
18387 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
18388 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
18389 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
18390 script:</p>
18391
18392 <pre>
18393 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
18394   mode_t retval = 0;
18395   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
18396   if (-1 != fd) {
18397     unlink(name);
18398     struct stat statbuf;
18399     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
18400       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
18401     }
18402     close(fd);
18403   }
18404   return retval;
18405 }
18406
18407 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
18408 int test_umask(void) {
18409   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
18410
18411   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
18412   mode_t newmode;
18413   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18414     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
18415            newmode);
18416   }
18417   umask(007);
18418   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
18419     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
18420            newmode);
18421   }
18422
18423   umask (orig_umask);
18424   return 0;
18425 }
18426
18427 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18428   [...]
18429   test_umask();
18430   return 0;
18431 }
18432 </pre>
18433
18434 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
18435
18436 <pre>
18437 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18438 info: testing symlink creation
18439 info: testing subdirectory creation
18440 info: testing fcntl locking
18441   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18442   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18443   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18444   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18445   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18446   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18447 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18448 </pre>
18449
18450 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
18451 result:</p>
18452
18453 <pre>
18454 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18455 info: testing symlink creation
18456 info: testing subdirectory creation
18457 info: testing fcntl locking
18458   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18459   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18460   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18461   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18462   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18463   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18464 info: testing umask effect on file creation
18465   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
18466   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
18467 </pre>
18468
18469 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
18470 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
18471 directory.</p>
18472
18473 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
18474 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
18475
18476 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18477 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18478 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18479
18480       </div>
18481       <div class="tags">
18482
18483
18484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18485
18486
18487       </div>
18488     </div>
18489     <div class="padding"></div>
18490
18491     <div class="entry">
18492       <div class="title">
18493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
18494       </div>
18495       <div class="date">
18496         15th August 2010
18497       </div>
18498       <div class="body">
18499         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
18500 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
18501 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
18502 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
18503 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
18504 long time.</p>
18505
18506       </div>
18507       <div class="tags">
18508
18509
18510         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
18511
18512
18513       </div>
18514     </div>
18515     <div class="padding"></div>
18516
18517     <div class="entry">
18518       <div class="title">
18519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
18520       </div>
18521       <div class="date">
18522          9th August 2010
18523       </div>
18524       <div class="body">
18525         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
18526 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
18527 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
18528 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
18529 generated configuration.</p>
18530
18531 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
18532 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
18533 without any manual configuration.</p>
18534
18535 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
18536 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
18537 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
18538 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
18539 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
18540 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
18541 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
18542 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
18543 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
18544 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
18545 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
18546 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
18547 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
18548 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
18549 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
18550 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
18551 use.</p>
18552
18553 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
18554 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
18555 working properly out of the box:</p>
18556
18557 <ul>
18558 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
18559 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
18560 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
18561 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
18562 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
18563 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
18564 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
18565 </ul>
18566
18567 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
18568
18569 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
18570 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
18571 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
18572 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
18573 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
18574
18575 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
18576 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
18577 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
18578 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
18579 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
18580 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
18581 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
18582 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
18583
18584 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
18585 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
18586 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
18587 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
18588 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
18589 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
18590 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
18591 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
18592 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
18593 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
18594 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
18595 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18596 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
18597 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
18598 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
18599 current DNS domain is used.</p>
18600
18601 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
18602 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
18603 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
18604 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
18605 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
18606 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
18607 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
18608 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
18609 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
18610 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
18611 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
18612 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
18613 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
18614
18615 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
18616 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
18617 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
18618 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
18619 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
18620 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
18621 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
18622 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
18623 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
18624 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
18625 do for now. :)</p>
18626
18627 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
18628 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
18629 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
18630 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
18631 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
18632 yet.</p>
18633
18634 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18635 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18636
18637 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
18638 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
18639 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
18640 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
18641
18642       </div>
18643       <div class="tags">
18644
18645
18646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18647
18648
18649       </div>
18650     </div>
18651     <div class="padding"></div>
18652
18653     <div class="entry">
18654       <div class="title">
18655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
18656       </div>
18657       <div class="date">
18658          8th August 2010
18659       </div>
18660       <div class="body">
18661         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
18662 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
18663 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
18664 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
18665 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
18666 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
18667 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
18668
18669 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
18670 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
18671 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
18672 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
18673 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
18674 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
18675 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
18676
18677 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
18678 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
18679 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
18680 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
18681 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
18682
18683 <pre>
18684 /*
18685  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
18686  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
18687  * directory.
18688  * License: GPL v2 or later
18689  *
18690  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
18691  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
18692 */
18693
18694 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
18695 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
18696 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
18697
18698 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
18699
18700 #include &lt;errno.h>
18701 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
18702 #include &lt;stdio.h>
18703 #include &lt;string.h>
18704 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
18705 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
18706 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
18707 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
18708 #include &lt;unistd.h>
18709
18710 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18711 /*
18712  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
18713  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
18714  * below.
18715  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
18716  */
18717 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
18718 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
18719   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
18720 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
18721   char *zErrMsg;
18722   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18723   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
18724   unlink(name);
18725   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
18726   if( rc ){
18727     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
18728     sqlite3_close(db);
18729     return -1;
18730   }
18731
18732   /* create tables */
18733   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
18734   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
18735     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
18736     sqlite3_close(db);
18737     return -1;
18738   }
18739   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
18740   sqlite3_close(db);
18741   return 0;
18742 }
18743 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18744
18745 /*
18746  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
18747  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
18748  * done in the sqlite3 library.
18749  * See also
18750  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
18751  * POSIX specification
18752  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
18753  */
18754 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
18755   struct flock fl;
18756   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18757   unlink(name);
18758   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
18759   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
18760
18761   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
18762   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
18763   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18764   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18765   fl.l_len    = 1;
18766   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18767   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18768
18769   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18770   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18771   fl.l_len    = 510;
18772   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18773   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18774
18775   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18776   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18777   fl.l_len    = 1;
18778   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18779   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18780
18781   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18782   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18783   fl.l_len    = 1;
18784   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
18785   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18786
18787   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18788   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18789   fl.l_len    = 510;
18790   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18791
18792   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
18793   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18794   fl.l_len    = 2;
18795   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18796   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18797
18798   close(fd);
18799   return 0;
18800 }
18801
18802 /*
18803  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
18804  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
18805  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
18806  * slowing down file operations.
18807  */
18808 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
18809 #define LEVELS 5
18810   char *path = strdup("test");
18811   char *dirs[LEVELS];
18812   int level;
18813   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
18814   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
18815     char *newpath = NULL;
18816     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
18817       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
18818              path, strerror(errno));
18819       break;
18820     }
18821     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
18822     free(path);
18823     path = newpath;
18824   }
18825   return 0;
18826 }
18827
18828 /*
18829  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
18830  * KDE.
18831  */
18832 int test_symlinks(void) {
18833   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
18834   unlink("symlink");
18835   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
18836     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
18837   return 0;
18838 }
18839
18840 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18841   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
18842   test_symlinks();
18843   test_subdirectory_creation();
18844 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18845   test_sqlite_open();
18846 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18847   test_gcompris_locking();
18848   return 0;
18849 }
18850 </pre>
18851
18852 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
18853 this:</p>
18854
18855 <pre>
18856 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18857 info: testing symlink creation
18858 info: testing subdirectory creation
18859 info: sqlite worked
18860 info: testing fcntl locking
18861   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18862   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18863   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18864   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18865   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18866   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18867 </pre>
18868
18869 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
18870 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
18871 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
18872 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
18873 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
18874 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
18875 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
18876 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
18877
18878 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
18879 it. :)</p>
18880
18881 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18882 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18883 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18884
18885       </div>
18886       <div class="tags">
18887
18888
18889         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18890
18891
18892       </div>
18893     </div>
18894     <div class="padding"></div>
18895
18896     <div class="entry">
18897       <div class="title">
18898         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
18899       </div>
18900       <div class="date">
18901          7th August 2010
18902       </div>
18903       <div class="body">
18904         <p>A few days ago, I
18905 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
18906 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
18907 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
18908 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
18909 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
18910 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
18911 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
18912 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
18913 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
18914
18915 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
18916 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
18917 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
18918 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
18919 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
18920 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
18921 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
18922 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
18923 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
18924 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
18925 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
18926 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
18927 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
18928 gave it a IP address.</p>
18929
18930 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
18931 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
18932 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
18933 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
18934 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
18935 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18936 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
18937 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
18938
18939 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
18940 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
18941 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
18942 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
18943 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
18944 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
18945
18946 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
18947 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
18948 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
18949 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
18950 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
18951 with UID and GID values.</p>
18952
18953 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18954 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18955
18956       </div>
18957       <div class="tags">
18958
18959
18960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18961
18962
18963       </div>
18964     </div>
18965     <div class="padding"></div>
18966
18967     <div class="entry">
18968       <div class="title">
18969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
18970       </div>
18971       <div class="date">
18972          3rd August 2010
18973       </div>
18974       <div class="body">
18975         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
18976 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
18977 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
18978 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
18979 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
18980 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
18981 servers.</p>
18982
18983 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
18984 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
18985 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
18986 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
18987 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
18988 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
18989 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
18990 .uio.no.</p>
18991
18992 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
18993 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
18994 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
18995 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
18996 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
18997 university servers.</p>
18998
18999 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
19000 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
19001 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
19002 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
19003 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
19004 uses.</p>
19005
19006       </div>
19007       <div class="tags">
19008
19009
19010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19011
19012
19013       </div>
19014     </div>
19015     <div class="padding"></div>
19016
19017     <div class="entry">
19018       <div class="title">
19019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
19020       </div>
19021       <div class="date">
19022         27th July 2010
19023       </div>
19024       <div class="body">
19025         <p>I discovered this while doing
19026 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
19027 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
19028 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
19029 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
19030 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
19031
19032 <p>An example is from todays
19033 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
19034 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
19035 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
19036 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
19037 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
19038 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
19039 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
19040
19041 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
19042
19043 <blockquote><pre>
19044 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
19045  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
19046   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
19047 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
19048  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
19049 </pre></blockquote>
19050
19051 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
19052 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
19053 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
19054 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
19055 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
19056 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
19057 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
19058 of dependency loops.</p>
19059
19060 <p>Thanks to
19061 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
19062 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
19063 dependencies
19064 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
19065 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
19066
19067 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
19068 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
19069 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
19070 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
19071 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
19072 it.</p>
19073
19074       </div>
19075       <div class="tags">
19076
19077
19078         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>.
19079
19080
19081       </div>
19082     </div>
19083     <div class="padding"></div>
19084
19085     <div class="entry">
19086       <div class="title">
19087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
19088       </div>
19089       <div class="date">
19090         27th July 2010
19091       </div>
19092       <div class="body">
19093         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
19094 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
19095 completed.</p>
19096
19097 <blockquote>
19098 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
19099 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
19100 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
19101 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
19102 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
19103 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
19104 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
19105 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
19106
19107 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
19108 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
19109 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
19110
19111 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
19112 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
19113 much.</p>
19114
19115 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
19116
19117 <ul>
19118 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
19119 <ul>
19120   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
19121          combination with some new artwork
19122   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
19123   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
19124   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
19125   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
19126   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
19127   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
19128   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
19129   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
19130   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
19131 </ul></li>
19132 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
19133     Enabled for:
19134 <ul>
19135   <li>PAM
19136   <li>LDAP
19137   <li>IMAP
19138   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
19139 </ul>
19140 </li>
19141 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
19142 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
19143     fetched from LDAP.</li>
19144 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
19145 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
19146 </ul>
19147 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
19148
19149 <ul>
19150 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
19151     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
19152     for testing.</li>
19153 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
19154     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
19155     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
19156 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
19157 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
19158 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
19159 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
19160     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
19161 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
19162     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
19163     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
19164 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
19165     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
19166     and help out with translations.</li>
19167 </ul>
19168
19169 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
19170
19171 <ul>
19172 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
19173 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
19174 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19175 </ul>
19176 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
19177
19178 <ul>
19179 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
19180 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
19181 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19182 </ul>
19183
19184 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
19185 get closer to the final release.</p>
19186
19187 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
19188
19189 <ul>
19190 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19191 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19192 </ul>
19193
19194 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
19195 <ul>
19196 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
19197 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
19198 </ul>
19199 <p>How to report bugs:
19200 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
19201
19202 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
19203 </blockquote>
19204
19205       </div>
19206       <div class="tags">
19207
19208
19209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19210
19211
19212       </div>
19213     </div>
19214     <div class="padding"></div>
19215
19216     <div class="entry">
19217       <div class="title">
19218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
19219       </div>
19220       <div class="date">
19221         25th July 2010
19222       </div>
19223       <div class="body">
19224         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
19225 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
19226 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
19227 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
19228 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
19229
19230 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
19231 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
19232 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
19233 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
19234 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
19235 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
19236 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
19237
19238 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
19239 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
19240 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
19241 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
19242 up. :)</p>
19243
19244 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
19245 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
19246 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
19247
19248 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
19249 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
19250 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
19251 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
19252 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
19253 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
19254 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
19255 release another day.</p>
19256
19257 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
19258 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19259
19260       </div>
19261       <div class="tags">
19262
19263
19264         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19265
19266
19267       </div>
19268     </div>
19269     <div class="padding"></div>
19270
19271     <div class="entry">
19272       <div class="title">
19273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
19274       </div>
19275       <div class="date">
19276         18th July 2010
19277       </div>
19278       <div class="body">
19279         <p>Thanks to
19280 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
19281 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
19282 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
19283 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
19284 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
19285 only available from the development server, until more experience is
19286 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
19287
19288 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
19289 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
19290 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
19291 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
19292 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
19293 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
19294 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
19295
19296       </div>
19297       <div class="tags">
19298
19299
19300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19301
19302
19303       </div>
19304     </div>
19305     <div class="padding"></div>
19306
19307     <div class="entry">
19308       <div class="title">
19309         <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>
19310       </div>
19311       <div class="date">
19312         17th July 2010
19313       </div>
19314       <div class="body">
19315         <p>This is a
19316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
19317 on my
19318 <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
19319 work</a> on
19320 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
19321 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
19322
19323 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
19324 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
19325 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
19326 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
19327
19328 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
19329 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
19330 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
19331
19332 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
19333
19334 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
19335 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
19336 the web.
19337
19338 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
19339 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
19340 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
19341 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
19342 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
19343 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
19344
19345 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
19346 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
19347 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
19348 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
19349 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
19350 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
19351 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
19352 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
19353 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
19354 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
19355 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
19356 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
19357 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
19358 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
19359 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
19360 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
19361
19362 <blockquote><pre>
19363 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19364   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19365   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19366   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19367   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19368   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19369   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19370
19371 ldapsearch -h ldap \
19372   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
19373   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
19374   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
19375   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
19376   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
19377 </pre></blockquote>
19378
19379 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
19380 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
19381 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
19382 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19383 also exist.</p>
19384
19385 <blockquote><pre>
19386 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19387 objectclass: top
19388 objectclass: dnsdomain
19389 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19390 dc: tjener
19391 arecord: 10.0.2.2
19392 associateddomain: tjener.intern
19393
19394 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19395 objectclass: top
19396 objectclass: dnsdomain2
19397 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19398 dc: 2
19399 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
19400 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
19401 </pre></blockquote>
19402
19403 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
19404 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
19405 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
19406 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
19407 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
19408 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
19409 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
19410 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
19411 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
19412 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
19413 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
19414 instead.</p>
19415
19416 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
19417 like this:</p>
19418
19419 <blockquote><pre>
19420 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19421   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
19422   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
19423   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
19424   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
19425   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
19426
19427 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
19428   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
19429 </pre></blockquote>
19430
19431 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
19432 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
19433 reverse lookups.</p>
19434
19435 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
19436 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
19437 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
19438 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
19439
19440 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
19441 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
19442 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
19443
19444 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
19445 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
19446 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
19447 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
19448 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
19449
19450 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
19451 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
19452 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
19453 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
19454 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
19455
19456 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
19457 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
19458 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
19459 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
19460 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
19461 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
19462
19463 <blockquote><pre>
19464 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
19465     SUP top
19466     AUXILIARY
19467     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
19468           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
19469           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
19470           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
19471           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
19472     ))
19473 </pre></blockquote>
19474
19475 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
19476 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
19477 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
19478 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
19479 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
19480 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
19481
19482 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
19483
19484 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
19485 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
19486 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
19487 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
19488 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
19489
19490 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
19491 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
19492 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
19493 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
19494
19495 <blockquote><pre>
19496 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
19497 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
19498 </pre></blockquote>
19499
19500 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
19501 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
19502 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
19503 search result is this entry:</p>
19504
19505 <blockquote><pre>
19506 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19507 cn: dhcp
19508 objectClass: top
19509 objectClass: dhcpServer
19510 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19511 </pre></blockquote>
19512
19513 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
19514 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
19515 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
19516 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
19517 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
19518 The search result is this entry:</p>
19519
19520 <blockquote><pre>
19521 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19522 cn: DHCP Config
19523 objectClass: top
19524 objectClass: dhcpService
19525 objectClass: dhcpOptions
19526 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19527 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
19528 dhcpStatements: authoritative
19529 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
19530 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
19531 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
19532 </pre></blockquote>
19533
19534 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
19535 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
19536 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
19537 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
19538 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
19539 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
19540 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
19541 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
19542 related computer objects.</p>
19543
19544 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
19545 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
19546 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
19547 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
19548 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
19549 like:</p>
19550
19551 <blockquote><pre>
19552 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19553 cn: hostname
19554 objectClass: top
19555 objectClass: dhcpHost
19556 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19557 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
19558 </pre></blockquote>
19559
19560 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
19561 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
19562 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
19563 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
19564 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
19565 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
19566 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
19567 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
19568 structural object class.
19569
19570 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
19571
19572 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
19573 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
19574 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
19575 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
19576 in the configuration.</p>
19577
19578 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
19579 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
19580 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
19581 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
19582 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
19583 structure.</p>
19584
19585 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
19586 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
19587
19588 <blockquote><pre>
19589 ou=services
19590   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
19591     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
19592     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19593       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19594         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19595     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
19596       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
19597         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
19598     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
19599       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
19600 </pre></blockquote>
19601
19602 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
19603 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
19604 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
19605 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
19606
19607 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
19608 like this:</p>
19609
19610 <blockquote><pre>
19611 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19612 dc: hostname
19613 objectClass: top
19614 objectClass: dhcpHost
19615 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19616 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
19617 associateddomain: hostname.intern
19618 arecord: 10.11.12.13
19619 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19620 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
19621 </pre></blockquote>
19622
19623 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
19624 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
19625 auxiliary object class.</p>
19626
19627       </div>
19628       <div class="tags">
19629
19630
19631         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>.
19632
19633
19634       </div>
19635     </div>
19636     <div class="padding"></div>
19637
19638     <div class="entry">
19639       <div class="title">
19640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
19641       </div>
19642       <div class="date">
19643         14th July 2010
19644       </div>
19645       <div class="body">
19646         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
19647 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
19648 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
19649 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
19650 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
19651
19652 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
19653 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
19654
19655 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
19656 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
19657 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
19658 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
19659 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
19660 to a slave DNS server.</p>
19661
19662 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
19663 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
19664 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
19665 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
19666 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
19667 seem to work.</p>
19668
19669 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
19670 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
19671 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
19672 this:</p>
19673
19674 <blockquote><pre>
19675   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19676   cn: hostname
19677   objectClass: dhcphost
19678   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
19679   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
19680   associateddomain: hostname.intern
19681   arecord: 10.11.12.13
19682   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
19683   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
19684   ldapconfigsound: Y
19685 </pre></blockquote>
19686
19687 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
19688 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
19689 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
19690 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
19691
19692 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
19693 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
19694 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
19695 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
19696 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
19697 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
19698 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
19699 might be a good place to put it.</p>
19700
19701 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19702 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19703
19704       </div>
19705       <div class="tags">
19706
19707
19708         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>.
19709
19710
19711       </div>
19712     </div>
19713     <div class="padding"></div>
19714
19715     <div class="entry">
19716       <div class="title">
19717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
19718       </div>
19719       <div class="date">
19720         11th July 2010
19721       </div>
19722       <div class="body">
19723         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
19724 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
19725 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
19726 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
19727
19728 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
19729 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
19730 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
19731 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
19732 LTSP clients.</p>
19733
19734 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
19735 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
19736 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
19737
19738 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
19739 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
19740 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
19741
19742 <blockquote><pre>
19743 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
19744 #
19745 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
19746 #
19747 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
19748 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
19749 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
19750 #
19751 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
19752 # existence of attribute names.
19753 #
19754 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
19755 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
19756 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
19757 #
19758 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
19759 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
19760 #
19761 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
19762 #     SUP top
19763 #     AUXILIARY
19764 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
19765
19766 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
19767 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
19768     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
19769     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
19770         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
19771         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
19772             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
19773             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
19774             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
19775             # bass value on to clients
19776             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
19777         done
19778     done
19779 fi
19780 </pre></blockquote>
19781
19782 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
19783 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
19784 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
19785 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
19786 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
19787
19788 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19789 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19790
19791 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
19792 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
19793 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
19794 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
19795 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
19796 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
19797
19798       </div>
19799       <div class="tags">
19800
19801
19802         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>.
19803
19804
19805       </div>
19806     </div>
19807     <div class="padding"></div>
19808
19809     <div class="entry">
19810       <div class="title">
19811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19812       </div>
19813       <div class="date">
19814          9th July 2010
19815       </div>
19816       <div class="body">
19817         <p>Since
19818 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
19819 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
19820 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
19821 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
19822 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
19823 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
19824 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
19825 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
19826 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
19827 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
19828 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
19829 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
19830 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
19831
19832       </div>
19833       <div class="tags">
19834
19835
19836         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>.
19837
19838
19839       </div>
19840     </div>
19841     <div class="padding"></div>
19842
19843     <div class="entry">
19844       <div class="title">
19845         <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>
19846       </div>
19847       <div class="date">
19848          3rd July 2010
19849       </div>
19850       <div class="body">
19851         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
19852 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
19853 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
19854 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
19855 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
19856 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
19857 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
19858 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
19859
19860 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
19861 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
19862 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
19863 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
19864 publish the difference.</p>
19865
19866 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19867
19868 <blockquote><p>
19869   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19870   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
19871   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
19872   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19873   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
19874   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19875   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
19876   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
19877 </p></blockquote>
19878
19879 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19880
19881 <blockquote><p>
19882   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
19883   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
19884   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
19885   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
19886   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
19887   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
19888   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19889   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19890   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19891   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19892   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
19893   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
19894   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
19895   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
19896   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
19897   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19898   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
19899   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
19900   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
19901   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
19902 </p></blockquote>
19903
19904 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19905
19906 <blockquote><p>
19907   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
19908   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
19909   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19910   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19911   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
19912   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
19913   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
19914   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19915   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19916   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19917   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19918   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
19919   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
19920   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
19921   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
19922   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
19923   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
19924   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
19925   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
19926   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
19927   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
19928 </p></blockquote>
19929
19930 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19931
19932 <blockquote><p>
19933   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
19934   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
19935   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
19936 </p></blockquote>
19937
19938 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
19939 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
19940 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
19941 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
19942 the difference somewhat.
19943
19944       </div>
19945       <div class="tags">
19946
19947
19948         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>.
19949
19950
19951       </div>
19952     </div>
19953     <div class="padding"></div>
19954
19955     <div class="entry">
19956       <div class="title">
19957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
19958       </div>
19959       <div class="date">
19960          1st July 2010
19961       </div>
19962       <div class="body">
19963         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
19964 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
19965 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
19966 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
19967 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
19968 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
19969 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
19970 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
19971 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
19972
19973 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19974
19975 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
19976 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
19977 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
19978 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
19979 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
19980 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
19981 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
19982 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
19983 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
19984 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
19985 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
19986 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
19987 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
19988 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
19989 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
19990
19991 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
19992
19993 <blockquote><pre>
19994 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
19995 </pre></blockquote>
19996
19997 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
19998 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
19999 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
20000 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
20001 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
20002 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
20003 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
20004 on how to get this working.</p>
20005
20006 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
20007 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
20008 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
20009 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
20010 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
20011 instructions I found in the
20012 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
20013 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
20014
20015 <blockquote><pre>
20016         debug-level             0
20017         reload-count            unlimited
20018         paranoia                no
20019
20020         enable-cache            passwd          yes
20021         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
20022         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
20023         suggested-size          passwd          211
20024         check-files             passwd          yes
20025         persistent              passwd          yes
20026         shared                  passwd          yes
20027         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
20028         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
20029
20030         enable-cache            group           yes
20031         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
20032         negative-time-to-live   group           20
20033         suggested-size          group           211
20034         check-files             group           yes
20035         persistent              group           yes
20036         shared                  group           yes
20037         max-db-size             group           33554432
20038         auto-propagate          group           yes
20039
20040         enable-cache            hosts           no
20041         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
20042         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
20043         suggested-size          hosts           211
20044         check-files             hosts           yes
20045         persistent              hosts           yes
20046         shared                  hosts           yes
20047         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
20048
20049         enable-cache            services        yes
20050         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
20051         negative-time-to-live   services        20
20052         suggested-size          services        211
20053         check-files             services        yes
20054         persistent              services        yes
20055         shared                  services        yes
20056         max-db-size             services        33554432
20057 </pre></blockquote>
20058
20059 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
20060 automatically like the one provided in
20061 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
20062 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
20063 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
20064 look like this:</p>
20065
20066 <blockquote><pre>
20067 passwd:         files ldap
20068 group:          files ldap
20069 shadow:         files ldap
20070 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
20071 networks:       files
20072 protocols:      files
20073 services:       files
20074 ethers:         files
20075 rpc:            files
20076 netgroup:       files ldap
20077 </pre></blockquote>
20078
20079 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
20080 shadow and netgroup.</p>
20081
20082 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
20083 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
20084 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
20085 attributes cached.
20086
20087 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
20088   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20089
20090 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
20091 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
20092 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
20093 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
20094 discovered sssd.</p>
20095
20096 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
20097
20098 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
20099 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
20100 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
20101 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
20102 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
20103 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
20104 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
20105 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
20106 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
20107 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
20108 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
20109 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
20110 version 1.2 is now in testing.
20111
20112 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
20113 roaming setup I want</p>
20114
20115 <blockquote><pre>
20116 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
20117 </pre></blockquote>
20118
20119 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
20120 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
20121
20122 <blockquote><pre>
20123 [sssd]
20124 config_file_version = 2
20125 reconnection_retries = 3
20126 sbus_timeout = 30
20127 services = nss, pam
20128 domains = INTERN
20129
20130 [nss]
20131 filter_groups = root
20132 filter_users = root
20133 reconnection_retries = 3
20134
20135 [pam]
20136 reconnection_retries = 3
20137
20138 [domain/INTERN]
20139 enumerate = false
20140 cache_credentials = true
20141
20142 id_provider = ldap
20143 auth_provider = ldap
20144 chpass_provider = ldap
20145
20146 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
20147 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20148 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
20149 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
20150 </pre></blockquote>
20151
20152 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
20153 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
20154
20155 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
20156 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
20157 modify it manually.</p>
20158
20159 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20160 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20161
20162       </div>
20163       <div class="tags">
20164
20165
20166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20167
20168
20169       </div>
20170     </div>
20171     <div class="padding"></div>
20172
20173     <div class="entry">
20174       <div class="title">
20175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20176       </div>
20177       <div class="date">
20178         28th June 2010
20179       </div>
20180       <div class="body">
20181         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
20182 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
20183 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
20184 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
20185 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
20186 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
20187 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
20188 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
20189 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
20190 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
20191
20192 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
20193 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
20194 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
20195 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
20196 released.</p>
20197
20198 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
20199 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
20200 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
20201 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
20202
20203 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
20204 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20205
20206 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
20207 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
20208 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
20209 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
20210 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
20211
20212       </div>
20213       <div class="tags">
20214
20215
20216         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>.
20217
20218
20219       </div>
20220     </div>
20221     <div class="padding"></div>
20222
20223     <div class="entry">
20224       <div class="title">
20225         <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>
20226       </div>
20227       <div class="date">
20228         24th June 2010
20229       </div>
20230       <div class="body">
20231         <p>A while back, I
20232 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
20233 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
20234 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
20235 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
20236
20237 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
20238 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
20239 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
20240 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
20241
20242 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
20243 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
20244 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
20245 Debian Edu.</p>
20246
20247 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
20248 the
20249 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
20250 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
20251 available today from IETF.</p>
20252
20253 <pre>
20254 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
20255 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
20256 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
20257  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
20258         NAME 'dhcpHost'
20259         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
20260 -       SUP top
20261 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
20262         MUST cn
20263         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
20264         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
20265 </pre>
20266
20267 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
20268 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
20269 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
20270
20271 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20272 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20273
20274       </div>
20275       <div class="tags">
20276
20277
20278         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>.
20279
20280
20281       </div>
20282     </div>
20283     <div class="padding"></div>
20284
20285     <div class="entry">
20286       <div class="title">
20287         <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>
20288       </div>
20289       <div class="date">
20290         16th June 2010
20291       </div>
20292       <div class="body">
20293         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
20294 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
20295 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
20296 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
20297 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
20298 this:
20299
20300 <blockquote><pre>
20301 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20302 tasksel --new-install
20303 </pre></blockquote>
20304
20305 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
20306 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
20307 any output what so ever.
20308
20309 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
20310 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
20311 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
20312 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
20313 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
20314 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
20315 code like this:
20316
20317 <blockquote><pre>
20318 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20319 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
20320 $cmd
20321 </pre></blockquote>
20322
20323 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
20324 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
20325 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
20326 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
20327 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
20328 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
20329 installation.</p>
20330
20331 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
20332 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
20333 like this.</p>
20334
20335       </div>
20336       <div class="tags">
20337
20338
20339         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>.
20340
20341
20342       </div>
20343     </div>
20344     <div class="padding"></div>
20345
20346     <div class="entry">
20347       <div class="title">
20348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
20349       </div>
20350       <div class="date">
20351         13th June 2010
20352       </div>
20353       <div class="body">
20354         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
20355 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
20356 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
20357 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
20358 pages.</p>
20359
20360 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
20361 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
20362 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
20363 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
20364 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
20365 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
20366 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
20367 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
20368 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
20369 see how the project is doing.</p>
20370
20371 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
20372 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
20373 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
20374 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
20375 Windows.  This is great.</p>
20376
20377       </div>
20378       <div class="tags">
20379
20380
20381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
20382
20383
20384       </div>
20385     </div>
20386     <div class="padding"></div>
20387
20388     <div class="entry">
20389       <div class="title">
20390         <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>
20391       </div>
20392       <div class="date">
20393         13th June 2010
20394       </div>
20395       <div class="body">
20396         <p>My
20397 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
20398 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
20399 finally made the upgrade logs available from
20400 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
20401 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
20402 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
20403 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
20404
20405 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
20406 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
20407 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
20408 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
20409 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
20410 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
20411 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
20412 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
20413
20414 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
20415 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
20416 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
20417 too surprising.</p>
20418
20419 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
20420 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
20421 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
20422 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
20423 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
20424 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
20425 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
20426 continue.</p>
20427
20428 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
20429 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
20430   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
20431   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
20432   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
20433   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
20434   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
20435   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20436   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20437   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20438   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20439   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20440   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20441   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20442   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20443   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20444   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20445   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20446   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20447   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20448   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20449   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20450   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20451   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20452   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20453   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20454   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20455   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20456   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
20457   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
20458
20459 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
20460
20461 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
20462   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
20463   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
20464   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
20465   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20466   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
20467   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
20468   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
20469   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
20470   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
20471   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20472   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
20473   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20474   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
20475   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
20476   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
20477   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
20478   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
20479   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
20480   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
20481   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
20482   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
20483   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
20484   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
20485   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20486   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
20487   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
20488   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
20489   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
20490   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20491   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20492   zip</p>
20493
20494 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
20495
20496 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
20497   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
20498   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
20499   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
20500   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
20501   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
20502   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20503   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20504   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
20505   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
20506   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
20507   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
20508   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20509   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20510   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20511   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20512   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20513   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
20514   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
20515   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
20516   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
20517   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
20518   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
20519   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
20520   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
20521   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
20522   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
20523   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
20524
20525 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
20526 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
20527   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
20528   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
20529   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
20530   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
20531   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
20532   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
20533   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
20534   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
20535   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
20536   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
20537   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
20538   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
20539   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
20540   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
20541   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
20542   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
20543   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
20544   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
20545   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
20546   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
20547   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
20548   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
20549   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
20550   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
20551   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
20552   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
20553   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
20554   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
20555   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
20556   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
20557   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
20558   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
20559   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
20560   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
20561   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
20562   xulrunner-1.9</p>
20563
20564
20565       </div>
20566       <div class="tags">
20567
20568
20569         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>.
20570
20571
20572       </div>
20573     </div>
20574     <div class="padding"></div>
20575
20576     <div class="entry">
20577       <div class="title">
20578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
20579       </div>
20580       <div class="date">
20581         11th June 2010
20582       </div>
20583       <div class="body">
20584         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
20585 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
20586 have been discovered and reported in the process
20587 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
20588 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
20589 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
20590 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
20591 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
20592
20593 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
20594 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
20595 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
20596 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
20597 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
20598 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
20599
20600 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
20601 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
20602 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20603 is created.  The bug report
20604 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
20605 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
20606 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
20607 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
20608 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
20609 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
20610 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
20611 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
20612 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
20613 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
20614 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
20615 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
20616 Debian Squeeze.</p>
20617
20618 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
20619 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
20620 trick:</p>
20621
20622 <blockquote><pre>
20623 #!/bin/sh
20624 set -ex
20625
20626 if [ "$1" ] ; then
20627     desktop=$1
20628 else
20629     desktop=gnome
20630 fi
20631
20632 from=lenny
20633 to=squeeze
20634
20635 exec &lt; /dev/null
20636 unset LANG
20637 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
20638 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
20639 fuser -mv .
20640 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
20641 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20642 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
20643 #!/bin/sh
20644 exit 101
20645 EOF
20646 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
20647 exit_cleanup() {
20648     umount $tmpdir/proc
20649 }
20650 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
20651 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
20652 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
20653
20654 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
20655
20656 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
20657 # to return the correct answers.
20658 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
20659     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
20660
20661 # Include the desktop and laptop task
20662 for test in desktop laptop ; do
20663     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
20664 #!/bin/sh
20665 exit 2
20666 EOF
20667     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
20668 done
20669
20670 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
20671 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
20672 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
20673 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
20674
20675 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
20676 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
20677 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
20678 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
20679 fuser -mv
20680 </pre></blockquote>
20681
20682 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
20683 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
20684 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
20685 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
20686 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
20687 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
20688
20689 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
20690 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
20691 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
20692 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
20693 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
20694 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
20695 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
20696
20697 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
20698 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
20699 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
20700 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
20701 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
20702 packages.</p>
20703
20704       </div>
20705       <div class="tags">
20706
20707
20708         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>.
20709
20710
20711       </div>
20712     </div>
20713     <div class="padding"></div>
20714
20715     <div class="entry">
20716       <div class="title">
20717         <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>
20718       </div>
20719       <div class="date">
20720          6th June 2010
20721       </div>
20722       <div class="body">
20723         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
20724 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
20725 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
20726 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
20727 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
20728 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
20729 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
20730
20731 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
20732 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
20733 COLUMNS):</p>
20734
20735 <blockquote><pre>
20736 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
20737 previous=N
20738 PREVLEVEL=
20739 RUNLEVEL=
20740 runlevel=S
20741 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
20742 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
20743 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
20744 </pre></blockquote>
20745
20746 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
20747 script.</p>
20748
20749 <blockquote><pre>
20750 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
20751 previous=N
20752 PREVLEVEL=N
20753 RUNLEVEL=S
20754 runlevel=S
20755 </pre></blockquote>
20756
20757 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
20758 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
20759 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
20760
20761 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
20762 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
20763 choice.</p>
20764
20765       </div>
20766       <div class="tags">
20767
20768
20769         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>.
20770
20771
20772       </div>
20773     </div>
20774     <div class="padding"></div>
20775
20776     <div class="entry">
20777       <div class="title">
20778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
20779       </div>
20780       <div class="date">
20781          6th June 2010
20782       </div>
20783       <div class="body">
20784         <p>Via the
20785 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
20786 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
20787 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
20788 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
20789 following the standards wars of today.</p>
20790
20791       </div>
20792       <div class="tags">
20793
20794
20795         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>.
20796
20797
20798       </div>
20799     </div>
20800     <div class="padding"></div>
20801
20802     <div class="entry">
20803       <div class="title">
20804         <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>
20805       </div>
20806       <div class="date">
20807          3rd June 2010
20808       </div>
20809       <div class="body">
20810         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
20811 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
20812 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
20813 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
20814 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
20815
20816 <blockquote><pre>
20817 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
20818   vendor                    count
20819   Dell Computer Corporation     1
20820     PowerEdge 1750              1
20821   IBM                           1
20822     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
20823   Intel                         2
20824   [no-dmi-info]                 3
20825 maintainer:~#
20826 </pre></blockquote>
20827
20828 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
20829 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
20830 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
20831 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
20832 option to list the individual machines.</p>
20833
20834 <p>A larger list is
20835 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
20836 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
20837 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
20838 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
20839 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
20840 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
20841 collector.</p>
20842
20843       </div>
20844       <div class="tags">
20845
20846
20847         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>.
20848
20849
20850       </div>
20851     </div>
20852     <div class="padding"></div>
20853
20854     <div class="entry">
20855       <div class="title">
20856         <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>
20857       </div>
20858       <div class="date">
20859          1st June 2010
20860       </div>
20861       <div class="body">
20862         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
20863 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
20864 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
20865 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
20866 wait.</p>
20867
20868 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
20869 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
20870 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
20871 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
20872 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
20873 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
20874
20875 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
20876 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
20877 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
20878 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
20879 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
20880 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
20881 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
20882 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
20883
20884 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
20885
20886       </div>
20887       <div class="tags">
20888
20889
20890         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>.
20891
20892
20893       </div>
20894     </div>
20895     <div class="padding"></div>
20896
20897     <div class="entry">
20898       <div class="title">
20899         <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>
20900       </div>
20901       <div class="date">
20902         27th May 2010
20903       </div>
20904       <div class="body">
20905         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
20906 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
20907 issues are known and should be solved:
20908
20909 <p><ul>
20910
20911 <li>The wicd package seen to
20912 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
20913 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
20914 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
20915 seem to be on the case.</li>
20916
20917 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
20918 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
20919 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
20920 maintainer is on the case.</li>
20921
20922 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
20923 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
20924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
20925 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
20926 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
20927 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
20928 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
20929 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
20930
20931 </ul></p>
20932
20933 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
20934 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
20935 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
20936 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
20937
20938 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20939 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20940 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20941 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20942
20943 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
20944
20945       </div>
20946       <div class="tags">
20947
20948
20949         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>.
20950
20951
20952       </div>
20953     </div>
20954     <div class="padding"></div>
20955
20956     <div class="entry">
20957       <div class="title">
20958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
20959       </div>
20960       <div class="date">
20961         22nd May 2010
20962       </div>
20963       <div class="body">
20964         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
20965 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
20966 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
20967 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
20968
20969 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
20970 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
20971 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
20972 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
20973 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
20974 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
20975 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
20976 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
20977 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
20978 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
20979 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
20980 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
20981 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
20982 going to work.</p>
20983
20984 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
20985 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
20986 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
20987 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
20988 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
20989 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
20990 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
20991 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
20992 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
20993 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
20994 Edu.</p>
20995
20996 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
20997 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
20998 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
20999 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
21000 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
21001 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
21002
21003 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
21004 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
21005
21006       </div>
21007       <div class="tags">
21008
21009
21010         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>.
21011
21012
21013       </div>
21014     </div>
21015     <div class="padding"></div>
21016
21017     <div class="entry">
21018       <div class="title">
21019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
21020       </div>
21021       <div class="date">
21022         19th May 2010
21023       </div>
21024       <div class="body">
21025         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
21026 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
21027 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
21028 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
21029 into unstable.  The
21030 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
21031 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
21032 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
21033 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
21034 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21035 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
21036 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
21037
21038 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
21039 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
21040 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
21041 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
21042 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
21043 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
21044 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
21045 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
21046
21047 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
21048 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
21049 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
21050 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
21051 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
21052 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
21053 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
21054
21055 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
21056 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
21057 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
21058 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
21059 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
21060 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
21061 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
21062 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
21063 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
21064 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
21065 on the home directory servers.</p>
21066
21067 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
21068 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
21069 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
21070 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
21071 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
21072 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
21073
21074 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21075 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21076
21077       </div>
21078       <div class="tags">
21079
21080
21081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21082
21083
21084       </div>
21085     </div>
21086     <div class="padding"></div>
21087
21088     <div class="entry">
21089       <div class="title">
21090         <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>
21091       </div>
21092       <div class="date">
21093         14th May 2010
21094       </div>
21095       <div class="body">
21096         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
21097 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
21098 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
21099 expected, if I am to believe the
21100 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21101 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
21102 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
21103 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
21104 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
21105 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
21106 version.</p>
21107
21108 More information about
21109 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21110 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
21111 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
21112 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21113
21114 <blockquote><pre>
21115 CONCURRENCY=none
21116 </pre></blockquote>
21117
21118 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21119 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21120 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21121 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21122
21123       </div>
21124       <div class="tags">
21125
21126
21127         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>.
21128
21129
21130       </div>
21131     </div>
21132     <div class="padding"></div>
21133
21134     <div class="entry">
21135       <div class="title">
21136         <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>
21137       </div>
21138       <div class="date">
21139         14th May 2010
21140       </div>
21141       <div class="body">
21142         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
21143 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
21144 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
21145 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
21146 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
21147 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
21148 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
21149 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
21150
21151 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
21152 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
21153 this on the collector host:</p>
21154
21155 <blockquote><pre>
21156 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
21157 </pre></blockquote>
21158
21159 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
21160 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
21161
21162 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
21163 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
21164 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
21165 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
21166 written yet.</p>
21167
21168       </div>
21169       <div class="tags">
21170
21171
21172         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>.
21173
21174
21175       </div>
21176     </div>
21177     <div class="padding"></div>
21178
21179     <div class="entry">
21180       <div class="title">
21181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
21182       </div>
21183       <div class="date">
21184         13th May 2010
21185       </div>
21186       <div class="body">
21187         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
21188 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
21189 has been
21190 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
21191
21192 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
21193 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
21194 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
21195 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
21196 based boot system.  Tollef is
21197 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
21198 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
21199 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
21200 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
21201 at the moment do not.</p>
21202
21203 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
21204 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
21205 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
21206 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
21207 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
21208 way forward.</p>
21209
21210 <p>In the mean time, based on the
21211 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
21212 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
21213 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
21214 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
21215 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
21216 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
21217 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
21218 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
21219
21220       </div>
21221       <div class="tags">
21222
21223
21224         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>.
21225
21226
21227       </div>
21228     </div>
21229     <div class="padding"></div>
21230
21231     <div class="entry">
21232       <div class="title">
21233         <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>
21234       </div>
21235       <div class="date">
21236          6th May 2010
21237       </div>
21238       <div class="body">
21239         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
21240 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
21241 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
21242 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
21243 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21244 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
21245 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
21246
21247 <blockquote><pre>
21248 CONCURRENCY=makefile
21249 </pre></blockquote>
21250
21251 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
21252 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
21253 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
21254 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
21255 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
21256 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
21257 make this happen.</p>
21258
21259 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
21260 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
21261 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
21262 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
21263 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
21264
21265 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
21266 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
21267 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
21268 fix the remaining issues.</p>
21269
21270 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21271 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21272 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21273 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21274
21275       </div>
21276       <div class="tags">
21277
21278
21279         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>.
21280
21281
21282       </div>
21283     </div>
21284     <div class="padding"></div>
21285
21286     <div class="entry">
21287       <div class="title">
21288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
21289       </div>
21290       <div class="date">
21291          2nd May 2010
21292       </div>
21293       <div class="body">
21294         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
21295 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
21296 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
21297
21298 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
21299 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
21300 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
21301 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
21302 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
21303
21304 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
21305 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
21306
21307 <blockquote><pre>
21308 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21309 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
21310 Password expires                                        : never
21311 Password inactive                                       : never
21312 Account expires                                         : never
21313 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21314 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
21315 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21316 root@tjener:~#
21317 </pre></blockquote>
21318
21319 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
21320 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
21321 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
21322 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
21323 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
21324 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
21325
21326 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
21327 intended:</p>
21328
21329 <blockquote><pre>
21330 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
21331 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
21332 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
21333 Password expires                                        : never
21334 Password inactive                                       : never
21335 Account expires                                         : never
21336 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
21337 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
21338 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
21339 root@tjener:~#
21340 </pre></blockquote>
21341
21342 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
21343 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
21344 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
21345
21346 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
21347 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
21348
21349 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
21350 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21351
21352 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
21353 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
21354 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
21355 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
21356 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
21357 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
21358 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
21359
21360 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
21361 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
21362 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
21363 change.</p>
21364
21365       </div>
21366       <div class="tags">
21367
21368
21369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
21370
21371
21372       </div>
21373     </div>
21374     <div class="padding"></div>
21375
21376     <div class="entry">
21377       <div class="title">
21378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
21379       </div>
21380       <div class="date">
21381         28th April 2010
21382       </div>
21383       <div class="body">
21384         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
21385 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
21386 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
21387 and go.</p>
21388
21389 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
21390 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
21391 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
21392 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
21393
21394 <ul>
21395
21396  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
21397    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
21398    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
21399    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
21400    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
21401    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
21402    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
21403    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
21404    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
21405    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
21406    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
21407    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
21408
21409  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
21410    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
21411    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
21412    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
21413    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
21414    or the Fedora developed
21415    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
21416    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
21417
21418  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
21419    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
21420    directory, using unison.</li>
21421
21422  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
21423    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
21424    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
21425    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
21426    implemented.</li>
21427
21428  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
21429    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
21430
21431  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
21432    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
21433    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
21434
21435 </ul>
21436
21437 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
21438 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
21439 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
21440 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
21441 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
21442 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
21443 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
21444 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
21445 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
21446
21447 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21448 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21449
21450       </div>
21451       <div class="tags">
21452
21453
21454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21455
21456
21457       </div>
21458     </div>
21459     <div class="padding"></div>
21460
21461     <div class="entry">
21462       <div class="title">
21463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
21464       </div>
21465       <div class="date">
21466         19th April 2010
21467       </div>
21468       <div class="body">
21469         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
21470 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
21471 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
21472 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
21473 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
21474 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
21475 restrictions on the web, for example from
21476 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
21477 epub-version from
21478 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
21479 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
21480 strongly recommend this book.</p>
21481
21482       </div>
21483       <div class="tags">
21484
21485
21486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21487
21488
21489       </div>
21490     </div>
21491     <div class="padding"></div>
21492
21493     <div class="entry">
21494       <div class="title">
21495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
21496       </div>
21497       <div class="date">
21498         14th April 2010
21499       </div>
21500       <div class="body">
21501         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
21502 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
21503 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
21504 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
21505 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
21506 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
21507 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
21508 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
21509 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
21510
21511 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
21512 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
21513 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
21514 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
21515 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
21516
21517 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
21518 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
21519
21520 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
21521 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
21522 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
21523 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
21524 to work properly.</p>
21525
21526 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
21527 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
21528 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
21529 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
21530 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
21531 time.</p>
21532
21533 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
21534 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
21535 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
21536 up in a few days.</p>
21537
21538       </div>
21539       <div class="tags">
21540
21541
21542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21543
21544
21545       </div>
21546     </div>
21547     <div class="padding"></div>
21548
21549     <div class="entry">
21550       <div class="title">
21551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
21552       </div>
21553       <div class="date">
21554          6th March 2010
21555       </div>
21556       <div class="body">
21557         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
21558 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
21559 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
21560 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
21561 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
21562 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
21563
21564 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
21565 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
21566 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
21567 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
21568
21569 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
21570 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
21571 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
21572 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
21573 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
21574 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
21575
21576       </div>
21577       <div class="tags">
21578
21579
21580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21581
21582
21583       </div>
21584     </div>
21585     <div class="padding"></div>
21586
21587     <div class="entry">
21588       <div class="title">
21589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
21590       </div>
21591       <div class="date">
21592         11th February 2010
21593       </div>
21594       <div class="body">
21595         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
21596 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
21597 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
21598 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
21599 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
21600 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
21601 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
21602
21603 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
21604
21605 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
21606 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
21607 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
21608 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
21609
21610       </div>
21611       <div class="tags">
21612
21613
21614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21615
21616
21617       </div>
21618     </div>
21619     <div class="padding"></div>
21620
21621     <div class="entry">
21622       <div class="title">
21623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
21624       </div>
21625       <div class="date">
21626         27th January 2010
21627       </div>
21628       <div class="body">
21629         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
21630 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
21631 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
21632 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
21633 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
21634 further.</p>
21635
21636 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
21637 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
21638 configured to be a server for the
21639 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
21640 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
21641 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
21642 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
21643 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
21644 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
21645 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
21646 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
21647 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
21648 and Nagios configuration.</p>
21649
21650 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
21651 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
21652 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
21653 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
21654
21655 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
21656 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
21657 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
21658 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
21659 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
21660 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
21661 the machine.</p>
21662
21663 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
21664 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
21665 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
21666 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
21667
21668 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
21669 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
21670 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
21671 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
21672 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
21673 everything is taken care of.</p>
21674
21675       </div>
21676       <div class="tags">
21677
21678
21679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
21680
21681
21682       </div>
21683     </div>
21684     <div class="padding"></div>
21685
21686     <div class="entry">
21687       <div class="title">
21688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
21689       </div>
21690       <div class="date">
21691         12th August 2009
21692       </div>
21693       <div class="body">
21694         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
21695 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
21696 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
21697 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
21698
21699 <table>
21700 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21701 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21702 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
21703 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
21704 </table>
21705
21706 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
21707 got these numbers:</p>
21708
21709 <table>
21710 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21711 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
21712 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
21713 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
21714 </table>
21715
21716 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
21717
21718 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
21719 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
21720 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
21721 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
21722 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
21723
21724
21725 <table>
21726 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21727 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21728 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
21729 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
21730 </table>
21731
21732 <p>And with 'site:no':
21733
21734 <table>
21735 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21736 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
21737 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
21738 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
21739 </table>
21740
21741 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
21742 numbers.</p>
21743
21744       </div>
21745       <div class="tags">
21746
21747
21748         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21749
21750
21751       </div>
21752     </div>
21753     <div class="padding"></div>
21754
21755     <div class="entry">
21756       <div class="title">
21757         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
21758       </div>
21759       <div class="date">
21760          8th August 2009
21761       </div>
21762       <div class="body">
21763         <p>According to <a
21764 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
21765 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
21766 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
21767 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
21768 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
21769 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
21770 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
21771 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
21772 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
21773 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
21774
21775 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
21776 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
21777 seminar this autumn.</p>
21778
21779       </div>
21780       <div class="tags">
21781
21782
21783         Tags: <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>.
21784
21785
21786       </div>
21787     </div>
21788     <div class="padding"></div>
21789
21790     <div class="entry">
21791       <div class="title">
21792         <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>
21793       </div>
21794       <div class="date">
21795         27th July 2009
21796       </div>
21797       <div class="body">
21798         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
21799 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
21800 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
21801 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
21802 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
21803 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
21804 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
21805
21806 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
21807 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
21808 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
21809
21810       </div>
21811       <div class="tags">
21812
21813
21814         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>.
21815
21816
21817       </div>
21818     </div>
21819     <div class="padding"></div>
21820
21821     <div class="entry">
21822       <div class="title">
21823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
21824       </div>
21825       <div class="date">
21826         22nd July 2009
21827       </div>
21828       <div class="body">
21829         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
21830 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
21831 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
21832 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
21833 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
21834 the package up to date.</p>
21835
21836 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
21837 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
21838 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
21839 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
21840 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
21841 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
21842 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
21843 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
21844 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
21845 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
21846 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
21847 working on the future release.</p>
21848
21849 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
21850 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
21851
21852       </div>
21853       <div class="tags">
21854
21855
21856         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>.
21857
21858
21859       </div>
21860     </div>
21861     <div class="padding"></div>
21862
21863     <div class="entry">
21864       <div class="title">
21865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
21866       </div>
21867       <div class="date">
21868         24th June 2009
21869       </div>
21870       <div class="body">
21871         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
21872 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
21873 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
21874 funded
21875 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
21876 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
21877 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
21878 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
21879 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
21880 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
21881
21882 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
21883 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
21884 boot:</p>
21885
21886 <ul>
21887
21888 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
21889
21890 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
21891    clock is in UTC.</li>
21892
21893 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
21894    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21895    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
21896
21897 </ul>
21898
21899 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
21900 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
21901 Villegas</a>.
21902
21903 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
21904 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
21905 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
21906 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
21907 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
21908 using this.</p>
21909
21910 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
21911 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
21912 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
21913 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
21914 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
21915 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
21916 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
21917
21918       </div>
21919       <div class="tags">
21920
21921
21922         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>.
21923
21924
21925       </div>
21926     </div>
21927     <div class="padding"></div>
21928
21929     <div class="entry">
21930       <div class="title">
21931         <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>
21932       </div>
21933       <div class="date">
21934          2nd May 2009
21935       </div>
21936       <div class="body">
21937         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
21938 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
21939 do not yet know them.</p>
21940
21941 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
21942 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
21943 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
21944 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
21945 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
21946 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
21947 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
21948 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
21949 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
21950 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
21951 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
21952
21953 <p>The second one is
21954 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
21955 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
21956 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
21957 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
21958 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
21959 and the company behind it is running
21960 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
21961 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
21962 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
21963 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
21964 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
21965 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
21966 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
21967 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
21968
21969 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
21970 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
21971 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
21972 surrounded by today.</p>
21973
21974       </div>
21975       <div class="tags">
21976
21977
21978         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>.
21979
21980
21981       </div>
21982     </div>
21983     <div class="padding"></div>
21984
21985     <div class="entry">
21986       <div class="title">
21987         <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>
21988       </div>
21989       <div class="date">
21990         28th April 2009
21991       </div>
21992       <div class="body">
21993         <p>Julien Blache
21994 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
21995 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
21996 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
21997 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
21998 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
21999 properties.</p>
22000
22001       </div>
22002       <div class="tags">
22003
22004
22005         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>.
22006
22007
22008       </div>
22009     </div>
22010     <div class="padding"></div>
22011
22012     <div class="entry">
22013       <div class="title">
22014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
22015       </div>
22016       <div class="date">
22017          5th April 2009
22018       </div>
22019       <div class="body">
22020         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
22021 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
22022 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
22023 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
22024 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
22025 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
22026 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
22027 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
22028
22029 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
22030 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
22031 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
22032   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22033   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
22034
22035 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
22036 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
22037 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
22038 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
22039
22040 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
22041 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
22042 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
22043 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
22044
22045 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
22046 set -e
22047 URL="$1"
22048 SAVEFILE="$2"
22049 DURATION="$3"
22050 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
22051   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
22052   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
22053 pid=$!
22054 sleep $DURATION
22055 kill $pid
22056 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
22057
22058       </div>
22059       <div class="tags">
22060
22061
22062         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
22063
22064
22065       </div>
22066     </div>
22067     <div class="padding"></div>
22068
22069     <div class="entry">
22070       <div class="title">
22071         <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>
22072       </div>
22073       <div class="date">
22074         30th March 2009
22075       </div>
22076       <div class="body">
22077         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
22078 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
22079 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
22080 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
22081 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
22082 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
22083 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
22084 application.</p>
22085
22086 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
22087 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
22088 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
22089 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
22090 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
22091 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
22092 blocked from doing so.</p>
22093
22094 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
22095 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
22096 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
22097 requirements change.</p>
22098
22099 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
22100 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
22101 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
22102
22103       </div>
22104       <div class="tags">
22105
22106
22107         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>.
22108
22109
22110       </div>
22111     </div>
22112     <div class="padding"></div>
22113
22114     <div class="entry">
22115       <div class="title">
22116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
22117       </div>
22118       <div class="date">
22119         29th March 2009
22120       </div>
22121       <div class="body">
22122         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
22123 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
22124 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
22125 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
22126 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
22127 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
22128 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
22129 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
22130 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
22131 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
22132 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
22133 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
22134 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
22135 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
22136 now. :)</p>
22137
22138       </div>
22139       <div class="tags">
22140
22141
22142         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>.
22143
22144
22145       </div>
22146     </div>
22147     <div class="padding"></div>
22148
22149     <div class="entry">
22150       <div class="title">
22151         <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>
22152       </div>
22153       <div class="date">
22154         29th March 2009
22155       </div>
22156       <div class="body">
22157         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
22158 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
22159 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
22160 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
22161 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
22162 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
22163
22164 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
22165 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
22166 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
22167 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
22168 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
22169 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
22170 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
22171 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
22172 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
22173 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
22174 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
22175 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
22176 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
22177
22178 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
22179 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
22180 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
22181 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
22182
22183 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
22184 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
22185
22186 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
22187 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
22188 new IETF work group?</p>
22189
22190       </div>
22191       <div class="tags">
22192
22193
22194         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>.
22195
22196
22197       </div>
22198     </div>
22199     <div class="padding"></div>
22200
22201     <div class="entry">
22202       <div class="title">
22203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
22204       </div>
22205       <div class="date">
22206         28th February 2009
22207       </div>
22208       <div class="body">
22209         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
22210 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
22211 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
22212 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
22213 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
22214 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
22215 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
22216 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
22217 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
22218 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
22219 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
22220 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
22221 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
22222 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
22223 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
22224 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
22225 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
22226 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
22227 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
22228 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
22229 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
22230 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
22231 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
22232 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
22233 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
22234 machine.</p>
22235
22236 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
22237 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
22238 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
22239 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
22240 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
22241 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
22242 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
22243
22244 <pre>
22245 use LWP::Simple;
22246 use POSIX;
22247 use WWW::Mechanize;
22248 use Date::Parse;
22249 [...]
22250 sub get_support_info {
22251     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
22252     my $str;
22253
22254     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
22255         # fetch website from Dell support
22256         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
22257         my $webpage = get($url);
22258         return undef unless ($webpage);
22259
22260         my $daysleft = -1;
22261         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
22262         foreach my $line (@lines) {
22263             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
22264             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22265             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
22266
22267             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
22268             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
22269             my $lastend = "";
22270             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
22271                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
22272
22273                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22274                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22275                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22276                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
22277                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
22278                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
22279                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
22280             }
22281             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22282             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22283                 if ($lastend lt $today);
22284         }
22285     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
22286         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
22287         my $url =
22288             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
22289         $mech->get($url);
22290         my $fields = {
22291             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
22292             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
22293             'country' => 'NO',
22294             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
22295             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
22296         };
22297         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
22298                             fields      => $fields );
22299         # Next step is screen scraping
22300         my $content = $mech->content();
22301
22302         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22303         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22304         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22305         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22306
22307         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22308
22309         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
22310             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
22311                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
22312             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
22313             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22314                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
22315             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
22316                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
22317
22318             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
22319
22320             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22321                 if ($end lt $today);
22322         }
22323     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
22324         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
22325         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
22326         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
22327             my $content =
22328                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
22329             if ($content) {
22330                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
22331                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
22332                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
22333                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
22334
22335                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
22336                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
22337
22338                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
22339
22340                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
22341                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
22342                     if ($end lt $today);
22343             }
22344         }
22345     }
22346     return $str;
22347 }
22348 </pre>
22349
22350 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
22351 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
22352 from dmidecode.</p>
22353
22354 <pre>
22355 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
22356                        "447707-B21");
22357 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
22358 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
22359                        "1234567");
22360 </pre>
22361
22362 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
22363 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
22364
22365 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
22366 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
22367 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
22368 do so.</p>
22369
22370       </div>
22371       <div class="tags">
22372
22373
22374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22375
22376
22377       </div>
22378     </div>
22379     <div class="padding"></div>
22380
22381     <div class="entry">
22382       <div class="title">
22383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
22384       </div>
22385       <div class="date">
22386         20th February 2009
22387       </div>
22388       <div class="body">
22389         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
22390 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
22391 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
22392 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
22393 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
22394 the "missing" computer.</p>
22395
22396 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
22397 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
22398 code blocks as defined in the
22399 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
22400 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
22401 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
22402 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
22403 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
22404 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
22405 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
22406 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
22407 codes.</p>
22408
22409 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
22410 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
22411 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
22412 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
22413 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
22414 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
22415
22416 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
22417 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
22418 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
22419 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
22420 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
22421 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
22422 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
22423 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
22424 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
22425 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
22426
22427 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
22428 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
22429 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
22430
22431       </div>
22432       <div class="tags">
22433
22434
22435         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22436
22437
22438       </div>
22439     </div>
22440     <div class="padding"></div>
22441
22442     <div class="entry">
22443       <div class="title">
22444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
22445       </div>
22446       <div class="date">
22447         17th January 2009
22448       </div>
22449       <div class="body">
22450         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
22451 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
22452 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
22453 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
22454 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
22455 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
22456 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
22457 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
22458 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
22459 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
22460 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
22461 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
22462 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
22463 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
22464
22465 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
22466 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
22467 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
22468 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
22469 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
22470 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
22471 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
22472 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
22473 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
22474 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
22475 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
22476 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
22477 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
22478 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
22479 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
22480 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
22481 playing when the download is done.</p>
22482
22483 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
22484 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
22485 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
22486 too.</p>
22487
22488 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
22489 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
22490 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
22491 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
22492
22493       </div>
22494       <div class="tags">
22495
22496
22497         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
22498
22499
22500       </div>
22501     </div>
22502     <div class="padding"></div>
22503
22504     <div class="entry">
22505       <div class="title">
22506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
22507       </div>
22508       <div class="date">
22509         28th December 2008
22510       </div>
22511       <div class="body">
22512         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
22513 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
22514 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
22515 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
22516 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
22517 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
22518 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
22519 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
22520 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
22521 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
22522 source, sink and mixer applications and
22523 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
22524 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
22525 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
22526 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
22527 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
22528 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
22529 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
22530 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
22531 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
22532
22533 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
22534 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
22535 larger stick as well.</p>
22536
22537       </div>
22538       <div class="tags">
22539
22540
22541         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
22542
22543
22544       </div>
22545     </div>
22546     <div class="padding"></div>
22547
22548     <div class="entry">
22549       <div class="title">
22550         <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>
22551       </div>
22552       <div class="date">
22553          7th December 2008
22554       </div>
22555       <div class="body">
22556         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
22557 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
22558 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
22559 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
22560 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
22561 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
22562 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
22563 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
22564
22565 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
22566 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
22567 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
22568 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
22569 of these cards.</p>
22570
22571       </div>
22572       <div class="tags">
22573
22574
22575         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>.
22576
22577
22578       </div>
22579     </div>
22580     <div class="padding"></div>
22581
22582     <div class="entry">
22583       <div class="title">
22584         <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>
22585       </div>
22586       <div class="date">
22587         25th November 2008
22588       </div>
22589       <div class="body">
22590         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
22591 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
22592 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
22593 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
22594 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
22595 notes are available on
22596 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
22597 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
22598 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
22599 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
22600 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
22601 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
22602 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
22603 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
22604 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
22605
22606 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
22607 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
22608
22609       </div>
22610       <div class="tags">
22611
22612
22613         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>.
22614
22615
22616       </div>
22617     </div>
22618     <div class="padding"></div>
22619
22620     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
22621     <div id="sidebar">
22622
22623
22624
22625 <h2>Archive</h2>
22626 <ul>
22627
22628 <li>2015
22629 <ul>
22630
22631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22632
22633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22634
22635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
22636
22637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
22638
22639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22640
22641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22642
22643 </ul></li>
22644
22645 <li>2014
22646 <ul>
22647
22648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22649
22650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
22651
22652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
22653
22654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22655
22656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
22657
22658 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22659
22660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
22661
22662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
22663
22664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22665
22666 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
22667
22668 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22669
22670 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
22671
22672 </ul></li>
22673
22674 <li>2013
22675 <ul>
22676
22677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
22678
22679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
22680
22681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
22682
22683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
22684
22685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22686
22687 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
22688
22689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22690
22691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22692
22693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22694
22695 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
22696
22697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
22698
22699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22700
22701 </ul></li>
22702
22703 <li>2012
22704 <ul>
22705
22706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22707
22708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
22709
22710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
22711
22712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
22713
22714 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
22715
22716 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
22717
22718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
22719
22720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22721
22722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
22723
22724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
22725
22726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
22727
22728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22729
22730 </ul></li>
22731
22732 <li>2011
22733 <ul>
22734
22735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
22736
22737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22738
22739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
22740
22741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22742
22743 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22744
22745 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22746
22747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22748
22749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22750
22751 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
22752
22753 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22754
22755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22756
22757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
22758
22759 </ul></li>
22760
22761 <li>2010
22762 <ul>
22763
22764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22765
22766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
22767
22768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
22769
22770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
22771
22772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22773
22774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
22775
22776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
22777
22778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
22779
22780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
22781
22782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
22783
22784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
22785
22786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
22787
22788 </ul></li>
22789
22790 <li>2009
22791 <ul>
22792
22793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
22794
22795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
22796
22797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
22798
22799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
22800
22801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22802
22803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
22804
22805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
22806
22807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22808
22809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
22810
22811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22812
22813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22814
22815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22816
22817 </ul></li>
22818
22819 <li>2008
22820 <ul>
22821
22822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
22823
22824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22825
22826 </ul></li>
22827
22828 </ul>
22829
22830
22831
22832 <h2>Tags</h2>
22833 <ul>
22834
22835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
22836
22837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
22838
22839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
22840
22841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
22842
22843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
22844
22845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
22846
22847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
22848
22849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
22850
22851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
22852
22853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
22854
22855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
22856
22857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
22858
22859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (13)</a></li>
22860
22861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
22862
22863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (278)</a></li>
22864
22865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
22866
22867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
22868
22869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (15)</a></li>
22870
22871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
22872
22873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (15)</a></li>
22874
22875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
22876
22877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
22878
22879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
22880
22881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
22882
22883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
22884
22885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
22886
22887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
22888
22889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
22890
22891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (34)</a></li>
22892
22893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (262)</a></li>
22894
22895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (176)</a></li>
22896
22897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (16)</a></li>
22898
22899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
22900
22901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (52)</a></li>
22902
22903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
22904
22905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
22906
22907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
22908
22909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
22910
22911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
22912
22913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
22914
22915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
22916
22917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
22918
22919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
22920
22921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
22922
22923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
22924
22925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
22926
22927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (47)</a></li>
22928
22929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
22930
22931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
22932
22933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
22934
22935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
22936
22937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
22938
22939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
22940
22941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (52)</a></li>
22942
22943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
22944
22945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (36)</a></li>
22946
22947 </ul>
22948
22949
22950     </div>
22951     <p style="text-align: right">
22952  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
22953 </p>
22954
22955   </body>
22956 </html>