+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ruling_ignored_our_objections_to_the_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no___domstolkontroll_.html">Ruling ignored our objections to the seizure of popcorn-time.no (#domstolkontroll)</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 13th February 2017
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>A few days ago, we received the ruling from
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">my
+day in court</a>. The case in question is a challenge of the seizure
+of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no. The ruling simply did not mention
+most of our arguments, and seemed to take everything ØKOKRIM said at
+face value, ignoring our demonstration and explanations. But it is
+hard to tell for sure, as we still have not seen most of the documents
+in the case and thus were unprepared and unable to contradict several
+of the claims made in court by the opposition. We are considering an
+appeal, but it is partly a question of funding, as it is costing us
+quite a bit to pay for our lawyer. If you want to help, please
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to the
+NUUG defense fund</a>.</p>
+
+<p>The details of the case, as far as we know it, is available in
+Norwegian from
+<a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the NUUG
+blog</a>. This also include
+<a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/Avslag_etter_rettslig_h_ring_om_DNS_beslaget___vurderer_veien_videre.shtml">the
+ruling itself</a>.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_day_in_court_challenging_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no_for__domstolkontroll.html">A day in court challenging seizure of popcorn-time.no for #domstolkontroll</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 3rd February 2017
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-02-01-popcorn-time-in-court.jpeg"></p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in court in Follo Tingrett
+representing <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the member association
+NUUG</a>, alongside <a href="https://www.efn.no/">the member
+association EFN</a> and <a href="http://www.imc.no">the DNS registrar
+IMC</a>, challenging the seizure of the DNS name popcorn-time.no. It
+was interesting to sit in a court of law for the first time in my
+life. Our team can be seen in the picture above: attorney Ola
+Tellesbø, EFN board member Tom Fredrik Blenning, IMC CEO Morten Emil
+Eriksen and NUUG board member Petter Reinholdtsen.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.domstol.no/no/Enkelt-domstol/follo-tingrett/Nar-gar-rettssaken/Beramming/?cid=AAAA1701301512081262234UJFBVEZZZZZEJBAvtale">The
+case at hand</a> is that the Norwegian National Authority for
+Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (aka
+Økokrim) decided on their own, to seize a DNS domain early last
+year, without following
+<a href="https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/#link12">the
+official policy of the Norwegian DNS authority</a> which require a
+court decision. The web site in question was a site covering Popcorn
+Time. And Popcorn Time is the name of a technology with both legal
+and illegal applications. Popcorn Time is a client combining
+searching a Bittorrent directory available on the Internet with
+downloading/distribute content via Bittorrent and playing the
+downloaded content on screen. It can be used illegally if it is used
+to distribute content against the will of the right holder, but it can
+also be used legally to play a lot of content, for example the
+millions of movies
+<a href="https://archive.org/details/movies">available from the
+Internet Archive</a> or the collection
+<a href="http://vodo.net/films/">available from Vodo</a>. We created
+<a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:86c1802af5a667ca56d3918aecb7d3c0f7173084&dn=PresentasjonFolloTingrett.mov&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce">a
+video demonstrating legally use of Popcorn Time</a> and played it in
+Court. It can of course be downloaded using Bittorrent.</p>
+
+<p>I did not quite know what to expect from a day in court. The
+government held on to their version of the story and we held on to
+ours, and I hope the judge is able to make sense of it all. We will
+know in two weeks time. Unfortunately I do not have high hopes, as
+the Government have the upper hand here with more knowledge about the
+case, better training in handling criminal law and in general higher
+standing in the courts than fairly unknown DNS registrar and member
+associations. It is expensive to be right also in Norway. So far the
+case have cost more than NOK 70 000,-. To help fund the case, NUUG
+and EFN have asked for donations, and managed to collect around NOK 25
+000,- so far. Given the presentation from the Government, I expect
+the government to appeal if the case go our way. And if the case do
+not go our way, I hope we have enough funding to appeal.</p>
+
+<p>From the other side came two people from Økokrim. On the benches,
+appearing to be part of the group from the government were two people
+from the Simonsen Vogt Wiik lawyer office, and three others I am not
+quite sure who was. Økokrim had proposed to present two witnesses
+from The Motion Picture Association, but this was rejected because
+they did not speak Norwegian and it was a bit late to bring in a
+translator, but perhaps the two from MPA were present anyway. All
+seven appeared to know each other. Good to see the case is take
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>If you, like me, believe the courts should be involved before a DNS
+domain is hijacked by the government, or you believe the Popcorn Time
+technology have a lot of useful and legal applications, I suggest you
+too <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">donate to
+the NUUG defense fund</a>. Both Bitcoin and bank transfer are
+available. If NUUG get more than we need for the legal action (very
+unlikely), the rest will be spend promoting free software, open
+standards and unix-like operating systems in Norway, so no matter what
+happens the money will be put to good use.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to lean more about the case, I recommend you check out
+<a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/tags/dns-domenebeslag/">the blog
+posts from NUUG covering the case</a>. They cover the legal arguments
+on both sides.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? — geolocated IP traceroute</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 9th January 2017
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
+web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
+It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
+is hard to find all the details. Many years ago, I wrote a system to
+map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
+network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
+to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users. Back
+then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
+to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
+graph and the map. The output from traceroute typically look like
+this:
+
+<p><pre>
+traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
+ 1 uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1) 0.447 ms 0.486 ms 0.621 ms
+ 2 uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229) 0.467 ms 0.578 ms 0.675 ms
+ 3 oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17) 0.385 ms 0.373 ms 0.358 ms
+ 4 te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3) 1.174 ms 1.172 ms 1.153 ms
+ 5 he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234) 2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48) 3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234) 2.857 ms
+ 6 ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39) 0.662 ms 0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23) 0.622 ms
+ 7 89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146) 0.931 ms 0.917 ms 0.955 ms
+ 8 * * *
+ 9 * * *
+[...]
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
+network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
+www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
+package to reach the equipment and return to me. Three packages are
+sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path. This
+is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
+traceroute request.</p>
+
+<p>There are many ways to measure trace routes. Other good traceroute
+implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
+both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
+traceroute and a lot of other capabilities). All of them are easily
+available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
+
+<p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
+different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
+information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe. The
+background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
+from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
+JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content. This will
+leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
+and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
+the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
+
+<p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
+www.stortinget.no. It is read daily by all members of parliament and
+their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
+citizens of Norway. A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
+ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
+insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
+stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
+www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se. I extracted this by
+asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
+Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
+render the page (in HAR format using
+<a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
+netsniff example</a>. I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
+to do this). My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
+addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
+information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
+
+<p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
+src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
+
+<p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
+free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
+wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP. KML
+is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
+of the GIS tools I have available. I got good help from by NUUG
+colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
+kmltraceroute git repository</a>. Unfortunately, the quality of the
+free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
+friends had access to) is not up to the task. The IP addresses of
+central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
+controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
+located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
+KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
+
+<p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
+src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
+
+<p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
+<a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
+showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
+question.
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
+graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
+format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
+equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation. This graph
+make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
+UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
+3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
+
+<p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
+src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
+
+<p>In the process, I came across the
+<a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
+Salim Gasmi. Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
+various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
+candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
+geolocation. But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
+a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
+for postprocessing. So I contacted the developer and asked if he
+would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
+clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
+machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway. So
+since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
+service thanks to a sensor node set up by
+<a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
+trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
+
+<p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
+src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
+
+<p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
+Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland. Plenty of places where the
+Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
+without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
+
+<p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
+over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
+ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
+file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
+behind the DNS name is traced this time. To get them all, one would
+have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
+GeoTraceroute). That might be the next step in this project.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
+the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
+And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
+be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
+Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe. (Hm, what should
+we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
+unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
+
+<p>PS: KML files are drawn using
+<a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
+Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
+Marble. There are heaps of other options too.</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/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</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/Introducing_ical_archiver_to_split_out_old_iCalendar_entries.html">Introducing ical-archiver to split out old iCalendar entries</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 4th January 2017
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Do you have a large <a href="https://icalendar.org/">iCalendar</a>
+file with lots of old entries, and would like to archive them to save
+space and resources? At least those of us using KOrganizer know that
+turning on and off an event set become slower and slower the more
+entries are in the set. While working on migrating our calendars to a
+<a href="http://radicale.org/">Radicale CalDAV server</a> on our
+<a href="https://freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox server</a/>, my
+loved one wondered if I could find a way to split up the calendar file
+she had in KOrganizer, and I set out to write a tool. I spent a few
+days writing and polishing the system, and it is now ready for general
+consumption. The
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/ical-archiver">code for
+ical-archiver</a> is publicly available from a git repository on
+github. The system is written in Python and depend on
+<a href="http://eventable.github.io/vobject/">the vobject Python
+module</a>.</p>
+
+<p>To use it, locate the iCalendar file you want to operate on and
+give it as an argument to the ical-archiver script. This will
+generate a set of new files, one file per component type per year for
+all components expiring more than two years in the past. The vevent,
+vtodo and vjournal entries are handled by the script. The remaining
+entries are stored in a 'remaining' file.</p>
+
+<p>This is what a test run can look like:
+
+<p><pre>
+% ical-archiver t/2004-2016.ics
+Found 3612 vevents
+Found 6 vtodos
+Found 2 vjournals
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2004.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2005.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2006.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2007.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2008.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2009.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2010.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2011.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2012.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2013.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2014.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2007.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2011.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vtodo-2012.ics
+Writing t/2004-2016.ics-remaining.ics
+%
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>As you can see, the original file is untouched and new files are
+written with names derived from the original file. If you are happy
+with their content, the *-remaining.ics file can replace the original
+the the others can be archived or imported as historical calendar
+collections.</p>
+
+<p>The script should probably be improved a bit. The error handling
+when discovering broken entries is not good, and I am not sure yet if
+it make sense to split different entry types into separate files or
+not. The program is thus likely to change. If you find it
+interesting, please get in touch. :)</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/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 23rd December 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today. As my regular
+readers probably know, I have been working on the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
+system</a> for many years. The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
+it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
+of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
+to map hardware to packages. Isenkram have its own mapping database,
+and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
+metadata format. And today,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
+Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
+ie using fnmatch():</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+% appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
+ usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
+Identifier: pymissile [generic]
+Name: pymissile
+Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
+Package: pymissile
+% appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
+Identifier: libnxt [generic]
+Name: libnxt
+Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
+Package: libnxt
+---
+Identifier: t2n [generic]
+Name: t2n
+Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
+Package: t2n
+---
+Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
+Name: python-nxt
+Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
+Package: python-nxt
+---
+Identifier: nbc [generic]
+Name: nbc
+Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
+Package: nbc
+%
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
+Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+% isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
+pymissile
+% isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
+libnxt
+nbc
+python-nxt
+t2n
+%
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
+<tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
+
+<p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
+make the most of the hardware they have, please
+help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
+AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
+documented in the wiki. So far only 11 packages provide such
+information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
+Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
+mostly related to USB dongles. Most of the packages with hardware
+mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
+part of my involvement in
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
+team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
+complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware. The
+team also got a nice Christmas present today. The
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
+package</a> made it into Debian. With this package in place, it is
+now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
+software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
+binaries for the NXT brick.</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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 20th December 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
+system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
+and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
+going strong. It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
+connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
+packages. It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
+using the user space daemon in the isenkram package. The latter will
+notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
+install to get the dongle working. It will even provide a button to
+click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
+
+<p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+% isenkram-lookup
+bluez
+cheese
+ethtool
+fprintd
+fprintd-demo
+gkrellm-thinkbat
+hdapsd
+libpam-fprintd
+pidgin-blinklight
+thinkfan
+tlp
+tp-smapi-dkms
+tp-smapi-source
+tpb
+%
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
+by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
+I have all the firmware my machine need:
+
+<p><pre>
+% /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
+info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
+%
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
+packages in Debian with udev rules. These seem like good candidates
+to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
+several that should be proposed by isenkram. I have not had time to
+check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
+packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram. 11 of these
+packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
+listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
+
+<p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment. The
+<strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
+support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
+
+<p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
+<strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
+bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
+<strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
+<strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
+dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
+fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
+gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
+gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
+ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
+<strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
+madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
+<strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
+open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
+pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
+<strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
+qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
+soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
+<strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
+tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
+virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
+xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
+xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
+zd1211-firmware</p>
+
+<p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
+bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
+maintainer to
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
+metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
+for everyone. In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
+hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
+
+<p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
+much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
+card. See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
+the details. I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon. In
+the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</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/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 11th December 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
+
+<p>In my early years, I played
+<a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
+Elite</a> on my PC. I spent many months trading and fighting in
+space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on. The
+original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
+edition I played had a 64 KB executable. I am still impressed today
+that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
+more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
+small.</p>
+
+<p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
+software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
+really have time to test it properly until a few days ago. It was
+great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
+still valid. But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
+to retrain to be able to dock on a space station. And I am still not
+able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
+bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
+put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
+
+<p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
+everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
+planets to be able to decide where to trade what. This time I had the
+advantages of the
+<a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
+where information about each planet is easily available with common
+price ranges and suggested trading routes. This improved my ability
+to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
+useful equipent in a few days. I believe I originally played for
+months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
+after less then a week.</p>
+
+<p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
+space, you should try out Oolite. It is available for Linux, MacOSX
+and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 25th November 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
+installation system, observing how using
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
+could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit. My testing measured
+speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
+1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package
+provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit
+risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
+stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
+machine crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if
+the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
+restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
+up the process make perfect sense.
+
+<p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
+but did not have time to push it any further. But a few months ago I
+picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
+Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
+speedup in Debian. Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
+eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
+enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
+quicker installations. It can be enabled using preseeding. The
+following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
+environment early in the installation sequence. Having it installed
+in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
+after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
+system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata. This is enough to
+speed up the installation process. There is a proposal to
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
+by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
+tested its impact.</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/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 13th November 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
+profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
+multi-threaded program, finally
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
+Debian unstable yesterday</A>. Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
+months since
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
+blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
+it suitable for Debian. There are still issues with clang
+compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
+JavaScript libraries.</p>
+
+<p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
+directory with the profiling information. This is then given to a
+JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
+<a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
+To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>See the project home page and the
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
+;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
+working.</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/How_to_talk_with_your_loved_ones_in_private.html">How to talk with your loved ones in private</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 7th November 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an
+idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end
+encryption with friends and family. I explicitly asked people not to
+list options only used in a work setting. The background is the
+uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as
+a blog post from Sander Venima about
+<a href="https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/">why
+he do not recommend Signal anymore</a> (with
+<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410">feedback from
+the Signal author available from ycombinator</a>). I wanted an
+overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options
+in a less biased survey later on. So far I have not taken the time to
+look into the individual proposed systems. They range from text
+sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging,
+VOIP and video conferencing. For those considering which system to
+use, it is also useful to have a look at
+<a href="https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard">the EFF Secure
+messaging scorecard</a> which is slightly out of date but still
+provide valuable information.</p>
+
+<p>So, on to the list. There were some used by many, some used by a
+few, some rarely used ones and a few mentioned but without anyone
+claiming to use them. Notice the grouping is in reality quite random
+given the biased self selected set of participants. First the ones
+used by many:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><a href="https://whispersystems.org/">Signal</a></li>
+<li>Email w/<a href="http://openpgp.org/">OpenPGP</a> (Enigmail, GPGSuite,etc)</li>
+<li><a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/">Whatsapp</a></li>
+<li>IRC w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
+<li>XMPP w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>Then the ones used by a few.</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><a href="https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page">Mumble</a></li>
+<li>iMessage (included in iOS from Apple)</li>
+<li><a href="https://telegram.org/">Telegram</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://keybase.io/download">Keybase file</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>Then the ones used by even fewer people</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://bitmessage.org/">Bitmessage</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://wire.com/">Wire</a></li>
+<li>VoIP w/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP">ZRTP</a> or controlled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol">SRTP</a> (e.g using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSipSimple">CSipSimple</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linphone">Linphone</a>)</li>
+<li><a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://kontalk.org/">Kontalk</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://0bin.net/">0bin</a> (encrypted pastebin)</li>
+<li><a href="https://appear.in">Appear.in</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://riot.im/">riot</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://www.wickr.com/">Wickr Me</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>And finally the ones mentioned by not marked as used by
+anyone. This might be a mistake, perhaps the person adding the entry
+forgot to flag it as used?</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Email w/Certificates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME">S/MIME</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://www.crypho.com/">Crypho</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://cryptpad.fr/">CryptPad</a></li>
+<li><a href="https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet">ricochet</a></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>Given the network effect it seem obvious to me that we as a society
+have been divided and conquered by those interested in keeping
+encrypted and secure communication away from the masses. The
+finishing remarks <a href="https://vimeo.com/97505679">from Aral Balkan
+in his talk "Free is a lie"</a> about the usability of free software
+really come into effect when you want to communicate in private with
+your friends and family. We can not expect them to allow the
+usability of communication tool to block their ability to talk to
+their loved ones.</p>
+
+<p>Note for example the option IRC w/OTR. Most IRC clients do not
+have OTR support, so in most cases OTR would not be an option, even if
+you wanted to. In my personal experience, about 1 in 20 I talk to
+have a IRC client with OTR. For private communication to really be
+available, most people to talk to must have the option in their
+currently used client. I can not simply ask my family to install an
+IRC client. I need to guide them through a technical multi-step
+process of adding extensions to the client to get them going. This is
+a non-starter for most.</p>
+
+<p>I would like to be able to do video phone calls, audio phone calls,
+exchange instant messages and share files with my loved ones, without
+being forced to share with people I do not know. I do not want to
+share the content of the conversations, and I do not want to share who
+I communicate with or the fact that I communicate with someone.
+Without all these factors in place, my private life is being more or
+less invaded.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 4th November 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
+<a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
+present. It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
+build a Segway like balancing lego robot. I had already built
+<a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
+robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
+NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well. It
+could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
+condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
+would fall over after a short while. I wanted something more robust,
+and had
+<a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
+gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
+wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
+loved ones. :)</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
+since then. But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
+lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
+building
+<a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
+HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot. Build instructions and
+<a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
+code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
+together. And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
+compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
+Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour. The resulting robot
+do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
+
+<p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
+
+<p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
+design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
+(taskControl). I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
+working without that sensor present. Now it balances just fine until
+the battery status run low:</p>
+
+<p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
+ <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
+</video></p>
+
+<p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
+control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
+
+<p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
+they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
+distributions like Ubuntu, check out
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
+project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team. Personally I own a
+RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
+Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
+should.</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/robot">robot</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 10th October 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>In July
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
+wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
+the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is
+time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
+
+<p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
+it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the
+end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
+setup, identity and keys. The reason behind this major mess was
+running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have
+started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
+roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I
+had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling
+back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
+in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
+problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
+protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big
+(674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
+content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
+time.</p>
+
+<p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
+make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still
+receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
+I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
+upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
+protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
+thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
+
+<p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
+making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated
+patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The
+original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
+and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more
+JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
+button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run
+the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
+now. I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
+in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
+
+<p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
+
+<ol>
+
+<li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
+browser you need. Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
+know, so you need to install it.
+
+<pre>
+apt install git tor chromium
+git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
+</pre></li>
+
+<li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
+block below.</li>
+
+<li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
+<tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
+
+<li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
+number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
+verification code and enter it into the form field and press
+'Register'. Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
+username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
+
+<li>You can now use Signal to contact others. Note, new contacts do
+not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
+no way to assign names to Contacts. There is also no way to create or
+update chat groups. I suspect this is because the web app do not have
+a associated contact database.</li>
+
+</ol>
+
+<p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
+main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
+corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
+Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon). See for
+example
+<a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
+LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
+view on these issues. But the network effect is strong in this case,
+and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
+Signal. Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
+once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
+laptop</a>? It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
+in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
+<a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
+working on Debian Stable.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
+working. It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
+make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
+
+<pre>
+cd Signal-Desktop; cat <<EOF | patch -p1
+diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
+index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
+--- a/js/background.js
++++ b/js/background.js
+@@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
+ });
+ });
+
+- var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
++ var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
+ var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
+- var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
++ var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
+ var messageReceiver;
+ window.getSocketStatus = function() {
+ if (messageReceiver) {
+diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
+index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
+--- a/js/expire.js
++++ b/js/expire.js
+@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
+ ;(function() {
+ 'use strict';
+- var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
++ var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
+
+ window.extension = window.extension || {};
+
+diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
+index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
+--- a/js/views/install_view.js
++++ b/js/views/install_view.js
+@@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
+ return {
+ 'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
+ 'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
+- 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
++ 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
++ 'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
+ };
+ },
+ clearQR: function() {
+diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
+index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
+--- a/options.html
++++ b/options.html
+@@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
+ <div class='nav'>
+ <h1>{{ installWelcome }}</h1>
+ <p>{{ installTagline }}</p>
+- <div> <a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}</a> </div>
++ <div> <a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}</a>
++ <br> <a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone</a>
++
++ </div>
+ <span class='dot step1 selected'></span>
+ <span class='dot step2'></span>
+ <span class='dot step3'></span>
+--- /dev/null 2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
++++ b/run-signal-app 2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
+@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
++#!/bin/sh
++set -e
++cd $(dirname $0)
++mkdir -p userdata
++userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
++if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
++ (cd $userdata && git init)
++fi
++(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
++exec chromium \
++ --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
++ --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
+EOF
+chmod a+rx run-signal-app
+</pre>
+
+<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/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 7th October 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
+system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
+packages support the hardware in a given machine. The command line
+tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
+convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
+hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
+firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
+a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
+while using the computer. For example, if you plug in a smart card
+reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
+that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
+camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
+cheese is currently missing. This already work just fine.</p>
+
+<p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
+package names. When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
+I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
+made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
+http. This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
+as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
+
+<p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings. The modalias
+design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
+made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
+globbing. It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
+identifiers.</p>
+
+<p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
+information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
+isenkram propose obsolete packages too. But along came AppStream, a
+cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
+software packages. When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
+people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
+modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
+mapping hardware to packages. This idea was accepted and AppStream is
+now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
+distribution neutral way. I wrote
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
+recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
+December. If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
+announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
+
+<p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
+RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream. The effect is
+that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
+machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
+it working. The intention is that this should allow the local user to
+start programming his robot controller right away without having to
+guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
+
+<p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
+unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
+annoying. The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
+the USB device for programming the unit. This used to work, but no
+longer in Jessie and Stretch. After some investigation and asking
+around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
+changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices. The
+ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
+no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
+plugdev group during login. Michael Biebl told me that this method
+was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead. This was good
+news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
+directory like LDAP. Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
+access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
+process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
+setup. Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
+for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
+
+<p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'. It can either be
+applied directly for a device, or is applied in
+/lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices. As the
+LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
+tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages. Here
+is one example. For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
+<tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
+
+<p><pre>
+SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
+ SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end. I suspect all
+packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
+changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
+<tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>). Perhaps a lintian check should be created
+to detect this?</p>
+
+<p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
+It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
+detail like the udev-acl tag used by
+<tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>. If it is, I guess the
+indirect method is the preferred way. Michael
+<a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
+documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
+this clearer. For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
+is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
+directly if no such class exist.</p>
+
+<p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
+blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
+
+<p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
+please join us on our IRC channel
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
+the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
+LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing
+list is not yet created, but we are working on 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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 30th August 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>In April we
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
+to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
+how to set up and administrate a Debian system. Today I am happy to
+report that the first draft is now publicly available. You can find
+it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
+Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages). The first
+eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
+proofreading the content. If you want to help out, please start
+contributing using
+<a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
+hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
+translators mailing list</a>. Please also check out
+<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
+contributors</a>. A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
+and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
+
+<p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
+electronic form.</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/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 11th August 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>This summer, I read a great article
+"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
+This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
+how to profile multi-threaded programs. It presented a system for
+profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
+testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
+the code to various degrees compared to a normal run. It does this by
+slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
+and measure how this affect processing time. The processing time is
+measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
+counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END). It
+can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
+runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
+
+<p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
+get the system into Debian. I
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
+a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
+system ready for Debian by sending patches. The build process need to
+be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
+to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
+profiling information included in the source package.
+But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
+
+<p>The way the system work is fairly simple. To run an coz experiment
+on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+coz run --- program-to-run
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
+information. To show what part of the code affect the performance
+most, use a web browser and either point it to
+<a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
+or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch). Check out this web
+site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like. To make the
+profiling more useful you include <coz.h> and insert the
+COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
+code, rebuild and run the profiler. This allow coz to do more
+targeted experiments.</p>
+
+<p>A video published by ACM
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
+Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube. There is also a paper
+from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
+titled
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
+finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
+for Coz is available from github. It will only build with clang
+because it uses a
+<a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
+feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
+<a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
+it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
+
+<p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
+of software in Debian. I would very much like some help with the
+packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
+C++ libraries.</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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html">Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 5th August 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
+a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
+<a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
+founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig. A bit less
+known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
+using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original. And
+because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
+too. The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
+Corporation. In other words, I do not earn any money from this
+project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
+for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
+Commons is needed.</p>
+
+<p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
+Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping. Much to
+my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
+French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
+available in English since it was first published. In total, 24 paper
+books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
+
+<table border="0">
+<tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
+stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble. Most revenue, around $10 per
+book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
+directly by Lulu.com. The other channels give less revenue. The
+summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
+via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu. And Lulu.com tells
+me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42. No idea
+what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
+good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not. But it make me
+happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
+as much as I did.</p>
+
+<p>The ebook edition is available for free from
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
+
+<p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
+language, I would be happy to help make it happen. Please get in
+touch.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html">Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 1st August 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
+16 across an entire country? Or that there is a TV channel
+broadcasting talks by or about
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
+printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics? It works
+using only free software (all of it
+<a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
+is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
+
+<p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
+<a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
+via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
+running and developing the software for the channel. The channel is
+organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
+broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
+broadcasting television). Individuals can broadcast too. The time
+slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis. Because the
+channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
+experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
+mistakes. And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
+the schedule are free. I see this as an opportunity to spread
+knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
+regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
+technology related video. The end result is a channel I like to
+describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
+presentations.</p>
+
+<p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
+network (RiksTV). It is also available as a multicast stream on
+Uninett. And finally, it is available as
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
+Frikanalen and NUUG. Check it out. :)</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 7th July 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
+to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
+again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
+<a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
+hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
+device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken
+microphone The initial idea had been to just
+<a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
+CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
+until a few days ago.</p>
+
+<p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
+loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
+'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
+machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
+oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
+the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
+site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
+or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This
+apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
+running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
+require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to
+come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap
+on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
+him.</p>
+
+<p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
+<a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
+windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
+For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
+project named unruu</a> using libunshield. The unshield tool did not
+recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
+containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
+devices it would work for.</p>
+
+<p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I
+followed some instructions
+<a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
+from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
+machine with Debian testing:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+adb reboot-bootloader
+fastboot oem rebootRUU
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot reboot
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
+as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
+The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
+device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
+too.</p>
+
+<p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
+instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token
+like this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
+</pre>
+
+<p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
+could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
+So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
+before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should
+install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</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/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 3rd July 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
+<a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
+said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
+friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
+mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
+have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
+machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
+Github source, compared it to the source in
+<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
+Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
+patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
+asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form. Here is
+the recipe how I did it.</p>
+
+<p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
+
+<pre>
+git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
+</pre>
+
+<p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
+able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
+
+<pre>
+cat <<EOF | patch -p0
+diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
+--- ./js/background.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js 2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
+ });
+ });
+
+- var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
+- var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
++ var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
++ var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
+ var messageReceiver;
+ window.getSocketStatus = function() {
+ if (messageReceiver) {
+diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
+--- ./js/expire.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
+ ;(function() {
+ 'use strict';
+- var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
++ var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
+
+ window.extension = window.extension || {};
+
+EOF
+</pre>
+
+<p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
+an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
+It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
+The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
+
+<p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
+script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
+
+<pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+cd $(dirname $0)
+mkdir -p userdata
+exec chromium \
+ --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
+ --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
+</pre>
+
+<p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
+SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
+Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
+will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
+connections if they use source IP address.</p>
+
+<p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
+"Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
+repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
+Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
+'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
+registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
+pressed 'Call'. 5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
+repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
+into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
+Signal from my laptop.
+
+<p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
+whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
+but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
+setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
+content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
+exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
+So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
+connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
+to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
+those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
+avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
+using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
+on this topic in
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
+and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
+phone</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 6th June 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
+multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
+MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
+the various players claimed support for. The range was from 55 to 130
+MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
+players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
+their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
+listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
+the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
+and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
+favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
+yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
+player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
+
+<p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
+totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
+kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
+several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
+toten and parole.</p>
+
+<p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
+supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
+desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
+audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
+video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
+video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
+it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
+players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
+formats.</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/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff