+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 17th June 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
+administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
+and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
+text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
+
+<p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
+language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
+But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
+information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
+in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
+documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
+contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
+edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
+easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
+help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
+tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
+goals.</p>
+
+<p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
+wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
+front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
+for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
+chapters together into one large web page (aka
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
+AllInOne page</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
+processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
+<a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
+wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
+<a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
+the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
+page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
+manual. This process also download images and transform image
+references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
+Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
+using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
+result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
+a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
+and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
+our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
+epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
+are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
+
+<p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
+documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
+track the English original. For this we use the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
+which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
+translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
+translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
+file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
+files), which the translations update with the native language
+translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
+original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
+and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
+create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
+debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
+translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
+then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
+of the documentation.</p>
+
+<p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
+recommend using
+<a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
+while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
+<a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
+<a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>. All we care about
+is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
+translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
+against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
+
+<p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
+they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
+formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
+this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
+needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
+translated images by storing translated versions in
+images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
+package maintainers know more.</p>
+
+<p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
+<a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
+of the documentation packages on the web</a>. See for example the
+<a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
+PDF version</a> or the
+<a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
+HTML version</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
+but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
+
+<p>To learn more, check out
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
+debian-edu-doc package</a>,
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
+manual on the wiki</a> and
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
+translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 23rd April 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
+related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
+So I implemented one, using
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
+package</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
+run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
+"Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
+select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
+the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
+
+<p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
+description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
+packages to install. The first part is in
+<tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+Task: isenkram
+Section: hardware
+Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
+ Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
+ proposed.
+Test-new-install: mark show
+Relevance: 8
+Packages: for-current-hardware
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The second part is in
+<tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+(
+ isenkram-lookup
+ isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
+) | sort -u
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
+trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
+have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
+get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
+before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
+check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
+
+<p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
+fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
+/usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
+database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
+parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>). The cause is in
+the python-apt code (bug
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
+workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
+reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
+around 2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
+daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
+unstable today.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
+Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
+use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
+AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
+project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
+look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
+start using the information when it is ready.</p>
+
+<p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
+add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
+package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
+package. See also
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
+blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation. I expect
+the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
+moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 15th April 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
+project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
+it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
+at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
+encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
+today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
+
+<p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
+created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
+the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
+during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
+the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
+Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
+build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
+
+<p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>. There
+are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
+documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
+the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
+
+<p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
+setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
+become root:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
+ mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
+ u-boot-tools
+git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
+ freedom-maker
+make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
+devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
+details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
+make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
+virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
+vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
+the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
+include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
+
+<p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
+method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
+the preseed values:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
+it still work.</p>
+
+<p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
+systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
+Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
+a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
+during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
+too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
+be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
+
+<p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
+us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
+irc.debian.org)</a> and
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
+mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 9th April 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
+solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
+cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
+keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
+One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
+storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
+writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
+service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
+of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
+lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
+I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
+have looked at a system called
+<a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
+mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
+
+<p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
+handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
+Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
+providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
+combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
+include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
+and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
+a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
+while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
+have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
+shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
+mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
+access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
+
+<p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
+package is included already. So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
+install s3ql</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
+Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
+<a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
+to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
+in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
+data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
+in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
+<a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
+Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
+Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
+the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
+the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
+account.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
+system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
+file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
+machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
+I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below. In addition, one need
+the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
+all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+[s3c]
+storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+backend-login: API-login
+backend-password: API-password
+fs-passphrase: local-password
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
+but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
+Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
+details and password to create it:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
+# mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+Enter backend login:
+Enter backend password:
+Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
+the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
+Enter encryption password:
+Confirm encryption password:
+Generating random encryption key...
+Creating metadata tables...
+Dumping metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Compressing and uploading metadata...
+Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
+# </pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
+Using 4 upload threads.
+Downloading and decompressing metadata...
+Reading metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Mounting filesystem...
+# df -h /s3ql
+Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
+s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name 1.0T 0 1.0T 0% /s3ql
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
+backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
+mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
+running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
+command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
+instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# umount.s3ql /s3ql
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
+correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
+crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
+mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
+file system:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+Using cached metadata.
+File system seems clean, checking anyway.
+Checking DB integrity...
+Creating temporary extra indices...
+Checking lost+found...
+Checking cached objects...
+Checking names (refcounts)...
+Checking contents (names)...
+Checking contents (inodes)...
+Checking contents (parent inodes)...
+Checking objects (reference counts)...
+Checking objects (backend)...
+..processed 5000 objects so far..
+..processed 10000 objects so far..
+..processed 15000 objects so far..
+Checking objects (sizes)...
+Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
+Checking blocks (refcounts)...
+Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
+Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
+Checking inodes (refcounts)...
+Checking inodes (sizes)...
+Checking extended attributes (names)...
+Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
+Checking symlinks (inodes)...
+Checking directory reachability...
+Checking unix conventions...
+Checking referential integrity...
+Dropping temporary indices...
+Backing up old metadata...
+Dumping metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Compressing and uploading metadata...
+Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
+quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
+amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
+house. Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
+which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
+Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
+Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
+network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
+size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
+working set.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
+time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
+busy:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
+Using 8 upload threads.
+Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
+metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default. To ensure the
+file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
+file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
+s3qlctrl:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
+# s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
+cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
+storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
+a report:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# s3qlstat /s3ql
+Directory entries: 9141
+Inodes: 9143
+Data blocks: 8851
+Total data size: 22049.38 MB
+After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
+After compression: 21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
+Database size: 2.39 MB (uncompressed)
+(some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
+storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
+<a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
+<a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
+<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
+<a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
+<a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>. The latter even
+accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
+them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
+quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
+best.</p>
+
+<p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
+and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
+told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
+science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
+poster is titled
+"<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
+Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
+Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
+Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
+and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
+
+<p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
+check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
+a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
+it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
+test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
+no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
+directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
+
+<p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
+work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
+<a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
+provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
+a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
+access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
+only read from it.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 14th March 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
+project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
+making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
+communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
+friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
+going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
+release (0.2).</p>
+
+<p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
+new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
+Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
+system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
+file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
+where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
+the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
+boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
+and build using
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
+with a user with sudo access to become root:
+
+<pre>
+git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
+ freedom-maker
+sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
+ mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
+ u-boot-tools
+make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
+</pre>
+
+<p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
+devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
+want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to <a
+href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
+vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
+kpartx call.</p>
+
+<p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
+method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
+the preseed values:</p>
+
+<pre>
+url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
+</pre>
+
+<p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
+recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
+currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
+'<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
+installation will get the installation going. This affect all
+installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
+
+<p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
+us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
+irc.debian.org)</a> and
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
+mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 22nd February 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
+innetgr tools, because I needed them in
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>. I called the project
+ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
+<a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
+repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
+not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
+proper home since then.</p>
+
+<p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
+fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
+a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
+to follow up on it. Until today. :)</p>
+
+<p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
+now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
+history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
+them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
+expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
+release and call it 1.0. Visit the new project home on
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
+if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 3rd February 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
+their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
+boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
+<a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
+Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
+get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
+I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
+<a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
+and started it using virt-manager.</p>
+
+<p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
+password) was to get the network operational. I followed
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
+instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
+commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
+kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
+kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
+kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
+dhclient /dev/eth0
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
+upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
+enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
+
+<p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
+running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
+set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
+compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
+side.</p>
+
+<p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
+stuff:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list <<EOF
+deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
+EOF
+apt-get update
+apt-get dist-upgrade
+apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
+ sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
+update-alternatives --config runsystem
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
+<tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
+yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
+'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
+upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
+after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
+start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
+longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
+ssh instead.
+
+<p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
+fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
+figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
+irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
+the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
+adding this repository to the machine:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list <<EOF
+deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
+EOF
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
+http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
+unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
+BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
+i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
+i gdb - GNU Debugger
+i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
+i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
+i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
+i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
+i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
+i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
+i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
+i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
+i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
+i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
+i xorg - X.Org X Window System
+i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
+i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
+X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
+the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
+command line stuff.<p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 14th January 2014
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
+find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
+analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
+useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
+the source. The company behind it provide
+<a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
+a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
+already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
+the Coverity system, and discovered that the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
+projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
+fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
+check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
+checking of the chrpath project</a>. It was
+added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
+these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
+error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
+of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
+is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
+the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
+<a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
+mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
+publish a new release. These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
+ <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.16 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a test suite check.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 24th November 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
+development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
+acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
+the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
+compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
+Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
+support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
+is working on. I checked the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
+<a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
+<a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
+packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
+OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
+These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
+ with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
+ up.</li>
+
+ <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
+
+ <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
+ Matthias Klose.</li>
+
+ <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
+ Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
+
+ <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
+ .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
+ Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.15 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a testsuite check.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 2nd November 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
+<a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
+init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
+init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
+of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+#!/lib/init/init-d-script
+### BEGIN INIT INFO
+# Provides: rsyslog
+# Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
+# Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
+# X-Stop-After: sendsigs
+# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
+# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
+# Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
+# Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
+# It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
+# used as a drop-in replacement.
+### END INIT INFO
+DESC="enhanced syslogd"
+DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
+script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
+info/comments.</p>
+
+<p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
+/lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
+
+<p><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+
+# Define LSB log_* functions.
+# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
+# and status_of_proc is working.
+. /lib/lsb/init-functions
+
+#
+# Function that starts the daemon/service
+
+#
+do_start()
+{
+ # Return
+ # 0 if daemon has been started
+ # 1 if daemon was already running
+ # 2 if daemon could not be started
+ start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
+ || return 1
+ start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
+ $DAEMON_ARGS \
+ || return 2
+ # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
+ # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
+ # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
+}
+
+#
+# Function that stops the daemon/service
+#
+do_stop()
+{
+ # Return
+ # 0 if daemon has been stopped
+ # 1 if daemon was already stopped
+ # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
+ # other if a failure occurred
+ start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
+ RETVAL="$?"
+ [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
+ # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
+ # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
+ # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
+ # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
+ # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
+ # sleep for some time.
+ start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
+ [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
+ # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
+ rm -f $PIDFILE
+ return "$RETVAL"
+}
+
+#
+# Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
+#
+do_reload() {
+ #
+ # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
+ # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
+ # then implement that here.
+ #
+ start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
+ return 0
+}
+
+SCRIPTNAME=$1
+scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
+echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
+if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
+ script="$1"
+ shift
+ . $script
+else
+ exit 0
+fi
+
+NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
+PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
+
+# Exit if the package is not installed
+#[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
+
+# Read configuration variable file if it is present
+[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
+
+# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
+. /lib/init/vars.sh
+
+case "$1" in
+ start)
+ [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
+ do_start
+ case "$?" in
+ 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
+ 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
+ esac
+ ;;
+ stop)
+ [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
+ do_stop
+ case "$?" in
+ 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
+ 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
+ esac
+ ;;
+ status)
+ status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
+ ;;
+ #reload|force-reload)
+ #
+ # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
+ # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
+ #
+ #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
+ #do_reload
+ #log_end_msg $?
+ #;;
+ restart|force-reload)
+ #
+ # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
+ # 'force-reload' alias
+ #
+ log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
+ do_stop
+ case "$?" in
+ 0|1)
+ do_start
+ case "$?" in
+ 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
+ 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
+ *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
+ esac
+ ;;
+ *)
+ # Failed to stop
+ log_end_msg 1
+ ;;
+ esac
+ ;;
+ *)
+ echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
+ exit 3
+ ;;
+esac
+
+:
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
+lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
+work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
+optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
+
+<p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
+the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
+get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
+robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
+and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 1st November 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
+remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
+Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
+that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
+missing in Debian. The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
+for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
+2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
+from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
+repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
+others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
+mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
+NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>The source is now available from
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 27th October 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>The
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
+program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
+create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
+debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
+stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
+of a plan to simplify the build system for
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
+project</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
+the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
+based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
+Raspberry Pi.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
+architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
+code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
+Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
+allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
+Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>. First, the
+<tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
+call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
+generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
+vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
+two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
+fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
+given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
+partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a <tt>--variant
+variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
+Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
+<tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
+as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
+most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
+upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
+available from
+<a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
+upstream project page</a>.</p>
+
+<p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
+create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
+binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
+list:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+set -e # Exit on first error
+rootdir="$1"
+cd "$rootdir"
+cat <<EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
+deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
+EOF
+# Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
+# install a kernel somewhere too.
+wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
+ -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
+chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
+mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
+touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
+chroot $rootdir rpi-update
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
+to build the image:</p>
+
+<pre>
+sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
+ --variant minbase \
+ --arch armel \
+ --distribution jessie \
+ --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
+ --image test.img \
+ --size 600M \
+ --bootsize 64M \
+ --boottype vfat \
+ --log-level debug \
+ --verbose \
+ --no-kernel \
+ --no-extlinux \
+ --root-password raspberry \
+ --hostname raspberrypi \
+ --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
+ --customize `pwd`/customize \
+ --package netbase \
+ --package git-core \
+ --package binutils \
+ --package ca-certificates \
+ --package wget \
+ --package kmod
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
+rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
+exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
+/etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
+set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
+that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
+using a non-free binary blob.</p>
+
+<p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
+probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
+build dependency list.</p>
+
+<p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
+on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
+optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
+than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff