blog/tags/debian/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 debian</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="debian.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 "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         22nd February 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
  32 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
  33 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
  34 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
  35 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
  36 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
  37 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
  38 proper home since then.</p>
  39
  40 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
  41 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
  42 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
  43 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
  44 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
  45
  46 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
  47 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
  48 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
  49 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
  50 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
  51 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
  52 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
  53 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
  54 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
  55
  56       </div>
  57       <div class="tags">
  58
  59
  60         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>.
  61
  62
  63       </div>
  64     </div>
  65     <div class="padding"></div>
  66
  67     <div class="entry">
  68       <div class="title">
  69         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
  70       </div>
  71       <div class="date">
  72          3rd February 2014
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="body">
  75         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
  76 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
  77 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
  78 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
  79 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
  80 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
  81 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
  82 <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>,
  83 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
  84
  85 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
  86 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
  87 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
  88 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
  89 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
  90 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
  91
  92 <p><blockquote><pre>
  93 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
  94 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
  95 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
  96 dhclient /dev/eth0
  97 </pre></blockquote></p>
  98
  99 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
 100 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
 101 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
 102
 103 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
 104 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
 105 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
 106 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
 107 side.</p>
 108
 109 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
 110 stuff:</p>
 111
 112 <p><blockquote><pre>
 113 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 114 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
 115 EOF
 116 apt-get update
 117 apt-get dist-upgrade
 118 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
 119     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
 120 update-alternatives --config runsystem
 121 </pre></blockquote></p>
 122
 123 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
 124 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
 125 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
 126 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
 127 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
 128 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 129 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 130 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 131 ssh instead.
 132
 133 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 134 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 135 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 136 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 137 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 138 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
 139
 140 <p><blockquote><pre>
 141 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
 142 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 143 EOF
 144 </pre></blockquote></p>
 145
 146 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 147 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 148 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 149 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
 150
 151 <p><blockquote><pre>
 152 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
 153 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 154 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 155 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 156 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 157 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 158 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 159 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 160 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 161 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 162 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 163 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 164 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 165 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 166 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 167 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 168 #
 169 </pre></blockquote></p>
 170
 171 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 172 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 173 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 174 command line stuff.<p>
 175
 176       </div>
 177       <div class="tags">
 178
 179
 180         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>.
 181
 182
 183       </div>
 184     </div>
 185     <div class="padding"></div>
 186
 187     <div class="entry">
 188       <div class="title">
 189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="date">
 192         14th January 2014
 193       </div>
 194       <div class="body">
 195         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
 196 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
 197 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
 198 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
 199 the source.  The company behind it provide
 200 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
 201 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
 202 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
 203 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
 204 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
 205 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
 206 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
 207 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
 208 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
 209 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
 210 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
 211 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
 212 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
 213 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
 214 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
 215 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
 216 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
 217 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
 218 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
 219
 220 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
 221
 222 <ul>
 223
 224   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
 225   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
 226   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
 227
 228 </ul>
 229
 230 <p>You can
 231 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 232 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 233 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 234 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 235 include a test suite check.</p>
 236
 237       </div>
 238       <div class="tags">
 239
 240
 241         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>.
 242
 243
 244       </div>
 245     </div>
 246     <div class="padding"></div>
 247
 248     <div class="entry">
 249       <div class="title">
 250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="date">
 253         24th November 2013
 254       </div>
 255       <div class="body">
 256         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
 257 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
 258 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
 259 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
 260 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
 261 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
 262 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
 263 is working on.  I checked the
 264 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
 265 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
 266 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
 267 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
 268 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
 269 These are the release notes:</p>
 270
 271 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
 272
 273 <ul>
 274
 275   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
 276    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
 277    up.</li>
 278
 279   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
 280
 281   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
 282    Matthias Klose.</li>
 283
 284   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
 285    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
 286
 287   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
 288    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
 289    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
 290
 291 </ul>
 292
 293 <p>You can
 294 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 295 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 296 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 297 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 298 include a testsuite check.</p>
 299
 300       </div>
 301       <div class="tags">
 302
 303
 304         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>.
 305
 306
 307       </div>
 308     </div>
 309     <div class="padding"></div>
 310
 311     <div class="entry">
 312       <div class="title">
 313         <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>
 314       </div>
 315       <div class="date">
 316          2nd November 2013
 317       </div>
 318       <div class="body">
 319         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
 320 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
 321 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
 322 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
 323 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
 324
 325 <p><pre>
 326 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
 327 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
 328 # Provides:          rsyslog
 329 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
 330 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
 331 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
 332 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
 333 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
 334 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
 335 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
 336 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
 337 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
 338 ### END INIT INFO
 339 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
 340 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
 341 </pre></p>
 342
 343 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
 344 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
 345 info/comments.</p>
 346
 347 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
 348 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
 349
 350 <p><pre>
 351 #!/bin/sh
 352
 353 # Define LSB log_* functions.
 354 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
 355 # and status_of_proc is working.
 356 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
 357
 358 #
 359 # Function that starts the daemon/service
 360
 361 #
 362 do_start()
 363 {
 364         # Return
 365         #   0 if daemon has been started
 366         #   1 if daemon was already running
 367         #   2 if daemon could not be started
 368         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
 369                 || return 1
 370         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
 371                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
 372                 || return 2
 373         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
 374         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
 375         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
 376 }
 377
 378 #
 379 # Function that stops the daemon/service
 380 #
 381 do_stop()
 382 {
 383         # Return
 384         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
 385         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
 386         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
 387         #   other if a failure occurred
 388         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 389         RETVAL="$?"
 390         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
 391         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
 392         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
 393         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
 394         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
 395         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
 396         # sleep for some time.
 397         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
 398         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
 399         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
 400         rm -f $PIDFILE
 401         return "$RETVAL"
 402 }
 403
 404 #
 405 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
 406 #
 407 do_reload() {
 408         #
 409         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
 410         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
 411         # then implement that here.
 412         #
 413         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 414         return 0
 415 }
 416
 417 SCRIPTNAME=$1
 418 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
 419 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
 420 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
 421     script="$1"
 422     shift
 423     . $script
 424 else
 425     exit 0
 426 fi
 427
 428 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
 429 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
 430
 431 # Exit if the package is not installed
 432 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
 433
 434 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
 435 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
 436
 437 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
 438 . /lib/init/vars.sh
 439
 440 case "$1" in
 441   start)
 442         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
 443         do_start
 444         case "$?" in
 445                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 446                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 447         esac
 448         ;;
 449   stop)
 450         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
 451         do_stop
 452         case "$?" in
 453                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 454                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 455         esac
 456         ;;
 457   status)
 458         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
 459         ;;
 460   #reload|force-reload)
 461         #
 462         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
 463         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
 464         #
 465         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
 466         #do_reload
 467         #log_end_msg $?
 468         #;;
 469   restart|force-reload)
 470         #
 471         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
 472         # 'force-reload' alias
 473         #
 474         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
 475         do_stop
 476         case "$?" in
 477           0|1)
 478                 do_start
 479                 case "$?" in
 480                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
 481                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
 482                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
 483                 esac
 484                 ;;
 485           *)
 486                 # Failed to stop
 487                 log_end_msg 1
 488                 ;;
 489         esac
 490         ;;
 491   *)
 492         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
 493         exit 3
 494         ;;
 495 esac
 496
 497 :
 498 </pre></p>
 499
 500 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
 501 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
 502 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
 503 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
 504
 505 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
 506 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
 507 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
 508 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
 509 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
 510
 511       </div>
 512       <div class="tags">
 513
 514
 515         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>.
 516
 517
 518       </div>
 519     </div>
 520     <div class="padding"></div>
 521
 522     <div class="entry">
 523       <div class="title">
 524         <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>
 525       </div>
 526       <div class="date">
 527          1st November 2013
 528       </div>
 529       <div class="body">
 530         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
 531 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
 532 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
 533 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
 534 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
 535 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
 536 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
 537 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
 538 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
 539 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
 540 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
 541 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
 542
 543 <p>The source is now available from
 544 <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>
 545
 546       </div>
 547       <div class="tags">
 548
 549
 550         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>.
 551
 552
 553       </div>
 554     </div>
 555     <div class="padding"></div>
 556
 557     <div class="entry">
 558       <div class="title">
 559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
 560       </div>
 561       <div class="date">
 562         27th October 2013
 563       </div>
 564       <div class="body">
 565         <p>The
 566 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
 567 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
 568 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
 569 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
 570 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
 571 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
 572 of a plan to simplify the build system for
 573 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
 574 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
 575 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
 576 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
 577 Raspberry Pi.</p>
 578
 579 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
 580 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
 581 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
 582 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
 583 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
 584 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
 585 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
 586 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
 587 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
 588 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
 589 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
 590 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
 591 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
 592 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
 593 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
 594 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
 595 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
 596 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
 597 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
 598 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
 599 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
 600 available from
 601 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
 602 upstream project page</a>.</p>
 603
 604 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
 605 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
 606 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
 607 list:</p>
 608
 609 <p><pre>
 610 #!/bin/sh
 611 set -e # Exit on first error
 612 rootdir="$1"
 613 cd "$rootdir"
 614 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
 615 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 616 EOF
 617 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
 618 # install a kernel somewhere too.
 619 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
 620     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 621 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 622 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
 623 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
 624 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
 625 </pre></p>
 626
 627 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
 628 to build the image:</p>
 629
 630 <pre>
 631 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
 632     --variant minbase \
 633     --arch armel \
 634     --distribution jessie \
 635     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 636     --image test.img \
 637     --size 600M \
 638     --bootsize 64M \
 639     --boottype vfat \
 640     --log-level debug \
 641     --verbose \
 642     --no-kernel \
 643     --no-extlinux \
 644     --root-password raspberry \
 645     --hostname raspberrypi \
 646     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 647     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 648     --package netbase \
 649     --package git-core \
 650     --package binutils \
 651     --package ca-certificates \
 652     --package wget \
 653     --package kmod
 654 </pre></p>
 655
 656 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 657 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 658 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 659 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 660 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 661 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 662 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 663
 664 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 665 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 666 build dependency list.</p>
 667
 668 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 669 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 670 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 671 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 672
 673       </div>
 674       <div class="tags">
 675
 676
 677         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>.
 678
 679
 680       </div>
 681     </div>
 682     <div class="padding"></div>
 683
 684     <div class="entry">
 685       <div class="title">
 686         <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>
 687       </div>
 688       <div class="date">
 689         15th October 2013
 690       </div>
 691       <div class="body">
 692         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
 693 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
 694 these. :)</p>
 695
 696 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
 697 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
 698 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
 699 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
 700 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
 701 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
 702 hope you will to. :)</p>
 703
 704 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
 705 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
 706 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
 707 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
 708 donated.  Are you next?</p>
 709
 710 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
 711 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
 712 statement under the heading
 713 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
 714 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
 715 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
 716 too.</p>
 717
 718       </div>
 719       <div class="tags">
 720
 721
 722         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>.
 723
 724
 725       </div>
 726     </div>
 727     <div class="padding"></div>
 728
 729     <div class="entry">
 730       <div class="title">
 731         <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>
 732       </div>
 733       <div class="date">
 734         27th September 2013
 735       </div>
 736       <div class="body">
 737         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
 738 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
 739 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
 740 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
 741
 742 <ul>
 743
 744 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
 745 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
 746
 747 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
 748 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 749
 750 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
 751 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
 752 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
 753 (Youtube)</li>
 754
 755 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
 756 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
 757
 758 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
 759 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 760
 761 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
 762 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 763 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
 764
 765 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
 766 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
 767 (Youtube)</li>
 768
 769 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
 770 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
 771
 772 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
 773 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
 774
 775 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
 776 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 777 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
 778
 779 </ul>
 780
 781 <p>A larger list is available from
 782 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
 783 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
 784
 785 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 786 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 787 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 788 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 789 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 790 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 791 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 792 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
 793 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
 794 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 795 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 796
 797       </div>
 798       <div class="tags">
 799
 800
 801         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>.
 802
 803
 804       </div>
 805     </div>
 806     <div class="padding"></div>
 807
 808     <div class="entry">
 809       <div class="title">
 810         <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>
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="date">
 813         10th September 2013
 814       </div>
 815       <div class="body">
 816         <p>I was introduced to the
 817 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
 818 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 819 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 820 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 821 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 822 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 823 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 824 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
 825
 826 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 827 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 828 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
 829 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 830 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
 831
 832 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
 833 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 834 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 835 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 836 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 837 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
 838 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 839 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 840 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 841 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
 842 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 843 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 844 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 845 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 846 missing in Debian).</p>
 847
 848 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 849 scripts
 850 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
 851 and a administrative web interface
 852 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
 853 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 854 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
 855 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 856 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
 857 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 858 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
 859 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 860 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 861 this is really working yet, see
 862 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
 863 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 864 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 865 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 866 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 867 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 868 with lots of half baked features.</p>
 869
 870 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 871 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 872 at.</p>
 873
 874 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
 875
 876 <ol>
 877
 878 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
 879 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
 880 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 881 to the Debian installer:<p>
 882 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
 883
 884 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 885 install on.</li>
 886
 887 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 888 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
 889
 890 </ol>
 891
 892 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
 893
 894 <ol>
 895
 896 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
 897 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
 898 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
 899 <pre>
 900 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
 901 </pre></li>
 902 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
 903 <pre>
 904 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 905    apt-key add -
 906 apt-get update
 907 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 908 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 909 </pre></li>
 910 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
 911
 912 </ol>
 913
 914 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 915 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 916 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 917 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 918 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 919
 920 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 921 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 922 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 923 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 924
 925 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 926 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 927 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 928 irc.debian.org and the
 929 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 930 mailing list</a>.</p>
 931
 932 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 933 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 934 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 935 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 936 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 937 default password is 'secret'.</p>
 938
 939       </div>
 940       <div class="tags">
 941
 942
 943         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>.
 944
 945
 946       </div>
 947     </div>
 948     <div class="padding"></div>
 949
 950     <div class="entry">
 951       <div class="title">
 952         <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>
 953       </div>
 954       <div class="date">
 955         18th August 2013
 956       </div>
 957       <div class="body">
 958         <p>Earlier, I reported about
 959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
 960 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
 961 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
 962 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
 963 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
 964 currently on the disk.</p>
 965
 966 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
 967 <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>
 968 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
 969 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
 970 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
 971 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
 972 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
 973 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
 974 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
 975 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
 976 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
 977 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
 978 the broken disks.</p>
 979
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="tags">
 982
 983
 984         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>.
 985
 986
 987       </div>
 988     </div>
 989     <div class="padding"></div>
 990
 991     <div class="entry">
 992       <div class="title">
 993         <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>
 994       </div>
 995       <div class="date">
 996         17th July 2013
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="body">
 999         <p>Today I switched to
1000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1001 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
1002 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1003 <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
1004 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1005 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1006 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1007 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1008 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
1009 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1010 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1011 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1012 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1013 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1014 station from now on.</p>
1015
1016 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1017 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1018 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
1019 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1020 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1021 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
1022 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1023 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1024 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1025 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1026 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1027 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1028
1029 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1030 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
1031 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1032 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1033 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
1034 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
1035 parameters are tuned:</p>
1036
1037 <ul>
1038
1039 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1040     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
1041
1042 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1043     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1044     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
1045
1046 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1047     systems.</li>
1048
1049 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1050     /etc/fstab.</li>
1051
1052 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
1053
1054 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1055     cron.daily).</li>
1056
1057 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1058     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
1059
1060 </ul>
1061
1062 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1063 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1064 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1065 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1066 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1067 from getting the data on the disk (see
1068 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
1069 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1070 right thing to do.</p>
1071
1072 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1073 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1074 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
1075
1076 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1077 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1078 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1079 instead of during my work.</p>
1080
1081 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1082 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
1083
1084 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
1085 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1086 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
1087
1088 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1089 there.</p>
1090
1091 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1092 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1093 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1094 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1095 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1096 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1097 back.</p>
1098
1099       </div>
1100       <div class="tags">
1101
1102
1103         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>.
1104
1105
1106       </div>
1107     </div>
1108     <div class="padding"></div>
1109
1110     <div class="entry">
1111       <div class="title">
1112         <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>
1113       </div>
1114       <div class="date">
1115         10th July 2013
1116       </div>
1117       <div class="body">
1118         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
1120 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
1121 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1122 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
1123 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
1124 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
1125 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
1126
1127 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1128 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
1129 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
1130 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1131 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1132 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
1133 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
1134 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
1135 lock up when I download a new
1136 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
1137 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1138 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
1139
1140 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1141 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1142 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1143 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1144 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1145 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1146
1147 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1148 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
1149 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1150 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1151 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1152 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1153
1154 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1155 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
1156 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1157 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1158 exist).</p>
1159
1160       </div>
1161       <div class="tags">
1162
1163
1164         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>.
1165
1166
1167       </div>
1168     </div>
1169     <div class="padding"></div>
1170
1171     <div class="entry">
1172       <div class="title">
1173         <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>
1174       </div>
1175       <div class="date">
1176          9th July 2013
1177       </div>
1178       <div class="body">
1179         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
1180 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1181 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1182 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
1183 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1184 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
1185 Bitraf</a>.</p>
1186
1187 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
1188 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
1189 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
1190 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
1191 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
1192
1193       </div>
1194       <div class="tags">
1195
1196
1197         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>.
1198
1199
1200       </div>
1201     </div>
1202     <div class="padding"></div>
1203
1204     <div class="entry">
1205       <div class="title">
1206         <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>
1207       </div>
1208       <div class="date">
1209          5th July 2013
1210       </div>
1211       <div class="body">
1212         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1213 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
1214 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
1215 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1216 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
1217 ended up picking a
1218 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
1219 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1220 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
1221 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
1222 on that below.</p>
1223
1224 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1225 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1226 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1227 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1228 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1229 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
1230 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
1231 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
1232 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
1233
1234 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
1235 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
1236 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
1237 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
1238 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
1239 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
1240 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
1241
1242 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
1243 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
1244
1245 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
1246 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
1247 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
1248 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
1249 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
1250 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
1251 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
1252 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
1253 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
1254 kernel developers as
1255 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
1256 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
1257 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
1258 Lenovo forums, both for
1259 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
1260 2012-11-10</a> and for
1261 <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
1262 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
1263 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
1264 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
1265 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
1266 There is even a
1267 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
1268 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
1269 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
1270
1271 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
1272 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
1273 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
1274 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
1275 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
1276 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
1277 fixed. :)</p>
1278
1279       </div>
1280       <div class="tags">
1281
1282
1283         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>.
1284
1285
1286       </div>
1287     </div>
1288     <div class="padding"></div>
1289
1290     <div class="entry">
1291       <div class="title">
1292         <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>
1293       </div>
1294       <div class="date">
1295          4th July 2013
1296       </div>
1297       <div class="body">
1298         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1299 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1300 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
1301 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
1302 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
1303 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
1304 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1305 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1306 with an expencive door stop.</p>
1307
1308 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1309 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1310 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1311 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1312 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1313 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1314 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
1315
1316 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1317 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1318 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
1319 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1320 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1321 new laptop now. :)</p>
1322
1323 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
1324
1325       </div>
1326       <div class="tags">
1327
1328
1329         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>.
1330
1331
1332       </div>
1333     </div>
1334     <div class="padding"></div>
1335
1336     <div class="entry">
1337       <div class="title">
1338         <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>
1339       </div>
1340       <div class="date">
1341         25th June 2013
1342       </div>
1343       <div class="body">
1344         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1345 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1346 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1347 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
1348 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1349 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
1350 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
1351 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1352 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1353 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1354 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
1355
1356 <p><pre>
1357 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1358 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1359 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1360 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1361 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1362 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1363 firmware-ipw2x00
1364 firmware-ipw2x00
1365 Preconfiguring packages ...
1366 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1367 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1368 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1369 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
1370 #
1371 </pre></p>
1372
1373 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1374 printed instead:</p>
1375
1376 <p><pre>
1377 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1378 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1379 #
1380 </pre></p>
1381
1382 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1383 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
1384
1385 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
1386 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1387 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
1388 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1389 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1390 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
1391 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1392 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
1393 machine.</p>
1394
1395 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1396 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1397 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
1398 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1399 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1400 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
1401
1402       </div>
1403       <div class="tags">
1404
1405
1406         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>.
1407
1408
1409       </div>
1410     </div>
1411     <div class="padding"></div>
1412
1413     <div class="entry">
1414       <div class="title">
1415         <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>
1416       </div>
1417       <div class="date">
1418         11th June 2013
1419       </div>
1420       <div class="body">
1421         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
1422 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
1423 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
1424 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
1425 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
1426 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
1427 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
1428 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
1429 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
1430 i915 driver used by the
1431 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
1432 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
1433
1434 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
1435 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
1436 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
1437 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
1438 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
1439
1440 <pre>
1441 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
1442 update-initramfs -u -k all
1443 </pre>
1444
1445 <p>Since March 2012 there is
1446 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
1447 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
1448 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
1449 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
1450 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
1451 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
1452 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
1453 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
1454 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
1455 number.</p>
1456
1457 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
1458 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
1459
1460 <p><pre>
1461 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
1462     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
1463     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
1464  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
1465  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
1466     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
1467  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
1468     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
1469  Latency: 0
1470  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
1471  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
1472  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
1473  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
1474  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
1475  Capabilities: <access denied>
1476  Kernel driver in use: i915
1477 </pre></p>
1478
1479 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
1480
1481 <p><pre>
1482 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
1483        ...
1484         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
1485         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
1486        ...
1487 }
1488 </pre></p>
1489
1490 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
1491 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
1492 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
1493 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
1494 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
1495 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
1496 yet shown up in
1497 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
1498 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
1499 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
1500 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
1501 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
1502 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
1503
1504 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
1505 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
1506 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
1507 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
1508 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
1509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
1510 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
1511 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
1512 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
1513 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
1514 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
1515 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
1516
1517 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
1518 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
1519 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
1520 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
1521 backlight.</p>
1522
1523       </div>
1524       <div class="tags">
1525
1526
1527         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>.
1528
1529
1530       </div>
1531     </div>
1532     <div class="padding"></div>
1533
1534     <div class="entry">
1535       <div class="title">
1536         <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>
1537       </div>
1538       <div class="date">
1539         27th May 2013
1540       </div>
1541       <div class="body">
1542         <p>Two days ago, I asked
1543 <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
1544 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
1545 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
1546 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
1547 and Windows 8.</p>
1548
1549 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
1550 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
1551 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
1552 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
1553 enough to tell.</p>
1554
1555 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
1556 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
1557 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
1558 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
1559 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
1560 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
1561 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
1562 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
1563 to follow.</p>
1564
1565 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
1566 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
1567 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
1568 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
1569 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
1570 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
1571 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
1572 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
1573
1574 <p>I've updated the
1575 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
1576 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
1577 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
1578 machine.</p>
1579
1580 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
1581 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
1582
1583       </div>
1584       <div class="tags">
1585
1586
1587         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>.
1588
1589
1590       </div>
1591     </div>
1592     <div class="padding"></div>
1593
1594     <div class="entry">
1595       <div class="title">
1596         <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>
1597       </div>
1598       <div class="date">
1599         25th May 2013
1600       </div>
1601       <div class="body">
1602         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
1603 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
1604 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
1605 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
1606 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
1607 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
1608
1609 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
1610 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
1611 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
1612 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
1613 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
1614 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
1615 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
1616 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
1617 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
1618 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
1619
1620 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
1621 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
1622 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
1623 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
1624 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
1625 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
1626
1627 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
1628 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
1629 on new Laptops?</p>
1630
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="tags">
1633
1634
1635         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>.
1636
1637
1638       </div>
1639     </div>
1640     <div class="padding"></div>
1641
1642     <div class="entry">
1643       <div class="title">
1644         <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>
1645       </div>
1646       <div class="date">
1647         17th May 2013
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="body">
1650         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
1651 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
1652 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
1653 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
1654 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
1655 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
1656 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
1657 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
1658 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
1659 donate some money</a>.
1660
1661 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
1662 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
1663 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
1664 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
1665 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
1666
1667 <p>The script,
1668 <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/>
1669 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
1670 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
1671 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
1672
1673 <ol>
1674
1675 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
1676 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
1677 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
1678     our configuration.</li>
1679 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
1680     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
1681     according to the profile specified in the config above,
1682     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
1683 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
1684     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
1685 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
1686
1687 </ol>
1688
1689 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
1690 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
1691 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
1692 the needed packages.</p>
1693
1694 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
1695 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
1696 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
1697 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
1698 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
1699 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
1700
1701 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
1702 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
1703 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
1704
1705 <p><pre>
1706 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
1707 DESKTOP="lxde"
1708 </pre></p>
1709
1710 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
1711 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
1712 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
1713 boot.</p>
1714
1715       </div>
1716       <div class="tags">
1717
1718
1719         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>.
1720
1721
1722       </div>
1723     </div>
1724     <div class="padding"></div>
1725
1726     <div class="entry">
1727       <div class="title">
1728         <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>
1729       </div>
1730       <div class="date">
1731         11th May 2013
1732       </div>
1733       <div class="body">
1734         <P>In January,
1735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
1736 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
1737 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
1738 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
1739 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
1740 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
1741 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
1742 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
1743 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
1744 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
1745 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
1746 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
1747
1748 <p><table>
1749 <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>
1750 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
1751 <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>
1752 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
1753 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
1754 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
1755 <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>
1756 <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>
1757 <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>
1758 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
1759 </table></p>
1760
1761 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
1762 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
1763 available in experimental.</p>
1764
1765 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
1766 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
1767 for LEGO designers.</p>
1768
1769       </div>
1770       <div class="tags">
1771
1772
1773         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>.
1774
1775
1776       </div>
1777     </div>
1778     <div class="padding"></div>
1779
1780     <div class="entry">
1781       <div class="title">
1782         <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>
1783       </div>
1784       <div class="date">
1785          5th May 2013
1786       </div>
1787       <div class="body">
1788         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
1789 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
1790 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
1791 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
1792 soon.</p>
1793
1794 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
1795 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
1796 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
1797 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
1798 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
1799 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
1800 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
1801 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
1802 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
1803 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
1804 Edu.</a>
1805
1806 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
1807 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
1808 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
1809 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
1810 follow.<p>
1811
1812       </div>
1813       <div class="tags">
1814
1815
1816         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>.
1817
1818
1819       </div>
1820     </div>
1821     <div class="padding"></div>
1822
1823     <div class="entry">
1824       <div class="title">
1825         <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>
1826       </div>
1827       <div class="date">
1828          3rd April 2013
1829       </div>
1830       <div class="body">
1831         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
1832 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
1833 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
1834 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
1835
1836 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
1837 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
1838 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
1839 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
1840 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
1841 BTS. :)</p>
1842
1843       </div>
1844       <div class="tags">
1845
1846
1847         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>.
1848
1849
1850       </div>
1851     </div>
1852     <div class="padding"></div>
1853
1854     <div class="entry">
1855       <div class="title">
1856         <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>
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="date">
1859          2nd February 2013
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="body">
1862         <p>My
1863 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
1864 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
1865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
1866 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1867 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
1868 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1869 version too.</p>
1870
1871 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1872 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1873 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1874 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1875 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
1876 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1877 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
1878 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
1879
1880 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1881 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1882 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
1883 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1884 it. :)</p>
1885
1886 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1887 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1888 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1889
1890       </div>
1891       <div class="tags">
1892
1893
1894         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>.
1895
1896
1897       </div>
1898     </div>
1899     <div class="padding"></div>
1900
1901     <div class="entry">
1902       <div class="title">
1903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
1904       </div>
1905       <div class="date">
1906         22nd January 2013
1907       </div>
1908       <div class="body">
1909         <p>Yesterday, I
1910 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
1911 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1912 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
1914 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
1915 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1916 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1917 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1918 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
1919 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1920 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
1921 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
1922 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
1923
1924 <pre>
1925 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1926 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
1927 </pre>
1928
1929 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
1930 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1931 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1932 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
1933
1934 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1935 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
1936 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1937 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1938 word.</p>
1939
1940 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
1941 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1942 process.</p>
1943
1944 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1945 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</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/isenkram">isenkram</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/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
1961       </div>
1962       <div class="date">
1963         21st January 2013
1964       </div>
1965       <div class="body">
1966         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
1967 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
1968 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
1969 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1970 it, fetch the
1971 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
1972 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
1973 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1974 autostart script.</p>
1975
1976 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1977
1978 <ul>
1979
1980 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1981 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1982
1983 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1984 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1985 initially did.</li>
1986
1987 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1988 the APT database, a database
1989 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1990 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1991
1992 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1993 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1994 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1995 package or packages.</li>
1996
1997 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1998 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1999
2000 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
2001 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
2002
2003 </ul>
2004
2005 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
2006 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
2007 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
2008 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
2009
2010 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
2011 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
2012 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
2013 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
2014 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
2015
2016 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
2017 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
2018 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
2019 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
2020 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
2021 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
2022 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
2023 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
2024
2025 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
2026 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
2027 '<tt>svn checkout
2028 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
2029 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
2030 devscripts package.</p>
2031
2032 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
2033 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
2034 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
2035 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
2036 instructions</a> for details.</p>
2037
2038       </div>
2039       <div class="tags">
2040
2041
2042         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>.
2043
2044
2045       </div>
2046     </div>
2047     <div class="padding"></div>
2048
2049     <div class="entry">
2050       <div class="title">
2051         <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>
2052       </div>
2053       <div class="date">
2054         19th January 2013
2055       </div>
2056       <div class="body">
2057         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
2058 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
2059 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
2060 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
2061 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
2062 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
2063 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
2064 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
2065 not a durable solution.
2066
2067 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
2068 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
2069
2070 <ul>
2071
2072 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
2073   than A4).</li>
2074 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
2075 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
2076 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
2077 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
2078 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
2079 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
2080 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
2081 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
2082 size).</li>
2083 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
2084   X.org packages.</li>
2085 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
2086   the time).
2087
2088 </ul>
2089
2090 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
2091 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
2092 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
2093 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
2094 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
2095 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
2096 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
2097 still be useful.</p>
2098
2099 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
2100 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
2101 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
2102 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
2103 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
2104 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
2105
2106       </div>
2107       <div class="tags">
2108
2109
2110         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>.
2111
2112
2113       </div>
2114     </div>
2115     <div class="padding"></div>
2116
2117     <div class="entry">
2118       <div class="title">
2119         <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>
2120       </div>
2121       <div class="date">
2122         18th January 2013
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="body">
2125         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
2126 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
2127 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
2128 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
2129 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
2130 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
2131 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
2132
2133 <pre>
2134 #!/usr/bin/python
2135 import sys
2136 import apt
2137 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
2138     cache = apt.Cache()
2139     cache.open(None)
2140     thepkgs = []
2141     for pkg in cache:
2142         version = pkg.candidate
2143         if version is None:
2144             version = pkg.installed
2145         if version is None:
2146             continue
2147         record = version.record
2148         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
2149             continue
2150         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
2151         for t in mime_types:
2152             t = t.rstrip().strip()
2153             if t == mimetype:
2154                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
2155     return thepkgs
2156 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
2157 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
2158     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
2159 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
2160 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
2161     print "  %s" %pkg
2162 </pre>
2163
2164 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
2165
2166 <pre>
2167 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
2168 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
2169   gecko-mediaplayer
2170 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
2171 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
2172   browser-plugin-gnash
2173 %
2174 </pre>
2175
2176 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
2177 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
2178 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
2179 anyone working on adding it?</p>
2180
2181 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
2182 request for icweasel support for this feature is
2183 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
2184 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
2185 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
2186 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
2187
2188       </div>
2189       <div class="tags">
2190
2191
2192         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>.
2193
2194
2195       </div>
2196     </div>
2197     <div class="padding"></div>
2198
2199     <div class="entry">
2200       <div class="title">
2201         <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>
2202       </div>
2203       <div class="date">
2204         16th January 2013
2205       </div>
2206       <div class="body">
2207         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
2208 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
2209 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
2210 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
2211 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
2212 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
2213 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
2214 downloaded by the browser.</p>
2215
2216 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
2217 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
2218 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
2219 can be found on the
2220 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
2221 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
2222 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
2223 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
2224 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
2225
2226 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
2227
2228 <pre>
2229   count MIME type
2230   ----- -----------------------
2231      32 text/plain
2232      30 audio/mpeg
2233      29 image/png
2234      28 image/jpeg
2235      27 application/ogg
2236      26 audio/x-mp3
2237      25 image/tiff
2238      25 image/gif
2239      22 image/bmp
2240      22 audio/x-wav
2241      20 audio/x-flac
2242      19 audio/x-mpegurl
2243      18 video/x-ms-asf
2244      18 audio/x-musepack
2245      18 audio/x-mpeg
2246      18 application/x-ogg
2247      17 video/mpeg
2248      17 audio/x-scpls
2249      17 audio/ogg
2250      16 video/x-ms-wmv
2251 </pre>
2252
2253 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
2254
2255 <pre>
2256   count MIME type
2257   ----- -----------------------
2258      33 text/plain
2259      32 image/png
2260      32 image/jpeg
2261      29 audio/mpeg
2262      27 image/gif
2263      26 image/tiff
2264      26 application/ogg
2265      25 audio/x-mp3
2266      22 image/bmp
2267      21 audio/x-wav
2268      19 audio/x-mpegurl
2269      19 audio/x-mpeg
2270      18 video/mpeg
2271      18 audio/x-scpls
2272      18 audio/x-flac
2273      18 application/x-ogg
2274      17 video/x-ms-asf
2275      17 text/html
2276      17 audio/x-musepack
2277      16 image/x-xbitmap
2278 </pre>
2279
2280 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
2281
2282 <pre>
2283   count MIME type
2284   ----- -----------------------
2285      31 text/plain
2286      31 image/png
2287      31 image/jpeg
2288      29 audio/mpeg
2289      28 application/ogg
2290      27 image/gif
2291      26 image/tiff
2292      26 audio/x-mp3
2293      23 audio/x-wav
2294      22 image/bmp
2295      21 audio/x-flac
2296      20 audio/x-mpegurl
2297      19 audio/x-mpeg
2298      18 video/x-ms-asf
2299      18 video/mpeg
2300      18 audio/x-scpls
2301      18 application/x-ogg
2302      17 audio/x-musepack
2303      16 video/x-ms-wmv
2304      16 video/x-msvideo
2305 </pre>
2306
2307 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
2308 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
2309 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
2310 issues.</p>
2311
2312 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
2313 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
2314
2315       </div>
2316       <div class="tags">
2317
2318
2319         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>.
2320
2321
2322       </div>
2323     </div>
2324     <div class="padding"></div>
2325
2326     <div class="entry">
2327       <div class="title">
2328         <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>
2329       </div>
2330       <div class="date">
2331         15th January 2013
2332       </div>
2333       <div class="body">
2334         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
2335 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
2336 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
2337 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
2338 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
2339 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
2340 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
2341 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
2342 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
2343 packages.</p>
2344
2345 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
2346 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
2347 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
2348 modalias.</p>
2349
2350 <p><blockquote>
2351 Package: package-name
2352 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
2353 </blockquote></p>
2354
2355 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
2356 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
2357
2358 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
2359 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
2360
2361 <p><blockquote>
2362 Package: cheese
2363 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
2364 </blockquote></p>
2365
2366 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
2367 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
2368
2369 <p><blockquote>
2370 Package: pcmciautils
2371 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
2372 </blockquote></p>
2373
2374 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
2375 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
2376
2377 <p><blockquote>
2378 Package: colorhug-client
2379 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
2380 </blockquote></p>
2381
2382 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
2383 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
2384 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
2385
2386 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
2387 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
2388 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
2389 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
2390 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
2391 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
2392 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
2393 Raring.</p>
2394
2395 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
2396 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
2397 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
2398 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
2399 try the
2400 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
2401 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
2402 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
2403 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
2404
2405 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
2406 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
2407
2408 <p><blockquote>
2409 % ./hw-support-lookup
2410 <br>yubikey-personalization
2411 <br>%
2412 </blockquote></p>
2413
2414 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
2415 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
2416
2417 <p><blockquote>
2418 % ./hw-support-lookup
2419 <br>pcmciautils
2420 <br>%
2421 </blockquote></p>
2422
2423 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
2424 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
2425 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
2426
2427 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
2428 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
2429 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
2430 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
2431 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
2432 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
2433 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
2434 see if it work.</p>
2435
2436 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2437 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2438 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2439 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2440
2441       </div>
2442       <div class="tags">
2443
2444
2445         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>.
2446
2447
2448       </div>
2449     </div>
2450     <div class="padding"></div>
2451
2452     <div class="entry">
2453       <div class="title">
2454         <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>
2455       </div>
2456       <div class="date">
2457         14th January 2013
2458       </div>
2459       <div class="body">
2460         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
2461 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
2462 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
2463 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
2464 in
2465 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2466 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
2467
2468 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
2469
2470 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
2471 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
2472 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
2473 &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;,
2474 &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
2475 &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;.
2476
2477 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
2478 this shell script:</p>
2479
2480 <pre>
2481 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
2482 </pre>
2483
2484 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
2485 using modinfo:</p>
2486
2487 <pre>
2488 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
2489 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
2490 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
2491 %
2492 </pre>
2493
2494 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
2495
2496 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
2497 Bridge memory controller:</p>
2498
2499 <p><blockquote>
2500 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
2501 </blockquote></p>
2502
2503 <p>This represent these values:</p>
2504
2505 <pre>
2506  v   00008086  (vendor)
2507  d   00002770  (device)
2508  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
2509  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
2510  bc  06        (bus class)
2511  sc  00        (bus subclass)
2512  i   00        (interface)
2513 </pre>
2514
2515 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
2516 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
2517 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
2518 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
2519
2520 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
2521 means.</p>
2522
2523 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
2524
2525 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
2526 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
2527
2528 <p><blockquote>
2529 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
2530 </blockquote></p>
2531
2532 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
2533
2534 <pre>
2535  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
2536  p    0001  (device product)
2537  d    0206  (bcddevice)
2538  dc     09  (device class)
2539  dsc    00  (device subclass)
2540  dp     00  (device protocol)
2541  ic     09  (interface class)
2542  isc    00  (interface subclass)
2543  ip     00  (interface protocol)
2544 </pre>
2545
2546 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
2547 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
2548 these alias entries show up:</p>
2549
2550 <p><blockquote>
2551 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
2552 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
2553 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
2554 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
2555 </blockquote></p>
2556
2557 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
2558 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
2559 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
2560
2561 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
2562
2563 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
2564 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
2565
2566 <p><blockquote>
2567 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2568 </blockquote></p>
2569
2570 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
2571
2572 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
2573
2574 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
2575 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
2576 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
2577
2578 <p><blockquote>
2579 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
2580 </blockquote></p>
2581
2582 <p>The values present are</p>
2583
2584 <pre>
2585  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
2586  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
2587  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
2588  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
2589  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
2590  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
2591  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
2592  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
2593  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
2594  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
2595  ct   10             (chassis type)
2596  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
2597 </pre>
2598
2599 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
2600 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
2601
2602 <pre>
2603   3 Desktop
2604   4 Low Profile Desktop
2605   5 Pizza Box
2606   6 Mini Tower
2607   7 Tower
2608   8 Portable
2609   9 Laptop
2610  10 Notebook
2611  11 Hand Held
2612  12 Docking Station
2613  13 All In One
2614  14 Sub Notebook
2615  15 Space-saving
2616  16 Lunch Box
2617  17 Main Server Chassis
2618  18 Expansion Chassis
2619  19 Sub Chassis
2620  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
2621  21 Peripheral Chassis
2622  22 RAID Chassis
2623  23 Rack Mount Chassis
2624  24 Sealed-case PC
2625  25 Multi-system
2626  26 CompactPCI
2627  27 AdvancedTCA
2628  28 Blade
2629  29 Blade Enclosing
2630 </pre>
2631
2632 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
2633 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
2634 claim it is a desktop.</p>
2635
2636 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
2637
2638 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
2639 test machine:</p>
2640
2641 <p><blockquote>
2642 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
2643 </blockquote></p>
2644
2645 <p>The values present are</p>
2646
2647 <pre>
2648   ty  01  (type)
2649   pr  00  (prototype)
2650   id  00  (id)
2651   ex  00  (extra)
2652 </pre>
2653
2654 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
2655 the valid values are.</p>
2656
2657 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
2658
2659 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
2660 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
2661 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2662 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2663 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
2664 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2665 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
2666
2667 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
2668
2669 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2670 one can use the following shell script:</p>
2671
2672 <pre>
2673   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2674     echo "$id" ; \
2675     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
2676   done
2677 </pre>
2678
2679 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2680 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
2681
2682 <pre>
2683   acpi:ACPI0003:
2684     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2685   acpi:device:
2686   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2687   acpi:IBM0068:
2688     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2689     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2690     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2691     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2692   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2693     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2694     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2695     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2696   [...]
2697 </pre>
2698
2699 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2700 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2701 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2702 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2703
2704 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
2705 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
2706 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
2707
2708       </div>
2709       <div class="tags">
2710
2711
2712         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>.
2713
2714
2715       </div>
2716     </div>
2717     <div class="padding"></div>
2718
2719     <div class="entry">
2720       <div class="title">
2721         <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>
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="date">
2724         10th January 2013
2725       </div>
2726       <div class="body">
2727         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2728 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2729 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2730 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
2731 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
2732 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
2733 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2734 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
2735 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2736 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
2737 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2738 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
2739 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2740 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
2741 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2742 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
2743 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
2744 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
2745
2746       </div>
2747       <div class="tags">
2748
2749
2750         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>.
2751
2752
2753       </div>
2754     </div>
2755     <div class="padding"></div>
2756
2757     <div class="entry">
2758       <div class="title">
2759         <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>
2760       </div>
2761       <div class="date">
2762          9th January 2013
2763       </div>
2764       <div class="body">
2765         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2766 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2767 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2768 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2769 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2770 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2771 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2772 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2773 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2774 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
2775 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
2776
2777 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
2778 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
2779 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
2780 simple:
2781
2782 <ul>
2783
2784 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2785   starting when a user log in.</li>
2786
2787 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2788   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
2789
2790 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2791   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2792   packages.</li>
2793
2794 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2795   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
2796
2797 </ul>
2798
2799 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2800 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2801 discover database to find packages and
2802 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
2803 packages.</p>
2804
2805 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2806 draft package is now checked into
2807 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2808 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
2809 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
2810 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2811 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2812 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
2813 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
2814 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2815 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
2816 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
2817 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
2818 because of the freeze).</p>
2819
2820 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2821 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2822 inserted):</p>
2823
2824 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
2825
2826 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2827 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
2828 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
2829
2830 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2831 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2832 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
2833 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2834 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2835 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2836 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
2837
2838 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2839 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
2840 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
2841 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2842 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
2843 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
2844 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2845 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
2846 not be installed?</p>
2847
2848 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2849 please send me an email. :)</p>
2850
2851       </div>
2852       <div class="tags">
2853
2854
2855         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>.
2856
2857
2858       </div>
2859     </div>
2860     <div class="padding"></div>
2861
2862     <div class="entry">
2863       <div class="title">
2864         <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>
2865       </div>
2866       <div class="date">
2867          2nd January 2013
2868       </div>
2869       <div class="body">
2870         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2871 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
2872 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2873 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2874 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
2875 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2876 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
2877 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2878 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
2879 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
2880
2881 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
2882 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
2883 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
2884
2885       </div>
2886       <div class="tags">
2887
2888
2889         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>.
2890
2891
2892       </div>
2893     </div>
2894     <div class="padding"></div>
2895
2896     <div class="entry">
2897       <div class="title">
2898         <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>
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="date">
2901         25th December 2012
2902       </div>
2903       <div class="body">
2904         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2905 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
2906
2907 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
2908 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2909 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2910 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2911 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
2912 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
2913 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2914 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
2915 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2916 name.</p>
2917
2918 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2919 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2920 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
2921
2922 <blockquote><pre>
2923 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2924 cd bitcoin
2925 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2926 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2927 </pre></blockquote>
2928
2929 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
2930 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2931 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
2932 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
2933 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
2934 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2935 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2936 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2937 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
2938
2939 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2940 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2941 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2942
2943       </div>
2944       <div class="tags">
2945
2946
2947         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>.
2948
2949
2950       </div>
2951     </div>
2952     <div class="padding"></div>
2953
2954     <div class="entry">
2955       <div class="title">
2956         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="date">
2959         21st December 2012
2960       </div>
2961       <div class="body">
2962         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
2963 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
2964 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2965 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
2966 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
2967 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
2968 is now maintained by a
2969 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
2970 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
2971 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2972 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2973 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2974 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2975 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2976 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2977 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2978 Corallo in a
2979 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2980 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2981 Debian package.</p>
2982
2983 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2984 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2985 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2986 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2987 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2988 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2989 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2990 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2991 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2992 new version to unstable.
2993
2994 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2995 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2996 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2997 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2998 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2999 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
3000 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
3001 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
3002 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
3003 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
3004 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
3005 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
3006 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
3007 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
3008 have not tested them.</p>
3009
3010 <p>My
3011 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
3012 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
3013 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
3014 years ago, as can be
3015 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
3016 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
3017 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
3018 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
3019 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
3020 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
3021 the same address as last time,
3022 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3023
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="tags">
3026
3027
3028         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>.
3029
3030
3031       </div>
3032     </div>
3033     <div class="padding"></div>
3034
3035     <div class="entry">
3036       <div class="title">
3037         <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>
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="date">
3040          7th September 2012
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="body">
3043         <p>As I
3044 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
3045 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
3046 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
3047 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
3048 repository for the project</a>.</p>
3049
3050 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
3051 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
3052 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
3053 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
3054
3055 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
3056 PostScript formats at
3057 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
3058 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
3059
3060       </div>
3061       <div class="tags">
3062
3063
3064         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>.
3065
3066
3067       </div>
3068     </div>
3069     <div class="padding"></div>
3070
3071     <div class="entry">
3072       <div class="title">
3073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
3074       </div>
3075       <div class="date">
3076         16th August 2012
3077       </div>
3078       <div class="body">
3079         <p>I dag fyller
3080 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
3081 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
3082 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
3083
3084       </div>
3085       <div class="tags">
3086
3087
3088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
3089
3090
3091       </div>
3092     </div>
3093     <div class="padding"></div>
3094
3095     <div class="entry">
3096       <div class="title">
3097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
3098       </div>
3099       <div class="date">
3100         24th June 2012
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="body">
3103         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3104 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
3105 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
3106 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3107 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3108 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
3109 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3110 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3111 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
3112 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
3113 missing in my book.</p>
3114
3115 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3116 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3117 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3118 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
3119 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
3120 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
3121 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
3122
3123       </div>
3124       <div class="tags">
3125
3126
3127         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>.
3128
3129
3130       </div>
3131     </div>
3132     <div class="padding"></div>
3133
3134     <div class="entry">
3135       <div class="title">
3136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
3137       </div>
3138       <div class="date">
3139         21st November 2011
3140       </div>
3141       <div class="body">
3142         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
3143 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
3144 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3145 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3146 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3147 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3148 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3149 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3150 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3151 the tools to do so.</p>
3152
3153 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3154 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
3155 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3156 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
3157
3158 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3159 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
3160 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
3161 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
3162 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
3163 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
3164 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
3165 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
3166
3167 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
3168 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
3169 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
3170
3171 <p><pre>
3172 #!/usr/bin/perl
3173 use strict;
3174 use warnings;
3175 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
3176 BEGIN {
3177     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
3178     my %rhelmodules = (
3179         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
3180         );
3181     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
3182         eval "use $module;";
3183         if ($@) {
3184             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
3185             system("yum install -y $pkg");
3186             eval "use $module;";
3187         }
3188     }
3189 }
3190 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
3191
3192 upgrade_dell();
3193
3194 exit 0;
3195
3196 sub run_firmware_script {
3197     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
3198     unless ($script) {
3199         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
3200         exit 1
3201     }
3202     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
3203
3204     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
3205         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
3206     } else {
3207         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
3208     }
3209 }
3210
3211 sub run_firmware_scripts {
3212     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
3213     # Run firmware packages
3214     for my $dir (@dirs) {
3215         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
3216         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
3217         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
3218             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
3219             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
3220         }
3221         closedir $dh;
3222     }
3223 }
3224
3225 sub download {
3226     my $url = shift;
3227     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
3228     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
3229 }
3230
3231 sub upgrade_dell {
3232     my @dirs;
3233     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3234     chomp $product;
3235
3236     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
3237
3238         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
3239         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
3240
3241         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
3242             CLEANUP => 1
3243             );
3244         chdir($tmpdir);
3245         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
3246         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
3247         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
3248         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
3249         my $fwopts = "-q";
3250         if (@paths) {
3251             for my $url (@paths) {
3252                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
3253             }
3254             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
3255         } else {
3256             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3257             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3258         }
3259         chdir('/');
3260     } else {
3261         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3262         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3263     }
3264 }
3265
3266 sub fetch_dell_fw {
3267     my $path = shift;
3268     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
3269     download($url);
3270 }
3271
3272 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
3273 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
3274 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
3275 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
3276     my $filename = shift;
3277
3278     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3279     chomp $product;
3280     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
3281
3282     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
3283
3284     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
3285     my @paths;
3286     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
3287         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
3288         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
3289         my $oscode;
3290         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
3291             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
3292         } else {
3293             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
3294         }
3295         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
3296         {
3297             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
3298         }
3299     }
3300     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
3301         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
3302
3303         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
3304         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
3305
3306         my $cpath = $component->{path};
3307         for my $path (@paths) {
3308             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
3309                 push(@paths, $cpath);
3310             }
3311         }
3312     }
3313     return @paths;
3314 }
3315 </pre>
3316
3317 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
3318 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
3319 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
3320 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
3321 outdated.</p>
3322
3323       </div>
3324       <div class="tags">
3325
3326
3327         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>.
3328
3329
3330       </div>
3331     </div>
3332     <div class="padding"></div>
3333
3334     <div class="entry">
3335       <div class="title">
3336         <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>
3337       </div>
3338       <div class="date">
3339          4th August 2011
3340       </div>
3341       <div class="body">
3342         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
3343 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
3344 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
3345 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
3346 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
3347 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
3348 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
3349 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
3350 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
3351
3352 <p><blockquote>
3353 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
3354 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
3355 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
3356 </blockquote></p>
3357
3358 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
3359 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
3360 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
3361 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
3362 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
3363 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
3364 hard to explain.</p>
3365
3366 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
3367 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
3368 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
3369 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
3370 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
3371 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
3372 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
3373 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
3374 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
3375 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
3376 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
3377 mode).</p>
3378
3379 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
3380 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
3381 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
3382 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
3383 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
3384 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
3385 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
3386 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
3387 after visiting single user mode.</p>
3388
3389 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
3390 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
3391 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
3392 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
3393 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
3394 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
3395 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
3396 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
3397
3398 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
3399 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
3400 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
3401
3402       </div>
3403       <div class="tags">
3404
3405
3406         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>.
3407
3408
3409       </div>
3410     </div>
3411     <div class="padding"></div>
3412
3413     <div class="entry">
3414       <div class="title">
3415         <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>
3416       </div>
3417       <div class="date">
3418         30th July 2011
3419       </div>
3420       <div class="body">
3421         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
3422 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
3423 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
3424 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
3425 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
3426 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
3427 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
3428 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
3429 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
3430 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
3431 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
3432 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
3433 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
3434
3435 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
3436 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
3437 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
3438 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
3439 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
3440 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
3441 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
3442 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
3443 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
3444
3445 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
3446 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
3447 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
3448 is presented.</p>
3449
3450 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
3451 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
3452 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
3453 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
3454 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
3455 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
3456 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
3457 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
3458 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
3459 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
3460 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
3461 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
3462 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
3463 find time to push this forward.</p>
3464
3465       </div>
3466       <div class="tags">
3467
3468
3469         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>.
3470
3471
3472       </div>
3473     </div>
3474     <div class="padding"></div>
3475
3476     <div class="entry">
3477       <div class="title">
3478         <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>
3479       </div>
3480       <div class="date">
3481         29th July 2011
3482       </div>
3483       <div class="body">
3484         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
3485 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
3486 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
3487 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
3488 issues.</p>
3489
3490 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
3491 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
3492 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
3493
3494 <ol>
3495
3496 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
3497 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
3498 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
3499 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
3500 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
3501 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
3502 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
3503 Debian.</li>
3504
3505 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
3506 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
3507 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
3508 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
3509 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
3510 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
3511 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
3512 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
3513 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
3514 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
3515 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
3516 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
3517 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
3518
3519 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
3520 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
3521 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
3522 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
3523 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
3524 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
3525 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
3526 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
3527 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
3528 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
3529
3530 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
3531 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
3532 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
3533 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
3534 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
3535 latter behaviour.</li>
3536
3537 </ol>
3538
3539 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
3540 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
3541 it do not matter much.</p>
3542
3543 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
3544 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
3545 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
3546
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="tags">
3549
3550
3551         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>.
3552
3553
3554       </div>
3555     </div>
3556     <div class="padding"></div>
3557
3558     <div class="entry">
3559       <div class="title">
3560         <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>
3561       </div>
3562       <div class="date">
3563         26th July 2011
3564       </div>
3565       <div class="body">
3566         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
3567 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
3568 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
3569 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
3570 security support for a few years.</p>
3571
3572 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
3573 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
3574 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
3575 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
3576 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
3577 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
3578 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
3579 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
3580 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
3581 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
3582 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
3583 easier in the future.</p>
3584
3585 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
3586 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
3587 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
3588 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
3589 do not have time for.</p>
3590
3591       </div>
3592       <div class="tags">
3593
3594
3595         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>.
3596
3597
3598       </div>
3599     </div>
3600     <div class="padding"></div>
3601
3602     <div class="entry">
3603       <div class="title">
3604         <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>
3605       </div>
3606       <div class="date">
3607          3rd April 2011
3608       </div>
3609       <div class="body">
3610         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
3611 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
3612 update in English.</p>
3613
3614 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
3615 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
3616 of the British service
3617 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
3618 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
3619 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
3620 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
3621 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
3622 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
3623 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
3624 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
3625 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
3626 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
3627 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
3628 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
3629 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
3630
3631 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
3632 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
3633 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
3634 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
3635 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
3636 public infrastructure.</p>
3637
3638 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
3639 such service?</p>
3640
3641       </div>
3642       <div class="tags">
3643
3644
3645         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>.
3646
3647
3648       </div>
3649     </div>
3650     <div class="padding"></div>
3651
3652     <div class="entry">
3653       <div class="title">
3654         <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>
3655       </div>
3656       <div class="date">
3657         28th January 2011
3658       </div>
3659       <div class="body">
3660         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
3661 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
3662 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
3663 available on the Internet, and check our locally
3664 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
3665 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
3666 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
3667 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
3668 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
3669 out which security holes were present in our free software
3670 collection.</p>
3671
3672 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
3673 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
3674 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
3675 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
3676 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
3677 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
3678 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
3679 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
3680 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
3681 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
3682 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
3683 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
3684 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
3685 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
3686 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
3687 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
3688
3689 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
3690 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
3691 check out, one could look up
3692 <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
3693 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
3694 The most recent one is
3695 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
3696 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
3697 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
3698
3699 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
3700 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
3701 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
3702 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
3703 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
3704 security issues out.</p>
3705
3706 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
3707 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
3708 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
3709 RHEL is providing
3710 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
3711 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
3712 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
3713
3714 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
3715 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
3716 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
3717 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
3718 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
3719 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
3720 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
3721 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
3722 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
3723 established soon.</p>
3724
3725 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
3726 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
3727 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
3728 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
3729 for their packages.</p>
3730
3731       </div>
3732       <div class="tags">
3733
3734
3735         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>.
3736
3737
3738       </div>
3739     </div>
3740     <div class="padding"></div>
3741
3742     <div class="entry">
3743       <div class="title">
3744         <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>
3745       </div>
3746       <div class="date">
3747         23rd January 2011
3748       </div>
3749       <div class="body">
3750         <p>In the
3751 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
3752 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
3753 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
3754 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
3755 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
3756 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
3757 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
3758 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
3759 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
3760 one of my machines like this:</p>
3761
3762 <pre>
3763 loaded modules:
3764 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
3765 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
3766 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
3767 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
3768 10de:03ec pata_amd
3769 10de:03f6 sata_nv
3770 1022:1103 k8temp
3771 109e:036e bttv
3772 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
3773 11ab:4364 sky2
3774 </pre>
3775
3776 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
3777 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
3778
3779 <pre>
3780 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
3781     echo loaded pci modules:
3782     (
3783         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
3784         for address in * ; do
3785             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3786                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3787                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3788                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3789                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
3790                     echo "$id $module"
3791                 fi
3792             fi
3793         done
3794     )
3795     echo
3796 fi
3797 </pre>
3798
3799 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
3800 mappings:</p>
3801
3802 <pre>
3803 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
3804     echo loaded usb modules:
3805     (
3806         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
3807         for address in * ; do
3808             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3809                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3810                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3811                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3812                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
3813                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
3814                         echo "$id $module"
3815                     fi
3816                 fi
3817             fi
3818         done
3819     )
3820     echo
3821 fi
3822 </pre>
3823
3824 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
3825 well.</p>
3826
3827       </div>
3828       <div class="tags">
3829
3830
3831         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>.
3832
3833
3834       </div>
3835     </div>
3836     <div class="padding"></div>
3837
3838     <div class="entry">
3839       <div class="title">
3840         <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>
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="date">
3843         22nd December 2010
3844       </div>
3845       <div class="body">
3846         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
3847 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
3848 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
3849 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
3850 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
3851 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
3852 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
3853 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
3854 university.</p>
3855
3856 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
3857 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
3858 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
3859 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
3860 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
3861 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
3862 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
3863 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
3864
3865 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
3866 I perform on a new model.</p>
3867
3868 <ul>
3869
3870 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
3871 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
3872 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
3873
3874 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
3875 installation, X.org is working.</li>
3876
3877 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
3878 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
3879 reported by the program.</li>
3880
3881 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
3882 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
3883 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
3884 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
3885 normally test this by playing
3886 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
3887 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
3888
3889 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
3890 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3891
3892 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
3893 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3894
3895 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
3896 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
3897
3898 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
3899 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
3900 few.</li>
3901
3902 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
3903 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
3904 notice this.</li>
3905
3906 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
3907 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
3908 resume.</li>
3909
3910 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
3911 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
3912 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
3913 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
3914 not.</li>
3915
3916 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
3917 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
3918 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
3919 existence.</li>
3920
3921 </ul>
3922
3923 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
3924 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
3925 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
3926 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
3927 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
3928 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
3929 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
3930 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
3931
3932       </div>
3933       <div class="tags">
3934
3935
3936         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>.
3937
3938
3939       </div>
3940     </div>
3941     <div class="padding"></div>
3942
3943     <div class="entry">
3944       <div class="title">
3945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
3946       </div>
3947       <div class="date">
3948         11th December 2010
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="body">
3951         <p>As I continue to explore
3952 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
3953 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
3954 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
3955
3956 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
3957 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
3958 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
3959 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
3960 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
3961 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
3962 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
3963 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
3964 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
3965 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
3966 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
3967 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
3968 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
3969 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
3970 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
3971 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
3972 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
3973 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3974 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3975 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3976
3977 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3978 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3979 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3980 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3981 If the Skolelinux foundation
3982 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3983 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3984 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3985 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3986 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3987 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3988 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3989 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3990
3991 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3992 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3993 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3994 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3995 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3996 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3997 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3998 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3999 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
4000 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
4001 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
4002 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
4003 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
4004 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
4005 currencies.</p>
4006
4007 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
4008 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
4009 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
4010 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
4011 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
4012 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
4013 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
4014 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
4015 BitCoins.  Check out
4016 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
4017 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
4018 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
4019 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
4020 yet.</p>
4021
4022 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
4023 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
4024 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
4025 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
4026 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
4027
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="tags">
4030
4031
4032         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>.
4033
4034
4035       </div>
4036     </div>
4037     <div class="padding"></div>
4038
4039     <div class="entry">
4040       <div class="title">
4041         <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>
4042       </div>
4043       <div class="date">
4044         10th December 2010
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="body">
4047         <p>With this weeks lawless
4048 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
4049 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
4050 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
4051 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
4052 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
4053 A blog post from
4054 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
4055 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
4056 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
4057 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
4058 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
4059 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
4060 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
4061
4062 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
4063 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
4064 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
4065 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
4066 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
4067 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
4068 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
4069 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
4070 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
4071 Debian</a> soon.</p>
4072
4073 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
4074 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
4075 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
4076 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
4077 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
4078 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
4079 you can even get
4080 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
4081 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
4082 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
4083 on the current exchange rates.</p>
4084
4085 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
4086 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
4087 donations to the address
4088 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
4089
4090       </div>
4091       <div class="tags">
4092
4093
4094         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>.
4095
4096
4097       </div>
4098     </div>
4099     <div class="padding"></div>
4100
4101     <div class="entry">
4102       <div class="title">
4103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
4104       </div>
4105       <div class="date">
4106         27th November 2010
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="body">
4109         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
4110 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
4111 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
4112 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
4113 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
4114 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
4115 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
4116 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
4117
4118 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
4119 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4120 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
4121 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
4122 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
4123 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
4124 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
4125 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
4126 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
4127 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
4128 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
4129
4130 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
4131 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
4132 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
4133 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
4134 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
4135 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
4136 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
4137 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
4138 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
4139 what is going on.</p>
4140
4141       </div>
4142       <div class="tags">
4143
4144
4145         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>.
4146
4147
4148       </div>
4149     </div>
4150     <div class="padding"></div>
4151
4152     <div class="entry">
4153       <div class="title">
4154         <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>
4155       </div>
4156       <div class="date">
4157         22nd November 2010
4158       </div>
4159       <div class="body">
4160         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
4161 upgrade testing of the
4162 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4163 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
4164 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
4165 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
4166
4167 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
4168
4169 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4170
4171 <blockquote><p>
4172   apache2.2-bin
4173   aptdaemon
4174   baobab
4175   binfmt-support
4176   browser-plugin-gnash
4177   cheese-common
4178   cli-common
4179   cups-pk-helper
4180   dmz-cursor-theme
4181   empathy
4182   empathy-common
4183   freedesktop-sound-theme
4184   freeglut3
4185   gconf-defaults-service
4186   gdm-themes
4187   gedit-plugins
4188   geoclue
4189   geoclue-hostip
4190   geoclue-localnet
4191   geoclue-manual
4192   geoclue-yahoo
4193   gnash
4194   gnash-common
4195   gnome
4196   gnome-backgrounds
4197   gnome-cards-data
4198   gnome-codec-install
4199   gnome-core
4200   gnome-desktop-environment
4201   gnome-disk-utility
4202   gnome-screenshot
4203   gnome-search-tool
4204   gnome-session-canberra
4205   gnome-system-log
4206   gnome-themes-extras
4207   gnome-themes-more
4208   gnome-user-share
4209   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4210   gstreamer0.10-tools
4211   gtk2-engines
4212   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
4213   gtk2-engines-smooth
4214   hamster-applet
4215   libapache2-mod-dnssd
4216   libapr1
4217   libaprutil1
4218   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
4219   libaprutil1-ldap
4220   libart2.0-cil
4221   libboost-date-time1.42.0
4222   libboost-python1.42.0
4223   libboost-thread1.42.0
4224   libchamplain-0.4-0
4225   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
4226   libcheese-gtk18
4227   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
4228   libcryptui0
4229   libdiscid0
4230   libelf1
4231   libepc-1.0-2
4232   libepc-common
4233   libepc-ui-1.0-2
4234   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4235   libfreerdp0
4236   libgconf2.0-cil
4237   libgdata-common
4238   libgdata7
4239   libgdu-gtk0
4240   libgee2
4241   libgeoclue0
4242   libgexiv2-0
4243   libgif4
4244   libglade2.0-cil
4245   libglib2.0-cil
4246   libgmime2.4-cil
4247   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
4248   libgnome2.24-cil
4249   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
4250   libgpod-common
4251   libgpod4
4252   libgtk2.0-cil
4253   libgtkglext1
4254   libgtksourceview2.0-common
4255   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4256   libmono-addins0.2-cil
4257   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
4258   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4259   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
4260   libmono-posix2.0-cil
4261   libmono-security2.0-cil
4262   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4263   libmono-system2.0-cil
4264   libmtp8
4265   libmusicbrainz3-6
4266   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
4267   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
4268   libopal3.6.8
4269   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
4270   libpt2.6.7
4271   libpython2.6
4272   librpm1
4273   librpmio1
4274   libsdl1.2debian
4275   libsrtp0
4276   libssh-4
4277   libtelepathy-farsight0
4278   libtelepathy-glib0
4279   libtidy-0.99-0
4280   media-player-info
4281   mesa-utils
4282   mono-2.0-gac
4283   mono-gac
4284   mono-runtime
4285   nautilus-sendto
4286   nautilus-sendto-empathy
4287   p7zip-full
4288   pkg-config
4289   python-aptdaemon
4290   python-aptdaemon-gtk
4291   python-axiom
4292   python-beautifulsoup
4293   python-bugbuddy
4294   python-clientform
4295   python-coherence
4296   python-configobj
4297   python-crypto
4298   python-cupshelpers
4299   python-elementtree
4300   python-epsilon
4301   python-evolution
4302   python-feedparser
4303   python-gdata
4304   python-gdbm
4305   python-gst0.10
4306   python-gtkglext1
4307   python-gtksourceview2
4308   python-httplib2
4309   python-louie
4310   python-mako
4311   python-markupsafe
4312   python-mechanize
4313   python-nevow
4314   python-notify
4315   python-opengl
4316   python-openssl
4317   python-pam
4318   python-pkg-resources
4319   python-pyasn1
4320   python-pysqlite2
4321   python-rdflib
4322   python-serial
4323   python-tagpy
4324   python-twisted-bin
4325   python-twisted-conch
4326   python-twisted-core
4327   python-twisted-web
4328   python-utidylib
4329   python-webkit
4330   python-xdg
4331   python-zope.interface
4332   remmina
4333   remmina-plugin-data
4334   remmina-plugin-rdp
4335   remmina-plugin-vnc
4336   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4337   rhythmbox-plugins
4338   rpm-common
4339   rpm2cpio
4340   seahorse-plugins
4341   shotwell
4342   software-center
4343   system-config-printer-udev
4344   telepathy-gabble
4345   telepathy-mission-control-5
4346   telepathy-salut
4347   tomboy
4348   totem
4349   totem-coherence
4350   totem-mozilla
4351   totem-plugins
4352   transmission-common
4353   xdg-user-dirs
4354   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
4355   xserver-xephyr
4356 </p></blockquote>
4357
4358 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4359
4360 <blockquote><p>
4361   cheese
4362   ekiga
4363   eog
4364   epiphany-extensions
4365   evolution-exchange
4366   fast-user-switch-applet
4367   file-roller
4368   gcalctool
4369   gconf-editor
4370   gdm
4371   gedit
4372   gedit-common
4373   gnome-games
4374   gnome-games-data
4375   gnome-nettool
4376   gnome-system-tools
4377   gnome-themes
4378   gnuchess
4379   gucharmap
4380   guile-1.8-libs
4381   libavahi-ui0
4382   libdmx1
4383   libgalago3
4384   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4385   libgtksourceview2.0-0
4386   liblircclient0
4387   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
4388   libspeexdsp1
4389   libsvga1
4390   rhythmbox
4391   seahorse
4392   sound-juicer
4393   system-config-printer
4394   totem-common
4395   transmission-gtk
4396   vinagre
4397   vino
4398 </p></blockquote>
4399
4400 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4401
4402 <blockquote><p>
4403   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4404 </p></blockquote>
4405
4406 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4407
4408 <blockquote><p>
4409 [nothing]
4410 </p></blockquote>
4411
4412 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4413
4414 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4415
4416 <blockquote><p>
4417   ksmserver
4418 </p></blockquote>
4419
4420 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4421
4422 <blockquote><p>
4423   kwin
4424   network-manager-kde
4425 </p></blockquote>
4426
4427 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4428
4429 <blockquote><p>
4430   arts
4431   dolphin
4432   freespacenotifier
4433   google-gadgets-gst
4434   google-gadgets-xul
4435   kappfinder
4436   kcalc
4437   kcharselect
4438   kde-core
4439   kde-plasma-desktop
4440   kde-standard
4441   kde-window-manager
4442   kdeartwork
4443   kdeartwork-emoticons
4444   kdeartwork-style
4445   kdeartwork-theme-icon
4446   kdebase
4447   kdebase-apps
4448   kdebase-workspace
4449   kdebase-workspace-bin
4450   kdebase-workspace-data
4451   kdeeject
4452   kdelibs
4453   kdeplasma-addons
4454   kdeutils
4455   kdewallpapers
4456   kdf
4457   kfloppy
4458   kgpg
4459   khelpcenter4
4460   kinfocenter
4461   konq-plugins-l10n
4462   konqueror-nsplugins
4463   kscreensaver
4464   kscreensaver-xsavers
4465   ktimer
4466   kwrite
4467   libgle3
4468   libkde4-ruby1.8
4469   libkonq5
4470   libkonq5-templates
4471   libnetpbm10
4472   libplasma-ruby
4473   libplasma-ruby1.8
4474   libqt4-ruby1.8
4475   marble-data
4476   marble-plugins
4477   netpbm
4478   nuvola-icon-theme
4479   plasma-dataengines-workspace
4480   plasma-desktop
4481   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
4482   plasma-runners-addons
4483   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
4484   plasma-scriptengine-python
4485   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
4486   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
4487   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
4488   plasma-scriptengines
4489   plasma-wallpapers-addons
4490   plasma-widget-folderview
4491   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4492   ruby
4493   sweeper
4494   update-notifier-kde
4495   xscreensaver-data-extra
4496   xscreensaver-gl
4497   xscreensaver-gl-extra
4498   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4499 </p></blockquote>
4500
4501 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4502
4503 <blockquote><p>
4504   ark
4505   google-gadgets-common
4506   google-gadgets-qt
4507   htdig
4508   kate
4509   kdebase-bin
4510   kdebase-data
4511   kdepasswd
4512   kfind
4513   klipper
4514   konq-plugins
4515   konqueror
4516   ksysguard
4517   ksysguardd
4518   libarchive1
4519   libcln6
4520   libeet1
4521   libeina-svn-06
4522   libggadget-1.0-0b
4523   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
4524   libgps19
4525   libkdecorations4
4526   libkephal4
4527   libkonq4
4528   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
4529   libkscreensaver5
4530   libksgrd4
4531   libksignalplotter4
4532   libkunitconversion4
4533   libkwineffects1a
4534   libmarblewidget4
4535   libntrack-qt4-1
4536   libntrack0
4537   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
4538   libplasmaclock4a
4539   libplasmagenericshell4
4540   libprocesscore4a
4541   libprocessui4a
4542   libqalculate5
4543   libqedje0a
4544   libqtruby4shared2
4545   libqzion0a
4546   libruby1.8
4547   libscim8c2a
4548   libsmokekdecore4-3
4549   libsmokekdeui4-3
4550   libsmokekfile3
4551   libsmokekhtml3
4552   libsmokekio3
4553   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
4554   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
4555   libsmokekparts3
4556   libsmokektexteditor3
4557   libsmokekutils3
4558   libsmokenepomuk3
4559   libsmokephonon3
4560   libsmokeplasma3
4561   libsmokeqtcore4-3
4562   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
4563   libsmokeqtgui4-3
4564   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
4565   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
4566   libsmokeqtscript4-3
4567   libsmokeqtsql4-3
4568   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
4569   libsmokeqttest4-3
4570   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
4571   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
4572   libsmokeqtxml4-3
4573   libsmokesolid3
4574   libsmokesoprano3
4575   libtaskmanager4a
4576   libtidy-0.99-0
4577   libweather-ion4a
4578   libxklavier16
4579   libxxf86misc1
4580   okteta
4581   oxygencursors
4582   plasma-dataengines-addons
4583   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
4584   plasma-widget-lancelot
4585   plasma-widgets-addons
4586   plasma-widgets-workspace
4587   polkit-kde-1
4588   ruby1.8
4589   systemsettings
4590   update-notifier-common
4591 </p></blockquote>
4592
4593 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
4594 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
4595 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
4596 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
4597
4598       </div>
4599       <div class="tags">
4600
4601
4602         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>.
4603
4604
4605       </div>
4606     </div>
4607     <div class="padding"></div>
4608
4609     <div class="entry">
4610       <div class="title">
4611         <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>
4612       </div>
4613       <div class="date">
4614         22nd November 2010
4615       </div>
4616       <div class="body">
4617         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
4618 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
4619 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
4620 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
4621 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
4622 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
4623 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
4624 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
4625 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
4626
4627 <p>I found
4628 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
4629 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
4630 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
4631 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
4632 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
4633 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
4634
4635 <pre>
4636 #!/bin/sh
4637
4638 # Based on
4639 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
4640
4641 set -e
4642 set -x
4643
4644 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
4645     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
4646     exit 1
4647 else
4648     host="$1"
4649 fi
4650
4651 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
4652     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
4653     exit 1
4654 fi
4655
4656 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
4657 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
4658 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
4659 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
4660
4661 img=$host.img
4662 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
4663 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
4664
4665 parted $img mklabel msdos
4666 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
4667 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
4668 parted $img set 1 boot on
4669
4670 modprobe dm-mod
4671 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
4672 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
4673
4674 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
4675 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
4676 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
4677
4678 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
4679 losetup -d /dev/loop0
4680 </pre>
4681
4682 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
4683 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
4684
4685 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
4686 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
4687 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
4688 seem to work just fine.</p>
4689
4690       </div>
4691       <div class="tags">
4692
4693
4694         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>.
4695
4696
4697       </div>
4698     </div>
4699     <div class="padding"></div>
4700
4701     <div class="entry">
4702       <div class="title">
4703         <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>
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="date">
4706         20th November 2010
4707       </div>
4708       <div class="body">
4709         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
4710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4711 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
4712 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
4713
4714 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
4715 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
4716 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
4717
4718 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
4719
4720 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4721
4722 <blockquote><p>
4723   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
4724   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
4725   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
4726   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
4727   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
4728   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
4729   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
4730   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
4731   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
4732   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
4733   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4734   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
4735   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
4736   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
4737   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
4738   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
4739   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
4740   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
4741   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4742   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
4743   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
4744   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
4745   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
4746   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
4747   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
4748   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4749   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4750   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
4751   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4752   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
4753   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
4754   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4755   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
4756   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
4757   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
4758   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
4759   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
4760   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
4761   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
4762   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
4763   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
4764   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
4765   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
4766   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
4767   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
4768   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
4769   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
4770   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
4771   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
4772   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
4773   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
4774   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
4775   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4776   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
4777   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
4778   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
4779   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
4780   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
4781   zip
4782 </p></blockquote>
4783
4784 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
4785
4786 <blockquote><p>
4787   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
4788   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
4789   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
4790   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
4791   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
4792   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
4793   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
4794   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
4795   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
4796   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
4797   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
4798   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4799   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4800   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4801   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4802   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
4803   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4804   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
4805   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
4806   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
4807   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
4808   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
4809   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4810   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
4811   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
4812   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
4813   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
4814   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
4815   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
4816 </p></blockquote>
4817
4818 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4819
4820 <blockquote><p>
4821   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4822 </p></blockquote>
4823
4824 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4825
4826 <blockquote><p>
4827 [nothing]
4828 </p></blockquote>
4829
4830 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4831
4832 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4833
4834 <blockquote><p>
4835   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
4836   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4837   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
4838   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
4839   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
4840   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
4841   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4842   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
4843   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
4844   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4845   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
4846   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
4847   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
4848   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
4849   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
4850   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
4851   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
4852   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
4853   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
4854   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
4855   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
4856   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
4857   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
4858   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
4859   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
4860   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
4861   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
4862   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
4863   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
4864   ttf-sazanami-gothic
4865 </p></blockquote>
4866
4867 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4868
4869 <blockquote><p>
4870   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
4871   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
4872   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
4873   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
4874   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
4875   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
4876   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
4877   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
4878   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
4879   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
4880   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
4881   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
4882   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
4883   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
4884   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4885   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4886   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
4887   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
4888   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4889   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
4890   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4891   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
4892   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4893   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4894   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
4895   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
4896   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
4897   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
4898   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
4899   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
4900   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
4901   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
4902   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
4903 </p></blockquote>
4904
4905 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4906
4907 <blockquote><p>
4908   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
4909   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
4910   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
4911   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
4912   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4913   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
4914   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4915 </p></blockquote>
4916
4917 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4918
4919 <blockquote><p>
4920   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
4921 </p></blockquote>
4922
4923       </div>
4924       <div class="tags">
4925
4926
4927         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>.
4928
4929
4930       </div>
4931     </div>
4932     <div class="padding"></div>
4933
4934     <div class="entry">
4935       <div class="title">
4936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
4937       </div>
4938       <div class="date">
4939         20th November 2010
4940       </div>
4941       <div class="body">
4942         <p>Answering
4943 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
4944 call from the Gnash project</a> for
4945 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
4946 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
4947 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
4948 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
4949 releases out more often.</p>
4950
4951 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
4952 I have considered setting up a <a
4953 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
4954 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
4955 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
4956 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
4957 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
4958 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
4959 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
4960 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
4961 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
4962 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
4963 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
4964 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
4965
4966       </div>
4967       <div class="tags">
4968
4969
4970         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>.
4971
4972
4973       </div>
4974     </div>
4975     <div class="padding"></div>
4976
4977     <div class="entry">
4978       <div class="title">
4979         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4980       </div>
4981       <div class="date">
4982          9th November 2010
4983       </div>
4984       <div class="body">
4985         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4986
4987 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4988 3D linked in from
4989 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4990 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4991
4992       </div>
4993       <div class="tags">
4994
4995
4996         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>.
4997
4998
4999       </div>
5000     </div>
5001     <div class="padding"></div>
5002
5003     <div class="entry">
5004       <div class="title">
5005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="date">
5008         24th October 2010
5009       </div>
5010       <div class="body">
5011         <p>Some updates.</p>
5012
5013 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
5014 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
5015 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
5016 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
5017 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
5018 :)</p>
5019
5020 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
5021 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
5022 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
5023 It is called
5024 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
5025 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
5026 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
5027 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
5028 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
5029 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
5030
5031 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
5032 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
5033 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
5034 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
5035 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
5036 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
5037 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
5038 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
5039 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
5040 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
5041
5042       </div>
5043       <div class="tags">
5044
5045
5046         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>.
5047
5048
5049       </div>
5050     </div>
5051     <div class="padding"></div>
5052
5053     <div class="entry">
5054       <div class="title">
5055         <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>
5056       </div>
5057       <div class="date">
5058          4th September 2010
5059       </div>
5060       <div class="body">
5061         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
5062 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
5063 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
5064 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
5065 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
5066 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
5067 installed.</p>
5068
5069 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
5070 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
5071 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
5072 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
5073 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5074 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
5075 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
5076 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
5077 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
5078
5079 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
5080 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
5081 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
5082 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
5083 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
5084 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
5085 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
5086 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
5087 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
5088 pages they want to visit.</p>
5089
5090 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
5091 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
5092 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
5093 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
5094 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
5095 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
5096 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
5097 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
5098 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
5099 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
5100 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
5101
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="tags">
5104
5105
5106         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>.
5107
5108
5109       </div>
5110     </div>
5111     <div class="padding"></div>
5112
5113     <div class="entry">
5114       <div class="title">
5115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
5116       </div>
5117       <div class="date">
5118         27th July 2010
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="body">
5121         <p>I discovered this while doing
5122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
5123 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
5124 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
5125 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
5126 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
5127
5128 <p>An example is from todays
5129 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
5130 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
5131 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
5132 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
5133 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
5134 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
5135 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
5136
5137 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
5138
5139 <blockquote><pre>
5140 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
5141  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
5142   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
5143 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
5144  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
5145 </pre></blockquote>
5146
5147 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
5148 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
5149 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
5150 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
5151 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
5152 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
5153 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
5154 of dependency loops.</p>
5155
5156 <p>Thanks to
5157 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
5158 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
5159 dependencies
5160 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
5161 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
5162
5163 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
5164 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
5165 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
5166 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
5167 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
5168 it.</p>
5169
5170       </div>
5171       <div class="tags">
5172
5173
5174         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>.
5175
5176
5177       </div>
5178     </div>
5179     <div class="padding"></div>
5180
5181     <div class="entry">
5182       <div class="title">
5183         <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>
5184       </div>
5185       <div class="date">
5186         17th July 2010
5187       </div>
5188       <div class="body">
5189         <p>This is a
5190 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
5191 on my
5192 <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
5193 work</a> on
5194 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
5195 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
5196
5197 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
5198 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
5199 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
5200 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
5201
5202 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
5203 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
5204 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
5205
5206 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
5207
5208 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
5209 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
5210 the web.
5211
5212 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
5213 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
5214 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
5215 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
5216 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
5217 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
5218
5219 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
5220 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
5221 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
5222 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
5223 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
5224 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
5225 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
5226 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
5227 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
5228 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
5229 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
5230 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
5231 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
5232 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
5233 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
5234 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
5235
5236 <blockquote><pre>
5237 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5238   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5239   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5240   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5241   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5242   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5243   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5244
5245 ldapsearch -h ldap \
5246   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
5247   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
5248   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
5249   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
5250   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
5251 </pre></blockquote>
5252
5253 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
5254 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
5255 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
5256 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5257 also exist.</p>
5258
5259 <blockquote><pre>
5260 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5261 objectclass: top
5262 objectclass: dnsdomain
5263 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5264 dc: tjener
5265 arecord: 10.0.2.2
5266 associateddomain: tjener.intern
5267
5268 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5269 objectclass: top
5270 objectclass: dnsdomain2
5271 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5272 dc: 2
5273 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
5274 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
5275 </pre></blockquote>
5276
5277 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
5278 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
5279 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
5280 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
5281 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
5282 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
5283 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
5284 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
5285 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
5286 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
5287 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
5288 instead.</p>
5289
5290 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
5291 like this:</p>
5292
5293 <blockquote><pre>
5294 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5295   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5296   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5297   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5298   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5299   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5300
5301 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5302   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
5303 </pre></blockquote>
5304
5305 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
5306 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
5307 reverse lookups.</p>
5308
5309 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
5310 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
5311 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
5312 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
5313
5314 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
5315 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
5316 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
5317
5318 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
5319 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
5320 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
5321 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
5322 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
5323
5324 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
5325 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
5326 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
5327 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
5328 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
5329
5330 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
5331 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
5332 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
5333 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
5334 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
5335 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
5336
5337 <blockquote><pre>
5338 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
5339     SUP top
5340     AUXILIARY
5341     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
5342           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
5343           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
5344           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
5345           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
5346     ))
5347 </pre></blockquote>
5348
5349 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
5350 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
5351 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
5352 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
5353 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
5354 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
5355
5356 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
5357
5358 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
5359 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
5360 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
5361 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
5362 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
5363
5364 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
5365 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
5366 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
5367 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
5368
5369 <blockquote><pre>
5370 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
5371 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
5372 </pre></blockquote>
5373
5374 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
5375 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
5376 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
5377 search result is this entry:</p>
5378
5379 <blockquote><pre>
5380 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5381 cn: dhcp
5382 objectClass: top
5383 objectClass: dhcpServer
5384 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5385 </pre></blockquote>
5386
5387 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
5388 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
5389 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
5390 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
5391 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
5392 The search result is this entry:</p>
5393
5394 <blockquote><pre>
5395 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5396 cn: DHCP Config
5397 objectClass: top
5398 objectClass: dhcpService
5399 objectClass: dhcpOptions
5400 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5401 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
5402 dhcpStatements: authoritative
5403 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
5404 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
5405 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
5406 </pre></blockquote>
5407
5408 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
5409 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
5410 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
5411 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
5412 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
5413 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
5414 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
5415 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
5416 related computer objects.</p>
5417
5418 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
5419 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
5420 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
5421 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
5422 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
5423 like:</p>
5424
5425 <blockquote><pre>
5426 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5427 cn: hostname
5428 objectClass: top
5429 objectClass: dhcpHost
5430 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5431 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
5432 </pre></blockquote>
5433
5434 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
5435 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
5436 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
5437 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
5438 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
5439 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
5440 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
5441 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
5442 structural object class.
5443
5444 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
5445
5446 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
5447 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
5448 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
5449 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
5450 in the configuration.</p>
5451
5452 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
5453 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
5454 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
5455 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
5456 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
5457 structure.</p>
5458
5459 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
5460 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
5461
5462 <blockquote><pre>
5463 ou=services
5464   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
5465     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
5466     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5467       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5468         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5469     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5470       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5471         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5472     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
5473       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
5474 </pre></blockquote>
5475
5476 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
5477 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
5478 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
5479 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
5480
5481 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
5482 like this:</p>
5483
5484 <blockquote><pre>
5485 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5486 dc: hostname
5487 objectClass: top
5488 objectClass: dhcpHost
5489 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5490 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
5491 associateddomain: hostname.intern
5492 arecord: 10.11.12.13
5493 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5494 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
5495 </pre></blockquote>
5496
5497 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
5498 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
5499 auxiliary object class.</p>
5500
5501       </div>
5502       <div class="tags">
5503
5504
5505         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>.
5506
5507
5508       </div>
5509     </div>
5510     <div class="padding"></div>
5511
5512     <div class="entry">
5513       <div class="title">
5514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
5515       </div>
5516       <div class="date">
5517         14th July 2010
5518       </div>
5519       <div class="body">
5520         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
5521 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
5522 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
5523 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
5524 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
5525
5526 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
5527 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
5528
5529 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
5530 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
5531 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
5532 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
5533 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
5534 to a slave DNS server.</p>
5535
5536 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
5537 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
5538 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
5539 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
5540 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
5541 seem to work.</p>
5542
5543 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
5544 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
5545 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
5546 this:</p>
5547
5548 <blockquote><pre>
5549   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5550   cn: hostname
5551   objectClass: dhcphost
5552   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5553   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
5554   associateddomain: hostname.intern
5555   arecord: 10.11.12.13
5556   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5557   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
5558   ldapconfigsound: Y
5559 </pre></blockquote>
5560
5561 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
5562 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
5563 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
5564 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
5565
5566 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
5567 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
5568 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
5569 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
5570 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
5571 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
5572 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
5573 might be a good place to put it.</p>
5574
5575 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5576 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5577
5578       </div>
5579       <div class="tags">
5580
5581
5582         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>.
5583
5584
5585       </div>
5586     </div>
5587     <div class="padding"></div>
5588
5589     <div class="entry">
5590       <div class="title">
5591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
5592       </div>
5593       <div class="date">
5594         11th July 2010
5595       </div>
5596       <div class="body">
5597         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
5598 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
5599 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
5600 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
5601
5602 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
5603 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
5604 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
5605 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
5606 LTSP clients.</p>
5607
5608 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
5609 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
5610 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
5611
5612 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
5613 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
5614 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
5615
5616 <blockquote><pre>
5617 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
5618 #
5619 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
5620 #
5621 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
5622 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
5623 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
5624 #
5625 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
5626 # existence of attribute names.
5627 #
5628 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
5629 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
5630 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
5631 #
5632 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
5633 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
5634 #
5635 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
5636 #     SUP top
5637 #     AUXILIARY
5638 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
5639
5640 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
5641 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
5642     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
5643     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
5644         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
5645         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
5646             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
5647             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
5648             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
5649             # bass value on to clients
5650             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
5651         done
5652     done
5653 fi
5654 </pre></blockquote>
5655
5656 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
5657 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
5658 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
5659 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
5660 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
5661
5662 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5663 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5664
5665 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
5666 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
5667 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
5668 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
5669 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
5670 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
5671
5672       </div>
5673       <div class="tags">
5674
5675
5676         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>.
5677
5678
5679       </div>
5680     </div>
5681     <div class="padding"></div>
5682
5683     <div class="entry">
5684       <div class="title">
5685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5686       </div>
5687       <div class="date">
5688          9th July 2010
5689       </div>
5690       <div class="body">
5691         <p>Since
5692 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
5693 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
5694 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
5695 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
5696 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
5697 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
5698 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
5699 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
5700 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
5701 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
5702 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
5703 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
5704 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
5705
5706       </div>
5707       <div class="tags">
5708
5709
5710         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>.
5711
5712
5713       </div>
5714     </div>
5715     <div class="padding"></div>
5716
5717     <div class="entry">
5718       <div class="title">
5719         <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>
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="date">
5722          3rd July 2010
5723       </div>
5724       <div class="body">
5725         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
5726 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
5727 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
5728 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
5729 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
5730 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
5731 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
5732 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
5733
5734 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
5735 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
5736 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
5737 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
5738 publish the difference.</p>
5739
5740 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5741
5742 <blockquote><p>
5743   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5744   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
5745   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
5746   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5747   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
5748   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5749   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
5750   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
5751 </p></blockquote>
5752
5753 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5754
5755 <blockquote><p>
5756   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
5757   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
5758   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
5759   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
5760   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
5761   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
5762   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5763   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
5764   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5765   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5766   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
5767   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
5768   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
5769   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
5770   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
5771   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
5772   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
5773   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
5774   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
5775   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
5776 </p></blockquote>
5777
5778 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5779
5780 <blockquote><p>
5781   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
5782   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
5783   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5784   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5785   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
5786   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
5787   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
5788   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5789   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5790   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5791   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5792   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
5793   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
5794   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
5795   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
5796   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
5797   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
5798   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
5799   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
5800   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
5801   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
5802 </p></blockquote>
5803
5804 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5805
5806 <blockquote><p>
5807   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
5808   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
5809   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
5810 </p></blockquote>
5811
5812 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
5813 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
5814 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
5815 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
5816 the difference somewhat.
5817
5818       </div>
5819       <div class="tags">
5820
5821
5822         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>.
5823
5824
5825       </div>
5826     </div>
5827     <div class="padding"></div>
5828
5829     <div class="entry">
5830       <div class="title">
5831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5832       </div>
5833       <div class="date">
5834         28th June 2010
5835       </div>
5836       <div class="body">
5837         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
5838 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
5839 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
5840 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
5841 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
5842 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
5843 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
5844 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
5845 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
5846 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
5847
5848 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
5849 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
5850 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
5851 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
5852 released.</p>
5853
5854 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
5855 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
5856 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
5857 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
5858
5859 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
5860 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5861
5862 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
5863 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
5864 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
5865 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
5866 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
5867
5868       </div>
5869       <div class="tags">
5870
5871
5872         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>.
5873
5874
5875       </div>
5876     </div>
5877     <div class="padding"></div>
5878
5879     <div class="entry">
5880       <div class="title">
5881         <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>
5882       </div>
5883       <div class="date">
5884         24th June 2010
5885       </div>
5886       <div class="body">
5887         <p>A while back, I
5888 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
5889 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
5890 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
5891 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
5892
5893 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
5894 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
5895 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
5896 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
5897
5898 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
5899 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
5900 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
5901 Debian Edu.</p>
5902
5903 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
5904 the
5905 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
5906 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
5907 available today from IETF.</p>
5908
5909 <pre>
5910 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
5911 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
5912 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
5913  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
5914         NAME 'dhcpHost'
5915         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
5916 -       SUP top
5917 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
5918         MUST cn
5919         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
5920         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
5921 </pre>
5922
5923 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
5924 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
5925 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
5926
5927 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5928 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5929
5930       </div>
5931       <div class="tags">
5932
5933
5934         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>.
5935
5936
5937       </div>
5938     </div>
5939     <div class="padding"></div>
5940
5941     <div class="entry">
5942       <div class="title">
5943         <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>
5944       </div>
5945       <div class="date">
5946         16th June 2010
5947       </div>
5948       <div class="body">
5949         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
5950 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
5951 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
5952 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
5953 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
5954 this:
5955
5956 <blockquote><pre>
5957 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5958 tasksel --new-install
5959 </pre></blockquote>
5960
5961 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
5962 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
5963 any output what so ever.
5964
5965 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
5966 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
5967 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
5968 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
5969 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
5970 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
5971 code like this:
5972
5973 <blockquote><pre>
5974 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5975 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
5976 $cmd
5977 </pre></blockquote>
5978
5979 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
5980 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
5981 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
5982 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
5983 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
5984 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
5985 installation.</p>
5986
5987 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
5988 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
5989 like this.</p>
5990
5991       </div>
5992       <div class="tags">
5993
5994
5995         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>.
5996
5997
5998       </div>
5999     </div>
6000     <div class="padding"></div>
6001
6002     <div class="entry">
6003       <div class="title">
6004         <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>
6005       </div>
6006       <div class="date">
6007         13th June 2010
6008       </div>
6009       <div class="body">
6010         <p>My
6011 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
6012 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
6013 finally made the upgrade logs available from
6014 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
6015 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
6016 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
6017 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
6018
6019 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
6020 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
6021 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
6022 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
6023 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
6024 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
6025 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
6026 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
6027
6028 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
6029 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
6030 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
6031 too surprising.</p>
6032
6033 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
6034 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
6035 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
6036 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
6037 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
6038 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
6039 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
6040 continue.</p>
6041
6042 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
6043 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
6044   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
6045   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
6046   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
6047   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
6048   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
6049   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6050   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6051   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6052   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6053   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6054   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6055   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6056   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6057   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6058   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6059   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6060   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6061   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6062   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6063   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6064   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6065   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6066   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6067   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6068   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6069   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6070   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
6071   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
6072
6073 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
6074
6075 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
6076   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
6077   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
6078   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
6079   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6080   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
6081   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
6082   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
6083   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
6084   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
6085   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6086   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
6087   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
6088   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
6089   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
6090   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
6091   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
6092   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
6093   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
6094   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
6095   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
6096   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
6097   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
6098   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
6099   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6100   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
6101   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
6102   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
6103   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
6104   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6105   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6106   zip</p>
6107
6108 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
6109
6110 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
6111   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
6112   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
6113   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
6114   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
6115   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
6116   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6117   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6118   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
6119   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
6120   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
6121   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
6122   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6123   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6124   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6125   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6126   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6127   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
6128   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
6129   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
6130   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
6131   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
6132   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
6133   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
6134   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
6135   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
6136   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
6137   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
6138
6139 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
6140 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
6141   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6142   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
6143   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
6144   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6145   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
6146   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
6147   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6148   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
6149   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
6150   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
6151   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
6152   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
6153   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
6154   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
6155   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
6156   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6157   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6158   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
6159   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
6160   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6161   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
6162   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
6163   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6164   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6165   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
6166   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
6167   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
6168   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
6169   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
6170   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
6171   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
6172   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
6173   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
6174   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
6175   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
6176   xulrunner-1.9</p>
6177
6178
6179       </div>
6180       <div class="tags">
6181
6182
6183         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>.
6184
6185
6186       </div>
6187     </div>
6188     <div class="padding"></div>
6189
6190     <div class="entry">
6191       <div class="title">
6192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
6193       </div>
6194       <div class="date">
6195         11th June 2010
6196       </div>
6197       <div class="body">
6198         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
6199 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
6200 have been discovered and reported in the process
6201 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
6202 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
6203 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
6204 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
6205 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
6206
6207 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
6208 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
6209 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
6210 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
6211 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
6212 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
6213
6214 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
6215 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
6216 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6217 is created.  The bug report
6218 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
6219 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
6220 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
6221 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
6222 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
6223 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
6224 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
6225 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
6226 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
6227 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
6228 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
6229 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
6230 Debian Squeeze.</p>
6231
6232 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
6233 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
6234 trick:</p>
6235
6236 <blockquote><pre>
6237 #!/bin/sh
6238 set -ex
6239
6240 if [ "$1" ] ; then
6241     desktop=$1
6242 else
6243     desktop=gnome
6244 fi
6245
6246 from=lenny
6247 to=squeeze
6248
6249 exec &lt; /dev/null
6250 unset LANG
6251 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
6252 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
6253 fuser -mv .
6254 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
6255 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6256 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
6257 #!/bin/sh
6258 exit 101
6259 EOF
6260 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
6261 exit_cleanup() {
6262     umount $tmpdir/proc
6263 }
6264 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
6265 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
6266 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
6267
6268 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
6269
6270 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
6271 # to return the correct answers.
6272 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
6273     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
6274
6275 # Include the desktop and laptop task
6276 for test in desktop laptop ; do
6277     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
6278 #!/bin/sh
6279 exit 2
6280 EOF
6281     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
6282 done
6283
6284 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
6285 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
6286 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
6287 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
6288
6289 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
6290 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6291 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6292 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
6293 fuser -mv
6294 </pre></blockquote>
6295
6296 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
6297 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
6298 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
6299 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
6300 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
6301 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
6302
6303 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
6304 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
6305 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
6306 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
6307 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
6308 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
6309 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
6310
6311 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
6312 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
6313 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
6314 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
6315 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
6316 packages.</p>
6317
6318       </div>
6319       <div class="tags">
6320
6321
6322         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>.
6323
6324
6325       </div>
6326     </div>
6327     <div class="padding"></div>
6328
6329     <div class="entry">
6330       <div class="title">
6331         <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>
6332       </div>
6333       <div class="date">
6334          6th June 2010
6335       </div>
6336       <div class="body">
6337         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
6338 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
6339 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
6340 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
6341 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
6342 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
6343 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
6344
6345 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
6346 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
6347 COLUMNS):</p>
6348
6349 <blockquote><pre>
6350 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
6351 previous=N
6352 PREVLEVEL=
6353 RUNLEVEL=
6354 runlevel=S
6355 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
6356 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
6357 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
6358 </pre></blockquote>
6359
6360 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
6361 script.</p>
6362
6363 <blockquote><pre>
6364 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
6365 previous=N
6366 PREVLEVEL=N
6367 RUNLEVEL=S
6368 runlevel=S
6369 </pre></blockquote>
6370
6371 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
6372 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
6373 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
6374
6375 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
6376 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
6377 choice.</p>
6378
6379       </div>
6380       <div class="tags">
6381
6382
6383         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>.
6384
6385
6386       </div>
6387     </div>
6388     <div class="padding"></div>
6389
6390     <div class="entry">
6391       <div class="title">
6392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
6393       </div>
6394       <div class="date">
6395          6th June 2010
6396       </div>
6397       <div class="body">
6398         <p>Via the
6399 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
6400 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
6401 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
6402 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
6403 following the standards wars of today.</p>
6404
6405       </div>
6406       <div class="tags">
6407
6408
6409         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>.
6410
6411
6412       </div>
6413     </div>
6414     <div class="padding"></div>
6415
6416     <div class="entry">
6417       <div class="title">
6418         <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>
6419       </div>
6420       <div class="date">
6421          3rd June 2010
6422       </div>
6423       <div class="body">
6424         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
6425 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
6426 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
6427 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
6428 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
6429
6430 <blockquote><pre>
6431 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
6432   vendor                    count
6433   Dell Computer Corporation     1
6434     PowerEdge 1750              1
6435   IBM                           1
6436     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
6437   Intel                         2
6438   [no-dmi-info]                 3
6439 maintainer:~#
6440 </pre></blockquote>
6441
6442 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
6443 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
6444 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
6445 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
6446 option to list the individual machines.</p>
6447
6448 <p>A larger list is
6449 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
6450 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
6451 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
6452 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
6453 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
6454 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
6455 collector.</p>
6456
6457       </div>
6458       <div class="tags">
6459
6460
6461         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>.
6462
6463
6464       </div>
6465     </div>
6466     <div class="padding"></div>
6467
6468     <div class="entry">
6469       <div class="title">
6470         <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>
6471       </div>
6472       <div class="date">
6473          1st June 2010
6474       </div>
6475       <div class="body">
6476         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
6477 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
6478 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
6479 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
6480 wait.</p>
6481
6482 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
6483 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
6484 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
6485 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
6486 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
6487 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
6488
6489 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
6490 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
6491 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
6492 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
6493 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
6494 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
6495 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
6496 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
6497
6498 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
6499
6500       </div>
6501       <div class="tags">
6502
6503
6504         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>.
6505
6506
6507       </div>
6508     </div>
6509     <div class="padding"></div>
6510
6511     <div class="entry">
6512       <div class="title">
6513         <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>
6514       </div>
6515       <div class="date">
6516         27th May 2010
6517       </div>
6518       <div class="body">
6519         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
6520 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
6521 issues are known and should be solved:
6522
6523 <p><ul>
6524
6525 <li>The wicd package seen to
6526 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
6527 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
6528 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
6529 seem to be on the case.</li>
6530
6531 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
6532 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
6533 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
6534 maintainer is on the case.</li>
6535
6536 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
6537 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
6538 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
6539 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
6540 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
6541 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
6542 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
6543 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
6544
6545 </ul></p>
6546
6547 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
6548 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
6549 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
6550 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
6551
6552 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6553 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6554 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6555 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6556
6557 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
6558
6559       </div>
6560       <div class="tags">
6561
6562
6563         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>.
6564
6565
6566       </div>
6567     </div>
6568     <div class="padding"></div>
6569
6570     <div class="entry">
6571       <div class="title">
6572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
6573       </div>
6574       <div class="date">
6575         22nd May 2010
6576       </div>
6577       <div class="body">
6578         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
6579 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
6580 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
6581 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
6582
6583 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
6584 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
6585 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
6586 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
6587 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
6588 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
6589 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
6590 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
6591 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
6592 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
6593 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
6594 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
6595 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
6596 going to work.</p>
6597
6598 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
6599 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
6600 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
6601 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
6602 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
6603 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
6604 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
6605 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
6606 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
6607 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
6608 Edu.</p>
6609
6610 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
6611 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
6612 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
6613 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
6614 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
6615 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
6616
6617 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
6618 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
6619
6620       </div>
6621       <div class="tags">
6622
6623
6624         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>.
6625
6626
6627       </div>
6628     </div>
6629     <div class="padding"></div>
6630
6631     <div class="entry">
6632       <div class="title">
6633         <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>
6634       </div>
6635       <div class="date">
6636         14th May 2010
6637       </div>
6638       <div class="body">
6639         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
6640 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
6641 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
6642 expected, if I am to believe the
6643 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
6644 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
6645 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
6646 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
6647 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
6648 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
6649 version.</p>
6650
6651 More information about
6652 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6653 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
6654 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
6655 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
6656
6657 <blockquote><pre>
6658 CONCURRENCY=none
6659 </pre></blockquote>
6660
6661 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6662 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6663 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6664 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6665
6666       </div>
6667       <div class="tags">
6668
6669
6670         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>.
6671
6672
6673       </div>
6674     </div>
6675     <div class="padding"></div>
6676
6677     <div class="entry">
6678       <div class="title">
6679         <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>
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="date">
6682         14th May 2010
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="body">
6685         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
6686 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
6687 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
6688 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
6689 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
6690 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
6691 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
6692 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
6693
6694 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
6695 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
6696 this on the collector host:</p>
6697
6698 <blockquote><pre>
6699 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
6700 </pre></blockquote>
6701
6702 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
6703 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
6704
6705 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
6706 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
6707 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
6708 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
6709 written yet.</p>
6710
6711       </div>
6712       <div class="tags">
6713
6714
6715         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>.
6716
6717
6718       </div>
6719     </div>
6720     <div class="padding"></div>
6721
6722     <div class="entry">
6723       <div class="title">
6724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
6725       </div>
6726       <div class="date">
6727         13th May 2010
6728       </div>
6729       <div class="body">
6730         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
6731 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
6732 has been
6733 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
6734
6735 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
6736 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
6737 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
6738 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
6739 based boot system.  Tollef is
6740 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
6741 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
6742 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
6743 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
6744 at the moment do not.</p>
6745
6746 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
6747 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
6748 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
6749 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
6750 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
6751 way forward.</p>
6752
6753 <p>In the mean time, based on the
6754 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
6755 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
6756 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
6757 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
6758 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
6759 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
6760 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
6761 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
6762
6763       </div>
6764       <div class="tags">
6765
6766
6767         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>.
6768
6769
6770       </div>
6771     </div>
6772     <div class="padding"></div>
6773
6774     <div class="entry">
6775       <div class="title">
6776         <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>
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="date">
6779          6th May 2010
6780       </div>
6781       <div class="body">
6782         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
6783 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
6784 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
6785 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
6786 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6787 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
6788 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
6789
6790 <blockquote><pre>
6791 CONCURRENCY=makefile
6792 </pre></blockquote>
6793
6794 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
6795 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
6796 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
6797 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
6798 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
6799 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
6800 make this happen.</p>
6801
6802 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
6803 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
6804 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
6805 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
6806 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
6807
6808 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
6809 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
6810 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
6811 fix the remaining issues.</p>
6812
6813 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6814 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6815 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6816 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6817
6818       </div>
6819       <div class="tags">
6820
6821
6822         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>.
6823
6824
6825       </div>
6826     </div>
6827     <div class="padding"></div>
6828
6829     <div class="entry">
6830       <div class="title">
6831         <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>
6832       </div>
6833       <div class="date">
6834         27th July 2009
6835       </div>
6836       <div class="body">
6837         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
6838 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
6839 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
6840 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
6841 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
6842 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
6843 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
6844
6845 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
6846 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
6847 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
6848
6849       </div>
6850       <div class="tags">
6851
6852
6853         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>.
6854
6855
6856       </div>
6857     </div>
6858     <div class="padding"></div>
6859
6860     <div class="entry">
6861       <div class="title">
6862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
6863       </div>
6864       <div class="date">
6865         22nd July 2009
6866       </div>
6867       <div class="body">
6868         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
6869 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
6870 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
6871 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
6872 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
6873 the package up to date.</p>
6874
6875 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
6876 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
6877 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
6878 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
6879 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
6880 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
6881 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
6882 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
6883 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
6884 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
6885 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
6886 working on the future release.</p>
6887
6888 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
6889 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
6890
6891       </div>
6892       <div class="tags">
6893
6894
6895         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>.
6896
6897
6898       </div>
6899     </div>
6900     <div class="padding"></div>
6901
6902     <div class="entry">
6903       <div class="title">
6904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
6905       </div>
6906       <div class="date">
6907         24th June 2009
6908       </div>
6909       <div class="body">
6910         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
6911 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
6912 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
6913 funded
6914 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
6915 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
6916 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
6917 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
6918 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
6919 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
6920
6921 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
6922 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
6923 boot:</p>
6924
6925 <ul>
6926
6927 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
6928
6929 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
6930    clock is in UTC.</li>
6931
6932 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
6933    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6934    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
6935
6936 </ul>
6937
6938 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
6939 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
6940 Villegas</a>.
6941
6942 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
6943 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
6944 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
6945 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
6946 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
6947 using this.</p>
6948
6949 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
6950 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
6951 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
6952 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
6953 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
6954 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
6955 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
6956
6957       </div>
6958       <div class="tags">
6959
6960
6961         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>.
6962
6963
6964       </div>
6965     </div>
6966     <div class="padding"></div>
6967
6968     <div class="entry">
6969       <div class="title">
6970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
6971       </div>
6972       <div class="date">
6973         17th May 2009
6974       </div>
6975       <div class="body">
6976         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
6977 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
6978 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
6979 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
6980 dager siden kom
6981 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
6982 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
6983 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
6984 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
6985 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
6986
6987 <blockquote>
6988 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
6989 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
6990 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
6991 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
6992 </blockquote>
6993
6994 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
6995 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
6996 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
6997 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
6998 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
6999
7000 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
7001 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
7002 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
7003
7004       </div>
7005       <div class="tags">
7006
7007
7008         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
7009
7010
7011       </div>
7012     </div>
7013     <div class="padding"></div>
7014
7015     <div class="entry">
7016       <div class="title">
7017         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
7018       </div>
7019       <div class="date">
7020          7th May 2009
7021       </div>
7022       <div class="body">
7023         <p>Kom over
7024 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
7025 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
7026 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
7027 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
7028 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
7029 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
7030 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
7031
7032       </div>
7033       <div class="tags">
7034
7035
7036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7037
7038
7039       </div>
7040     </div>
7041     <div class="padding"></div>
7042
7043     <div class="entry">
7044       <div class="title">
7045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
7046       </div>
7047       <div class="date">
7048          2nd May 2009
7049       </div>
7050       <div class="body">
7051         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
7052 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
7053 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
7054 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
7055 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
7056 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
7057 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
7058 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
7059 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
7060 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
7061 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
7062 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
7063 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
7064 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
7065 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
7066 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
7067 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
7068 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
7069 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
7070 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
7071
7072 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
7073 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
7074 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
7075 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
7076 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
7077 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
7078 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
7079 betydelige.</p>
7080
7081       </div>
7082       <div class="tags">
7083
7084
7085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7086
7087
7088       </div>
7089     </div>
7090     <div class="padding"></div>
7091
7092     <div class="entry">
7093       <div class="title">
7094         <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>
7095       </div>
7096       <div class="date">
7097          2nd May 2009
7098       </div>
7099       <div class="body">
7100         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
7101 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
7102 do not yet know them.</p>
7103
7104 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
7105 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
7106 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
7107 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
7108 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
7109 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
7110 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
7111 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
7112 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
7113 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
7114 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
7115
7116 <p>The second one is
7117 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
7118 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
7119 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
7120 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
7121 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
7122 and the company behind it is running
7123 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
7124 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
7125 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
7126 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
7127 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
7128 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
7129 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
7130 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
7131
7132 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
7133 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
7134 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
7135 surrounded by today.</p>
7136
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="tags">
7139
7140
7141         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>.
7142
7143
7144       </div>
7145     </div>
7146     <div class="padding"></div>
7147
7148     <div class="entry">
7149       <div class="title">
7150         <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>
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="date">
7153         28th April 2009
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="body">
7156         <p>Julien Blache
7157 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
7158 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
7159 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
7160 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
7161 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
7162 properties.</p>
7163
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="tags">
7166
7167
7168         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>.
7169
7170
7171       </div>
7172     </div>
7173     <div class="padding"></div>
7174
7175     <div class="entry">
7176       <div class="title">
7177         <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>
7178       </div>
7179       <div class="date">
7180         30th March 2009
7181       </div>
7182       <div class="body">
7183         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
7184 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
7185 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
7186 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
7187 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
7188 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
7189 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
7190 application.</p>
7191
7192 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
7193 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
7194 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
7195 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
7196 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
7197 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
7198 blocked from doing so.</p>
7199
7200 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
7201 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
7202 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
7203 requirements change.</p>
7204
7205 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
7206 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
7207 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
7208
7209       </div>
7210       <div class="tags">
7211
7212
7213         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>.
7214
7215
7216       </div>
7217     </div>
7218     <div class="padding"></div>
7219
7220     <div class="entry">
7221       <div class="title">
7222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
7223       </div>
7224       <div class="date">
7225         29th March 2009
7226       </div>
7227       <div class="body">
7228         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
7229 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
7230 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
7231 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
7232 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
7233 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
7234 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
7235 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
7236 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
7237 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
7238 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
7239 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
7240 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
7241 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
7242 now. :)</p>
7243
7244       </div>
7245       <div class="tags">
7246
7247
7248         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>.
7249
7250
7251       </div>
7252     </div>
7253     <div class="padding"></div>
7254
7255     <div class="entry">
7256       <div class="title">
7257         <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>
7258       </div>
7259       <div class="date">
7260         29th March 2009
7261       </div>
7262       <div class="body">
7263         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
7264 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
7265 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
7266 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
7267 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
7268 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
7269
7270 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
7271 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
7272 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
7273 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
7274 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
7275 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
7276 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
7277 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
7278 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
7279 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
7280 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
7281 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
7282 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
7283
7284 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
7285 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
7286 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
7287 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
7288
7289 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
7290 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
7291
7292 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
7293 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
7294 new IETF work group?</p>
7295
7296       </div>
7297       <div class="tags">
7298
7299
7300         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>.
7301
7302
7303       </div>
7304     </div>
7305     <div class="padding"></div>
7306
7307     <div class="entry">
7308       <div class="title">
7309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
7310       </div>
7311       <div class="date">
7312         15th February 2009
7313       </div>
7314       <div class="body">
7315         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
7316 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
7317 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
7318 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
7319 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
7320 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
7321 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
7322 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
7323 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
7324 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
7325 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
7326 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
7327
7328       </div>
7329       <div class="tags">
7330
7331
7332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7333
7334
7335       </div>
7336     </div>
7337     <div class="padding"></div>
7338
7339     <div class="entry">
7340       <div class="title">
7341         <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>
7342       </div>
7343       <div class="date">
7344          7th December 2008
7345       </div>
7346       <div class="body">
7347         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
7348 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
7349 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
7350 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
7351 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
7352 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
7353 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
7354 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
7355
7356 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
7357 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
7358 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
7359 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
7360 of these cards.</p>
7361
7362       </div>
7363       <div class="tags">
7364
7365
7366         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>.
7367
7368
7369       </div>
7370     </div>
7371     <div class="padding"></div>
7372
7373     <div class="entry">
7374       <div class="title">
7375         <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>
7376       </div>
7377       <div class="date">
7378         25th November 2008
7379       </div>
7380       <div class="body">
7381         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
7382 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
7383 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
7384 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
7385 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
7386 notes are available on
7387 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
7388 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
7389 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
7390 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
7391 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
7392 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
7393 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
7394 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
7395 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
7396
7397 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
7398 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
7399
7400       </div>
7401       <div class="tags">
7402
7403
7404         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>.
7405
7406
7407       </div>
7408     </div>
7409     <div class="padding"></div>
7410
7411     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
7412     <div id="sidebar">
7413
7414
7415
7416 <h2>Archive</h2>
7417 <ul>
7418
7419 <li>2014
7420 <ul>
7421
7422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
7423
7424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
7425
7426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (2)</a></li>
7427
7428 </ul></li>
7429
7430 <li>2013
7431 <ul>
7432
7433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
7434
7435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
7436
7437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
7438
7439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
7440
7441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7442
7443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
7444
7445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
7446
7447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
7448
7449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
7450
7451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
7452
7453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
7454
7455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
7456
7457 </ul></li>
7458
7459 <li>2012
7460 <ul>
7461
7462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
7463
7464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
7465
7466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
7467
7468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
7469
7470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
7471
7472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
7473
7474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
7475
7476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
7477
7478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
7479
7480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
7481
7482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
7483
7484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
7485
7486 </ul></li>
7487
7488 <li>2011
7489 <ul>
7490
7491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
7492
7493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
7494
7495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
7496
7497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
7498
7499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
7500
7501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
7502
7503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
7504
7505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
7506
7507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
7508
7509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
7510
7511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
7512
7513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
7514
7515 </ul></li>
7516
7517 <li>2010
7518 <ul>
7519
7520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
7521
7522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
7523
7524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
7525
7526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
7527
7528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7529
7530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
7531
7532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
7533
7534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
7535
7536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
7537
7538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
7539
7540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
7541
7542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
7543
7544 </ul></li>
7545
7546 <li>2009
7547 <ul>
7548
7549 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
7550
7551 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
7552
7553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
7554
7555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
7556
7557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7558
7559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
7560
7561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
7562
7563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
7564
7565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
7566
7567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
7568
7569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
7570
7571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
7572
7573 </ul></li>
7574
7575 <li>2008
7576 <ul>
7577
7578 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
7579
7580 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
7581
7582 </ul></li>
7583
7584 </ul>
7585
7586
7587
7588 <h2>Tags</h2>
7589 <ul>
7590
7591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
7592
7593  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
7594
7595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
7596
7597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
7598
7599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
7600
7601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
7602
7603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
7604
7605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
7606
7607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (94)</a></li>
7608
7609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (145)</a></li>
7610
7611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
7612
7613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
7614
7615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
7616
7617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (237)</a></li>
7618
7619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
7620
7621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
7622
7623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
7624
7625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
7626
7627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
7628
7629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (39)</a></li>
7630
7631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
7632
7633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
7634
7635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
7636
7637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
7638
7639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
7640
7641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (7)</a></li>
7642
7643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
7644
7645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (241)</a></li>
7646
7647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (161)</a></li>
7648
7649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (10)</a></li>
7650
7651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
7652
7653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
7654
7655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (69)</a></li>
7656
7657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
7658
7659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
7660
7661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
7662
7663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
7664
7665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
7666
7667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
7668
7669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
7670
7671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (34)</a></li>
7672
7673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
7674
7675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
7676
7677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
7678
7679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
7680
7681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
7682
7683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (21)</a></li>
7684
7685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
7686
7687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
7688
7689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
7690
7691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
7692
7693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
7694
7695 </ul>
7696
7697
7698     </div>
7699     <p style="text-align: right">
7700  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
7701 </p>
7702
7703   </body>
7704 </html>