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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 2 Aug 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
have worked on a Norwegian
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
&lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
progress of the translation:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
project files currently available from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
the updated
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2013-07-27&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
desktop contains
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
   for network configuration, as wicd didn&#39;t work any more.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
   packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
   by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
   installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
   and libpam-mklocaluser.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
   crash bugs.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
   desktop=gnome installations.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
   netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
   setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
   install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
   with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
   exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
   name setting at run time to work again.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
   fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
   updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
   (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Grub is missing the new artwork.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
    not use the http proxy as it should.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Chromium also fail to use the proxy.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
new laptop&lt;/a&gt;.  I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning.  The
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
    (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
    this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
    0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
    systems.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
    /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
    cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
    to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
from getting the data on the disk (see
&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
there.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
back.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
lock up when I download a new
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
exist).&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
party in Oslo.  It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately I did not have much
time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
ended up picking a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
on that below.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
kernel developers as
&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
Lenovo forums, both for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
There is even a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2013-07-03&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
desktop contains
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
    submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
    brings KDE in line with the others.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
    they don&#39;t have a desktop menu entry and thus won&#39;t show up in the
    menu now that menu-xdg was removed.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
    multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
    X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
    too.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
    are too few to make the package useful.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
  &lt;li&gt;Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
    up for some language options.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
    d-i is doing it.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
    debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
    script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
    Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Update system to install needed firmware packages during
    installation, to work properly in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
    and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
    work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
    available yet (698840).&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Artwork not enabled for all desktops.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
&lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
#655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project, we include a post-installation test suite,
which check that services are running, working, and return the
expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
configured, which is the topic of this post.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The last week I&#39;ve fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
right after we got the ISOs operational.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
test suite using &lt;tt&gt;/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install&lt;/tt&gt; and see if
any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
the problem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
please join us on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt; and the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt; mailing
list.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>