Petter Reinholdtsen

When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly. And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian. Normally something more is needed. But thanks to my isenkram package and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy to do this using simple preseeding.

The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus of this story.)

To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific packages for the machine being installed and install them, because isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.

Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of hardware it is the only option in Debian.

The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get firmware installed automatically by the installer:

base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true

The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is implemented in the package currently in unstable.

If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how this recipe work for you if you decide to give it a go. :)

So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):

Task: isenkram-packages
Section: hardware
Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 proposed.
Test-new-install: show show
Relevance: 8
Packages: for-current-hardware

Task: isenkram-firmware
Section: hardware
Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 packages are proposed.
Test-new-install: mark show
Relevance: 8
Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware

The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:

#!/bin/sh
#
PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
export PATH
isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l

With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)

If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is installed, run DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test --new-install to get the list of packages that tasksel would install.

Debian Edu will be pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used to install firmware now.

Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:

If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what errors can reveal.

The lsdvd project got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood. This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve Dibb.

I just wrapped up a new lsdvd release, available in git or from the download page. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version 0.17.

• Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
• Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
• Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
• Fix pallete display of first entry
• Fix include orders
• Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
• Fix the chapter count
• Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising the palette size is the same.
• Fix array printing.
• Correct subsecond calculations.
• Add sector information to the output format.
• Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings with more GCC compiler warnings.

This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)

The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project provide a Linux solution for schools, including a powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the future. The current status can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer, but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a recipe on how to get the installation limping along.

First, download the test ISO via ftp, http or rsync (use ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso). The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to install with some tweaking.

When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run

nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install

and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install due to a known bug in eatmydata.

When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit your need.

If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two days.

I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch provided in bug #702711. The rest have proper fixes in unstable.

I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.

I use the lsdvd tool to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length, etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to get an updated version into Debian. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take over. And yesterday, I became project admin.

I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly, collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place. I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out the git source and join the project mailing list. :)

Rundt omkring i Oslo og Østlandsområdet henger det bokser over veiene som jeg har lurt på hva gjør. De har ut fra plassering og vinkling sett ut som bokser som sniffer ut et eller annet fra forbipasserende trafikk, men det har vært uklart for meg hva det er de leser av. Her om dagen tok jeg bilde av en slik boks som henger under ei skibru på Sollihøgda:

Boksen er tydelig merket «Kapsch >>>», logoen til det sveitsiske selskapet Kapsch som blant annet lager sensorsystemer for veitrafikk. Men de lager mye forskjellig, og jeg kjente ikke igjen boksen på utseendet etter en kjapp titt på produktlista til selskapet.

I og med at boksen henger over veien E16, en riksvei vedlikeholdt av Statens Vegvesen, så antok jeg at det burde være mulig å bruke REST-API-et som gir tilgang til vegvesenets database over veier, skilter og annet veirelatert til å finne ut hva i alle dager dette kunne være. De har både en datakatalog og et søk, der en kan søke etter ulike typer oppføringer innen for et gitt geografisk område. Jeg laget et enkelt shell-script for å hente ut antall av en gitt type innenfor området skibrua dekker, og listet opp navnet på typene som ble funnet. Orket ikke slå opp hvordan URL-koding av aktuelle strenger kunne gjøres mer generisk, og brukte en stygg sed-linje i stedet.

#!/bin/sh
urlmap() {
    sed \
    -e 's/  / /g'   -e 's/{/%7B/g'  \
    -e 's/}/%7D/g'  -e 's/\[/%5B/g' \
    -e 's/\]/%5D/g' -e 's/ /%20/g'  \
    -e 's/,/%2C/g'  -e 's/\"/%22/g' \
    -e 's/:/%3A/g'
}

lookup() {
    url="$1"
    curl -s -H 'Accept: application/vnd.vegvesen.nvdb-v1+xml' \
       "https://www.vegvesen.no/nvdb/api$url" | xmllint --format -
}

for id in $(seq 1 874) ; do
    search="{
  lokasjon: {
    bbox: \"10.34425,59.96386,10.34458,59.96409\",
    srid: \"WGS84\"
  },
   objektTyper: [{
     id: $id, antall: 10
   }]
}"

    query=/sok?kriterie=$(echo $search | urlmap)
    if lookup "$query" |
    grep -q '<totaltAntallReturnert>0<'
    then
    :
    else
    echo $id
    lookup "/datakatalog/objekttyper/$id" |grep '^  <navn>'
    fi
done

exit 0

Aktuelt ID-område 1-874 var riktig i datakatalogen da jeg laget scriptet. Det vil endre seg over tid. Skriptet listet så opp aktuelle typer i og rundt skibrua:

5
  <navn>Rekkverk</navn>
14
  <navn>Rekkverksende</navn>
47
  <navn>Trafikklomme</navn>
49
  <navn>Trafikkøy</navn>
60
  <navn>Bru</navn>
79
  <navn>Stikkrenne/Kulvert</navn>
80
  <navn>Grøft, åpen</navn>
86
  <navn>Belysningsstrekning</navn>
95
  <navn>Skiltpunkt</navn>
96
  <navn>Skiltplate</navn>
98
  <navn>Referansestolpe</navn>
99
  <navn>Vegoppmerking, langsgående</navn>
105
  <navn>Fartsgrense</navn>
106
  <navn>Vinterdriftsstrategi</navn>
172
  <navn>Trafikkdeler</navn>
241
  <navn>Vegdekke</navn>
293
  <navn>Breddemåling</navn>
301
  <navn>Kantklippareal</navn>
318
  <navn>Snø-/isrydding</navn>
445
  <navn>Skred</navn>
446
  <navn>Dokumentasjon</navn>
452
  <navn>Undergang</navn>
528
  <navn>Tverrprofil</navn>
532
  <navn>Vegreferanse</navn>
534
  <navn>Region</navn>
535
  <navn>Fylke</navn>
536
  <navn>Kommune</navn>
538
  <navn>Gate</navn>
539
  <navn>Transportlenke</navn>
540
  <navn>Trafikkmengde</navn>
570
  <navn>Trafikkulykke</navn>
571
  <navn>Ulykkesinvolvert enhet</navn>
572
  <navn>Ulykkesinvolvert person</navn>
579
  <navn>Politidistrikt</navn>
583
  <navn>Vegbredde</navn>
591
  <navn>Høydebegrensning</navn>
592
  <navn>Nedbøyningsmåling</navn>
597
  <navn>Støy-luft, Strekningsdata</navn>
601
  <navn>Oppgravingsdata</navn>
602
  <navn>Oppgravingslag</navn>
603
  <navn>PMS-parsell</navn>
604
  <navn>Vegnormalstrekning</navn>
605
  <navn>Værrelatert strekning</navn>
616
  <navn>Feltstrekning</navn>
617
  <navn>Adressepunkt</navn>
626
  <navn>Friksjonsmåleserie</navn>
629
  <navn>Vegdekke, flatelapping</navn>
639
  <navn>Kurvatur, horisontalelement</navn>
640
  <navn>Kurvatur, vertikalelement</navn>
642
  <navn>Kurvatur, vertikalpunkt</navn>
643
  <navn>Statistikk, trafikkmengde</navn>
647
  <navn>Statistikk, vegbredde</navn>
774
  <navn>Nedbøyningsmåleserie</navn>
775
  <navn>ATK, influensstrekning</navn>
794
  <navn>Systemobjekt</navn>
810
  <navn>Vinterdriftsklasse</navn>
821
  <navn>Funksjonell vegklasse</navn>
825
  <navn>Kurvatur, stigning</navn>
838
  <navn>Vegbredde, beregnet</navn>
862
  <navn>Reisetidsregistreringspunkt</navn>
871
  <navn>Bruksklasse</navn>

Av disse ser ID 775 og 862 mest relevant ut. ID 775 antar jeg refererer til fotoboksen som står like ved brua, mens «Reisetidsregistreringspunkt» kanskje kan være boksen som henger der. Hvordan finner jeg så ut hva dette kan være for noe. En titt på datakatalogsiden for ID 862/Reisetidsregistreringspunkt viser at det er finnes 53 slike målere i Norge, og hvor de er plassert, men gir ellers få detaljer. Det er plassert 40 på østlandet og 13 i Trondheimsregionen. Men siden nevner «AutoPASS», og hvis en slår opp oppføringen på Sollihøgda nevner den «Ciber AS» som ID for eksternt system. (Kan det være snakk om Ciber Norge AS, et selskap eid av Ciber Europe Bv?) Et nettsøk på «Ciber AS autopass» fører meg til en artikkel fra NRK Trøndelag i 2013 med tittel «Sjekk dette hvis du vil unngå kø». Artikkelen henviser til vegvesenets nettside reisetider.no som har en kartside for Østlandet som viser at det måles mellom Sandvika og Sollihøgda. Det kan dermed se ut til at jeg har funnet ut hva boksene gjør.

Hvis det stemmer, så er dette bokser som leser av AutoPASS-ID-en til alle passerende biler med AutoPASS-brikke, og dermed gjør det mulig for de som kontrollerer boksene å holde rede på hvor en gitt bil er når den passerte et slikt målepunkt. NRK-artikkelen forteller at denne informasjonen i dag kun brukes til å koble to AutoPASS-brikkepasseringer passeringer sammen for å beregne reisetiden, og at bruken er godkjent av Datatilsynet. Det er desverre ikke mulig for en sjåfør som passerer under en slik boks å kontrollere at AutoPASS-ID-en kun brukes til dette i dag og i fremtiden.

I tillegg til denne type AutoPASS-sniffere vet jeg at det også finnes mange automatiske stasjoner som tar betalt pr. passering (aka bomstasjoner), og der lagres informasjon om tid, sted og bilnummer i 10 år. Finnes det andre slike sniffere plassert ut på veiene?

Personlig har jeg valgt å ikke bruke AutoPASS-brikke, for å gjøre det vanskeligere og mer kostbart for de som vil invadere privatsfæren og holde rede på hvor bilen min beveger seg til enhver tid. Jeg håper flere vil gjøre det samme, selv om det gir litt høyere private utgifter (dyrere bompassering). Vern om privatsfæren koster i disse dager.

Takk til Jan Kristian Jensen i Statens Vegvesen for tips om dokumentasjon på vegvesenets REST-API.

The Debian installer could be a lot quicker. When we install more than 2000 packages in Skolelinux / Debian Edu using tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever. A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in bug #613428 about too much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really relevant while the installer is running.

A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It depend on the small and clever package eatmydata, which uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages), it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace them with a simple shell wrapper calling "eatmydata $program $@", to get the same effect. Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.

The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie, and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel dialog.

Machine/setup	Original tasksel	Optimised tasksel	Reduction
Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE	64 min (07:46-08:50)	<44 min (11:27-12:11)	>20 min 18%
Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE	57 min (08:48-09:45)	34 min (07:43-08:17)	23 min 40%
Latitude D505 Minimal	22 min (10:37-10:59)	11 min (11:16-11:27)	11 min 50%
Thinkpad X200 Minimal	6 min (08:19-08:25)	4 min (08:04-08:08)	2 min 33%
Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE	19 min (09:21-09:40)	15 min (10:25-10:40)	4 min 21%

The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being installed.

The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in Debian Installer, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger for the entire installation.

I've implemented this in the debian-edu-install git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
info() {
    logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
}
error() {
    logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
}
override_install() {
    apt-install eatmydata || true
    if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
        for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
            file=/usr/bin/$bin
            # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
            if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
                info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
                printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
                    > /target$file.edu
                chmod 755 /target$file.edu
                in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
                    --rename --quiet --add $file
                ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
            else
                error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
            fi
        done
    else
        error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
    fi
}

override_install

To clean up, another shell script should go into /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:

#! /bin/sh -e
. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
error() {
    logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
}
remove_install_override() {
    for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
        file=/usr/bin/$bin
        if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
            rm /target$file
            in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
                --rename --quiet --remove $file
            rm /target$file.edu
        else
            error "Missing divert for $file."
        fi
    done
    sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
}

remove_install_override

In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and finish-install.d scripts.

By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing. Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting everyone.

Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of bug #702711. An updated eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the Norwegian Unix User Group about the OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net, and was very happy to learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope those problems are gone now.

Behind the round robin DNS entry of the sks-keyservers.net service there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be better than what I have used so far. :)

Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?

Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this line:

keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net

With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG keyserver automatically should their need it:

% host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
_pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
%

Now if only the HKP lookup protocol supported finding signature paths, I would be very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys. This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something for a future version of the protocol?

Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license agreement with MPEG LA. If one want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license. I am not sure. Back then, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG LA. The issue is not limited to those two products, though. Other much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple. The complicating factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright licenses are.

These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their published end user license text (converted to lower case text for easier reading):

18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:

This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.

18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:

This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.

Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for personal or non-commercial purposes.

The Sorenson Media software have similar terms:

With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com.

With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.

Some free software like Handbrake and FFMPEG uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.

Lenge siden jeg har hatt tid til å publisere lenker til skriverier jeg har hatt glede og nytte av av å lese. Her er en liten norsk lenkesamling.

• Sjøslag om fiskemilliardene (NRK Ytring 2014-03-03) - litt om hvordan de norske felles matressurser røves fra felleskapet.
• Matkrisen kan komme til Norge (Aftenposten 2014-4-01) - hvordan miljøendringene vil gjøre matproduksjonen i Norge mer sårbar.
• Norge trenger kornlager (NRK Ytring 2014-06-07) Chr. Anton Smedshaug forteller litt om Norges sårbare matsituasjon etter at Staten solgte Norges kornlager.
• PST vil overvåke datatastaturer (NRK 2014-03-04) - PST ønsker retten til å bryte seg inn på private PC-er og legge inn spionprogrammer. Hvilket nok vil gjøre Linux mer populært, men gjør at en i enda mindre grad enn i dag kan stole på datamaskiner - neppe en god ide for samfunnet totalt sett.
• «Ruter fremstår som et pøbelvelde» (OsloBy 2014-03-05) - et eksempel på hvordan kollektivtransportselskapet i Oslo håndterer sine kunder.
• Clear Channel nektet å vise Greenpeace-reklame i Oslo (Dagbladet 2014-03-05) - forteller litt om hvordan hvilke budskap som når ut i det offentlige rom kontrolleres i Norge.
• Svarte ikke på kritikken (Dagbladet 2014-03-06) - innlegg fra Norsk presseforbund der de nok en gang tar opp det forkastelige i at politiet nå har full tilgang til å bedrive telefonkontroll av advokater.
• «Putin spiller poker, ikke sjakk. I sjakk har man regler.» (Aftenposten 2014-03-08) - sjakklegenden Kasparov forklarer litt om hvordan han ser at Russlands politikk fungerer, blant annet i lys av started av Ukraina-krisen.
• I seng med fienden (Aftenposten 2014-03-10) - kronikk fra Eirik H. Vinje om hvordan menn og kvinner settes opp mot hverandre i det offentlige ordskiftet, kanskje på sviktende grunnlag.
• Fritt frem for skulk (Aftenposten 2014-03-14) - skildring av hvordan norske elever i dag ikke lenger har rimelig krav om oppmøte på skolen.
• «Datalagringsdirektiv» avslørte abort, sykdom og våpenkjøp (Aftenposten 2014-03-14) - om hvordan forskere har dokumentert hvordan innsamling av metadata om telefoni og Internett-bruk kan være svært avslørende.
• Konsentrasjonssvikt på pensum (Dagbladet 2014-03-14) - Kommentar om hvordan (feil) bruk IKT i skolen kan ødelegge mer enn det bidrar til læring.
• Reservasjonsrettsstaten (blogg fra Doremus 2014-02-09) - morsom beskrivelse om hvordan regjeringens forslag til reservasjonsrett for leger kan utvides til å gjelde alles samvittighet.
• Autoritær gjøkunge (Aftenposten 2014-03-25) - Kronikk av Bjørn Stærk om snurpenots-overvåkningen som varsleren Snowden dokumenterte.
• Leveransekrise i Offentlig sektor – mener Mike Bracken, Executive Director of Digital in the Cabinet Office (blogg fra Friprog-senteret 2014-03-26).
• Norge må stanse avlyttingen (Dagbladet 2014-03-26) - leserinnlegg fra Felix Horne der han ber om at Norge gjør en innsats for å få slutt på overvåkning av innbyggerne som gjøres i Norge av Etiopiske myndigheter.
• Demokrati er ingen naturlig styreform (Aftenposten 2014-04-01) - kronikk av Stein Ringen om hvordan demokrati som styreform går tapt når innbyggerne tar det for gitt.
• Ytringsansvar ere Enhver tilladte! (NRK Ytring 2014-04-01) - innspill fra Trygve Svensson og Helge Svare om at hver enkelt av oss har et ansvar for å ytre oss i den offentlige debatten.
• Jeg er ingen god samfunnsborger (Aftenposten 2014-04-16), kronikk av Simen Tveitereid om alternative måter å motiveres i samfunnet, uten å hige etter mer penger og flere ting.
• DLD-dommen: Avgjørelsen får umiddelbar virkning (Aftenposten 2014-04-10) - kronikk av Høyres Michael Tetzschner, en partiutbryter i DLD-saken som stemte nei til DLD i Stortinget i 2011.
• Datalagringsdirektivets endelikt (blogg fra John Wessel-Aas 2014-04-11) - oppsummering av hvordan direktivet ble funnet ugyldig i EU-domstolen.
• Kronikk: Kapitulasjonspresidenten (VG 2014-04-22) - kronikk av Einar Kr. Steffenak om hvordan Stortingspresidenten og regjeringen viser sin prinsippløshet i møte med Kina.
• Innerst inne er alle nordmenn (Aftenposten 2014-04-27) - kronikk fra Bjørn Stærk om hvordan vi i Vesten i stor grad baserer oss på en fantasi om at alle i verden bærer på en drøm om å bli som oss.
• Det italienske senatet gav seg selv 134 milliarder euro i sluttpakke (Aftenposten 2014-06-19) - forsker Simen Gaure forteller hvordan løgner og fantasi fra nettkilder i stor grad blir akseptert som sannhet - antagelig også av deg og meg.
• Et forsvar for bråkmakerne (Dagbladet 2014-05-30) - kronikk av Dag Øystein Nome som beskriver hvordan dagens skole ikke fungerer så godt for mange elever.
• Betalte med slitt seddel - havnet i arresten (Osloby 2014-06-25)) - dokumentasjon av Oslopolitiets angrep på vår alles rett til å ferdes uten elektronisk sporing. Jeg bruker kontanter i så stor grad som mulig da banken ikke har noe med hvor jeg er og hva jeg kjøper. Vi som gjør dette risikerer som beskrevet overgrep som frihetsberøvelse og registrering og lagring av fingeravtrykk og bilde i politiets database over mistenkte.
• Fredsprisen til Snowden (Aftenposten 2014-06-28) - leder som forklarer hvorfor varsleren Snowden bør få fredsprisen.
• Strategi for politistaten (Dagbladet 2014-08-01) - leder som advarer om sterke krefter som bruker terrortrusselen til å lirke Norge nærmere å bli en politistat.
• Vi må tenke nytt om narkotika (NRK Ytring 2014-08-03) - Mark Lewis forklarer hvorfor legalisering og offentlig kontroll av narkotikamarkedet er mye bedre enn å overlate det til kriminelle.