<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
+was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
+up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
+successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
+to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
+George</a>.</p>
+
+<!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
+life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
+student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
+Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
+voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
+a bit vacant right now however.</p>
+
+<p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
+(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
+around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
+it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
+network of that school together with a team of very interested and
+talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
+learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
+to help building another school's informational education concept from
+scratch.</p>
+
+<p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
+and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
+ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
+
+<p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
+and cycling.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
+booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
+have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
+own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
+"out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
+
+<p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
+<a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
+BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
+really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
+ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
+a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
+guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
+small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
+seemed rather uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
+mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
+reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
+basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
+works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
+in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
+without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
+from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
+have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
+and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
+server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
+notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
+and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
+it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
+tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
+that it rocks!</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
+politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
+operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
+will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
+school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
+this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
+too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
+answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
+other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
+can list a few points about that:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
+ <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
+ <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
+all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
+year.</p>
+
+<p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
+run text tools. I use
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
+text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
+based full-featured student management software with the two),
+<a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
+<a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
+coloured world called the WWW, I use
+<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
+(Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
+e-mail.</p>
+
+<p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
+are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
+least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
+kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
+which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
+Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
+Facebook now ;).</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
+side is what I have experienced.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
+that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
+grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
+to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
+see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
+students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
+desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
+they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
+that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
+software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
+networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
+not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
+already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
+if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
+that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
+plain criminal.</p>
+
+<p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
+method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
+founded an association named
+<a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
+just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
+area of free and open source software, for example the
+<a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
+Teckids and are the youth programme of
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
+Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
+- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
+aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
+and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
+of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
+the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
+their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
+Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
+clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
+it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
+who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
+We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
+open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
+software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
+group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
+Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
+
+<p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
+being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
+that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
+but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
+
+<!--
+
+> * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
+
+That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
+community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
+
+ <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
+ free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
+ of the decision makers above;
+ <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
+ knowledge about free software
+
+If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
+
+-->
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><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>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
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