<item>
- <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
-start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
-problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
-initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
-wait.</p>
+ <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
+directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
+tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
+Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
+<a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
+be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
+populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
+find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
+objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
+are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
-<p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
-against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
-that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
-kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
+<p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
+the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
+not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
+Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
+released.</p>
-<p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
-problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
-distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
-maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
-the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
-while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
-distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
-but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
+<p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
+like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
+not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
+<a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
-<p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p__norsk__mot_sykkel.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p__norsk__mot_sykkel.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jun 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
-<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
-med sykkel</a>... Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
-fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
+<p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
+in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
-<p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
-effekt på området der?</p>
+<p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
+useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
+in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
+changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
-to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
-information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
-included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
-the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
+ <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
+ <link>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</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A while back, I
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
+about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
+for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
+of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
-<blockquote><pre>
-maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
- vendor count
- Dell Computer Corporation 1
- PowerEdge 1750 1
- IBM 1
- eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
- Intel 2
- [no-dmi-info] 3
-maintainer:~#
-</pre></blockquote>
+<p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
+the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
+the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
+computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
-<p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
-provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
-information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
-machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
-option to list the individual machines.</p>
+<p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
+without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
+do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
+Debian Edu.</p>
-<p>A larger list is
-<a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
-city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
-provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
-are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
-their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
-it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
-collector.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Via the
-<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
-of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
-<a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
-Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
-following the standards wars of today.</p>
+<p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
+the
+<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
+schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
+available today from IETF.</p>
+
+<pre>
+--- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
++++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
+@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
+ objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
+ NAME 'dhcpHost'
+ DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
+- SUP top
++ SUP top AUXILIARY
+ MUST cn
+ MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
+ X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
+</pre>
+
+<p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
+Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
+package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
+please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
-scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
-keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
-needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
-differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
-this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
-script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
-
-<p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
-script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
-COLUMNS):</p>
+ <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
+installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
+I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
+of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
+conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
+this:
<blockquote><pre>
-DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
-previous=N
-PREVLEVEL=
-RUNLEVEL=
-runlevel=S
-UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
-UPSTART_INSTANCE=
-UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+tasksel --new-install
</pre></blockquote>
-<p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
-script.</p>
+This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
+tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
+any output what so ever.
+
+Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
+package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
+any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
+happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
+when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
+printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
+code like this:
<blockquote><pre>
-INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
-previous=N
-PREVLEVEL=N
-RUNLEVEL=S
-runlevel=S
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
+$cmd
</pre></blockquote>
-<p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
-sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
-to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
+<p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
+--without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
+~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
+~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
+laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
+important, just like tasksel would have done it during
+installation.</p>
-<p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
-looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
-choice.</p>
+<p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
+install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
+like this.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jun 2010 12:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever. En slik
-myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
-tjenermaskiner. I siste Computerworld Norge er
-<a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
-Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
-blygsel:</p>
-
-<blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
-om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
-Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
-driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
-desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
-og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
-
-<p>En <a
-href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
-sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
-at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
-i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
-overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows. Et søk på
-nettet sendte meg til
-<a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
-IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
-
-<blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
-Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
-var så stor. Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
-forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
-til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
+ <title>Vinmonopolet bryter loven åpenlyst - og flere planlegger å gjøre det samme</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven__penlyst___og_flere_planlegger___gj_re_det_samme.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven__penlyst___og_flere_planlegger___gj_re_det_samme.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/06/16/nyheter/innenriks/streik/arbeidsliv/12157858/">Dagbladet
+melder</a> at Vinmonopolet med bakgrunn i vekterstreiken som pågår i
+Norge for tiden, har bestemt seg for med vitende og vilje å bryte
+sentralbanklovens paragraf 14 ved å nekte folk å betale med
+kontanter, og at flere butikker planlegger å følge deres eksempel.
+Jeg synes det er hårreisende hvis de slipper unna med et slikt
+soleklart lovbrudd, og lurer på hva slags muligheter jeg vil ha hvis
+jeg blir nektet å handle med kontanter. Jeg handler i hovedsak med
+kontanter selv, da jeg anser det som en borgerrett å kunne handle
+anonymt uten at det blir registrert. For meg er det et angrep på mitt
+personvern å nekte å ta imot kontant betaling.</p>
-<p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
-over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
-Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
-av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
-Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
-Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
-driftstjenester. Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
-jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
-artikkelen. Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
+<p><a href="http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19850524-028-003.html#14">Paragrafen
+i sentralbankloven</a> lyder:</p>
<blockquote>
-<p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
-meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
-mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
-sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
-avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
-skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
-noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
-sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
+<p>§ 14. Tvungent betalingsmiddel</p>
-<p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
-harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
-programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
-mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
-millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
-oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
-problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
-elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
-nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
-linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
+<p>Bankens sedler og mynter er tvungent betalingsmiddel i Norge. Ingen
+er pliktig til i én betaling å ta imot mer enn femogtyve mynter av
+hver enhet.</p>
-<p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
-ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
-klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
-administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
+<p>Sterkt skadde sedler og mynter er ikke tvungent
+betalingsmiddel. Banken gir nærmere forskrifter om erstatning for
+bortkomne, brente eller skadde sedler og mynter.</p>
-<p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
-boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
-var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
-oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
-arbeid.</p>
+<p>Selv om en avtale inneholder klausul om betaling av en
+pengeforpliktelse i gullverdi, kan skyldneren frigjøre seg med tvungne
+betalingsmidler uten hensyn til denne klausul.</p>
</blockquote>
-<p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
-sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere. Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
-IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
-minner.</p>
+<p>Det er med bakgrunn i denne lovet ikke tillatt å nekte å ta imot
+kontakt betaling. Det er en lov jeg har sans for, og som jeg mener må
+håndheves strengt.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
-see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
-have been discovered and reported in the process
-(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
-enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
-kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
-am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
-
-<p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
-Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
-it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
-script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
-desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
-(only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
-
-<p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
-currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
-in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
-is created. The bug report
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
-this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
-to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
-hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
-do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
-<a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
-issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
-maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
-working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
-udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
-upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
-documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
-Debian Squeeze.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
-script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
-trick:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-set -ex
-
-if [ "$1" ] ; then
- desktop=$1
-else
- desktop=gnome
-fi
-
-from=lenny
-to=squeeze
-
-exec &lt; /dev/null
-unset LANG
-mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
-tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
-fuser -mv .
-debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
-chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
-cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
-#!/bin/sh
-exit 101
-EOF
-chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
-exit_cleanup() {
- umount $tmpdir/proc
-}
-mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
-# Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
-trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
-
-chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
-
-# Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
-# to return the correct answers.
-echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
- chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
-
-# Include the desktop and laptop task
-for test in desktop laptop ; do
- echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
-#!/bin/sh
-exit 2
-EOF
- chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
-done
-
-DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
-DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
-export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
-chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
-
-echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
-chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
-touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
-chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
-fuser -mv
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
-with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
-differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
-regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
-work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
-kdebase-workspace-data</p>
-
-<p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
-(KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
-post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
-aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
-remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
-KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
-193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
+ <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
+interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
+is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
+<a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
+pages.</p>
-<p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
-is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
-booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
-packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
-upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
-packages.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pne_tr_dl_snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pne_tr_dl_snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Veldig glad for å oppdage via
-<a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1841256/Finland-To-Legalize-Use-of-Unsecured-Wi-Fi">Slashdot</a>
-at folk i Finland har forstått at åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode.
-Jeg ser på åpne trådløsnett som et fellesgode på linje med retten til
-ferdsel i utmark og retten til å bevege seg i strandsonen. Jeg har
-glede av åpne trådløsnett når jeg finner dem, og deler gladelig nett
-med andre så lenge de ikke forstyrrer min bruk av eget nett.
-Nettkapasiteten er sjelden en begrensning ved normal browsing og enkel
-SSH-innlogging (som er min vanligste nettbruk), og nett kan brukes til
-så mye positivt og nyttig (som nyhetslesing, sjekke været, kontakte
-slekt og venner, holde seg oppdatert om politiske saker, kontakte
-organisasjoner og politikere, etc), at det for meg er helt urimelig å
-blokkere dette for alle som ikke gjør en flue fortred. De som mener
-at potensialet for misbruk er grunn nok til å hindre all den positive
-og lovlydige bruken av et åpent trådløsnett har jeg dermed ingen
-forståelse for. En kan ikke la eksistensen av forbrytere styre hvordan
-samfunnet skal organiseres. Da får en et kontrollsamfunn de færreste
-ønsker å leve i, og det at vi har et samfunn i Norge der tilliten til
-hverandre er høy gjør at samfunnet fungerer ganske godt. Det bør vi
-anstrenge oss for å beholde.</p>
+<p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
+that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
+and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
+interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
+request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
+a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
+arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
+administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
+contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
+see how the project is doing.</p>
+
+<p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
+machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
+OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
+in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
+Windows. This is great.</p>
</description>
</item>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
-interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
-is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
-<a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
-pages.</p>
+ <title>Åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pne_tr_dl_snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pne_tr_dl_snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Veldig glad for å oppdage via
+<a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1841256/Finland-To-Legalize-Use-of-Unsecured-Wi-Fi">Slashdot</a>
+at folk i Finland har forstått at åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode.
+Jeg ser på åpne trådløsnett som et fellesgode på linje med retten til
+ferdsel i utmark og retten til å bevege seg i strandsonen. Jeg har
+glede av åpne trådløsnett når jeg finner dem, og deler gladelig nett
+med andre så lenge de ikke forstyrrer min bruk av eget nett.
+Nettkapasiteten er sjelden en begrensning ved normal browsing og enkel
+SSH-innlogging (som er min vanligste nettbruk), og nett kan brukes til
+så mye positivt og nyttig (som nyhetslesing, sjekke været, kontakte
+slekt og venner, holde seg oppdatert om politiske saker, kontakte
+organisasjoner og politikere, etc), at det for meg er helt urimelig å
+blokkere dette for alle som ikke gjør en flue fortred. De som mener
+at potensialet for misbruk er grunn nok til å hindre all den positive
+og lovlydige bruken av et åpent trådløsnett har jeg dermed ingen
+forståelse for. En kan ikke la eksistensen av forbrytere styre hvordan
+samfunnet skal organiseres. Da får en et kontrollsamfunn de færreste
+ønsker å leve i, og det at vi har et samfunn i Norge der tilliten til
+hverandre er høy gjør at samfunnet fungerer ganske godt. Det bør vi
+anstrenge oss for å beholde.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
+see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
+have been discovered and reported in the process
+(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
+enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
+kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
+am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
-<p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
-that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
-and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
-interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
-request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
-a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
-arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
-administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
-contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
-see how the project is doing.</p>
+<p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
+Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
+it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
+script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
+desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
+(only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
-<p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
-machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
-OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
-in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
-Windows. This is great.</p>
+<p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
+currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
+in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
+is created. The bug report
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
+this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
+to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
+hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
+do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
+<a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
+issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
+maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
+working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
+udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
+upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
+documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
+Debian Squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
+script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
+trick:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+set -ex
+
+if [ "$1" ] ; then
+ desktop=$1
+else
+ desktop=gnome
+fi
+
+from=lenny
+to=squeeze
+
+exec &lt; /dev/null
+unset LANG
+mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
+tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
+fuser -mv .
+debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
+cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
+#!/bin/sh
+exit 101
+EOF
+chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
+exit_cleanup() {
+ umount $tmpdir/proc
+}
+mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
+# Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
+trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
+
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
+
+# Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
+# to return the correct answers.
+echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
+ chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
+
+# Include the desktop and laptop task
+for test in desktop laptop ; do
+ echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
+#!/bin/sh
+exit 2
+EOF
+ chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
+done
+
+DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
+chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
+
+echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
+touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
+fuser -mv
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
+with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
+differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
+regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
+work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
+kdebase-workspace-data</p>
+
+<p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
+(KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
+post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
+aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
+remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
+KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
+193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
+
+<p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
+is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
+booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
+packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
+upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
+packages.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Vinmonopolet bryter loven åpenlyst - og flere planlegger å gjøre det samme</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven__penlyst___og_flere_planlegger___gj_re_det_samme.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven__penlyst___og_flere_planlegger___gj_re_det_samme.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p><a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/06/16/nyheter/innenriks/streik/arbeidsliv/12157858/">Dagbladet
-melder</a> at Vinmonopolet med bakgrunn i vekterstreiken som pågår i
-Norge for tiden, har bestemt seg for med vitende og vilje å bryte
-sentralbanklovens paragraf 14 ved å nekte folk å betale med
-kontanter, og at flere butikker planlegger å følge deres eksempel.
-Jeg synes det er hårreisende hvis de slipper unna med et slikt
-soleklart lovbrudd, og lurer på hva slags muligheter jeg vil ha hvis
-jeg blir nektet å handle med kontanter. Jeg handler i hovedsak med
-kontanter selv, da jeg anser det som en borgerrett å kunne handle
-anonymt uten at det blir registrert. For meg er det et angrep på mitt
-personvern å nekte å ta imot kontant betaling.</p>
+ <title>Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jun 2010 12:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever. En slik
+myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
+tjenermaskiner. I siste Computerworld Norge er
+<a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
+Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
+blygsel:</p>
-<p><a href="http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19850524-028-003.html#14">Paragrafen
-i sentralbankloven</a> lyder:</p>
+<blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
+om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
+Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
+driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
+desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
+og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>En <a
+href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
+sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
+at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
+i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
+overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows. Et søk på
+nettet sendte meg til
+<a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
+IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
+Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
+var så stor. Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
+forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
+til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
+over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
+Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
+av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
+Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
+Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
+driftstjenester. Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
+jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
+artikkelen. Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
<blockquote>
-<p>§ 14. Tvungent betalingsmiddel</p>
+<p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
+meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
+mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
+sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
+avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
+skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
+noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
+sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
-<p>Bankens sedler og mynter er tvungent betalingsmiddel i Norge. Ingen
-er pliktig til i én betaling å ta imot mer enn femogtyve mynter av
-hver enhet.</p>
+<p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
+harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
+programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
+mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
+millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
+oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
+problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
+elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
+nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
+linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
-<p>Sterkt skadde sedler og mynter er ikke tvungent
-betalingsmiddel. Banken gir nærmere forskrifter om erstatning for
-bortkomne, brente eller skadde sedler og mynter.</p>
+<p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
+ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
+klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
+administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
-<p>Selv om en avtale inneholder klausul om betaling av en
-pengeforpliktelse i gullverdi, kan skyldneren frigjøre seg med tvungne
-betalingsmidler uten hensyn til denne klausul.</p>
+<p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
+boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
+var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
+oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
+arbeid.</p>
</blockquote>
-<p>Det er med bakgrunn i denne lovet ikke tillatt å nekte å ta imot
-kontakt betaling. Det er en lov jeg har sans for, og som jeg mener må
-håndheves strengt.</p>
+<p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
+sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere. Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
+IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
+minner.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
-installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
-I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
-of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
-conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
-this:
+ <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
+scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
+keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
+needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
+differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
+this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
+script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
+
+<p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
+script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
+COLUMNS):</p>
<blockquote><pre>
-export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
-tasksel --new-install
+DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
+previous=N
+PREVLEVEL=
+RUNLEVEL=
+runlevel=S
+UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
+UPSTART_INSTANCE=
+UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
</pre></blockquote>
-This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
-tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
-any output what so ever.
-
-Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
-package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
-any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
-happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
-when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
-printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
-code like this:
+<p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
+script.</p>
<blockquote><pre>
-export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
-cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
-$cmd
+INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
+previous=N
+PREVLEVEL=N
+RUNLEVEL=S
+runlevel=S
</pre></blockquote>
-<p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
---without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
-~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
-~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
-laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
-important, just like tasksel would have done it during
-installation.</p>
+<p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
+sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
+to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
-<p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
-install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
-like this.</p>
+<p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
+looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
+choice.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
- <link>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</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>A while back, I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
-about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
-for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
-of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
-
-<p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
-the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
-the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
-computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
-
-<p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
-without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
-do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
-Debian Edu.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
-the
-<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
-schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
-available today from IETF.</p>
+ <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Via the
+<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
+of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
+<a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
+Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
+following the standards wars of today.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
+to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
+information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
+included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
+the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
-<pre>
---- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
-+++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
-@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
- objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
- NAME 'dhcpHost'
- DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
-- SUP top
-+ SUP top AUXILIARY
- MUST cn
- MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
- X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
-</pre>
+<blockquote><pre>
+maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
+ vendor count
+ Dell Computer Corporation 1
+ PowerEdge 1750 1
+ IBM 1
+ eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
+ Intel 2
+ [no-dmi-info] 3
+maintainer:~#
+</pre></blockquote>
-<p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
-Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
-package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
+<p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
+provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
+information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
+machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
+option to list the individual machines.</p>
-<p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
-please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
+<p>A larger list is
+<a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
+city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
+provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
+are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
+their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
+it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
+collector.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
-directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
-tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
-Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
-<a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
-be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
-populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
-find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
-objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
-are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
+ <title>Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p__norsk__mot_sykkel.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p__norsk__mot_sykkel.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jun 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
+med sykkel</a>... Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
+fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
-<p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
-the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
-not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
-Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
-released.</p>
+<p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
+effekt på området der?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
+start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
+problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
+initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
+wait.</p>
-<p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
-like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
-not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
-<a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
+<p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
+against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
+that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
+kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
-<p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
-in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
+<p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
+problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
+distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
+maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
+the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
+while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
+distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
+but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
-<p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
-useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
-in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
-changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
+<p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
</description>
</item>
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