Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2009

Intellektuelt privilegium - et bedre IP-begrep

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 15:06:00 +0100

Ofte brukes intellektuell eiendom som samlebegrep for opphavsrett, @@ -37,8 +37,8 @@ forretningshemmeligheter framover.

Norge trenger en personvernforening - ../../../Norge_trenger_en_personvernforening.html - ../../../Norge_trenger_en_personvernforening.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norge_trenger_en_personvernforening.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norge_trenger_en_personvernforening.html Sun, 1 Feb 2009 18:35:00 +0100

De siste Ã¥rene har jeg forsÃ¸kt Ã¥ fÃ¥ liv i @@ -59,8 +59,8 @@ nÃ¥ fÃ¥r vi se om noen er enig.

Min reprap tar sakte form - ../../../Min_reprap_tar_sakte_form.html - ../../../Min_reprap_tar_sakte_form.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Min_reprap_tar_sakte_form.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Min_reprap_tar_sakte_form.html Tue, 3 Feb 2009 13:30:00 +0100

Min reprap begynner Ã¥ ta form. Den er nÃ¥ kommet sÃ¥ langt at den er @@ -97,5 +97,291 @@ arbeidet.

FÃ¸rste vellykkede videostrÃ¸m fra NUUG

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:30:00 +0100

Jeg ble glad for Ã¥ se under +gÃ¥rdagens +medlemsmÃ¸te i NUUG Oslo at utsending av live-video fra mÃ¸tet +fungerte for fÃ¸rste gang. Forrige gang ble det ved en teknisk tabbe +sendt video uten lyd. Vi kan takke Ole Kristian Lien og resten av +videogruppen i NUUG for at nÃ¥ NUUG-medlemmer over det ganske land +kunne se foredraget samtidig med oss i Oslo. Vi opplevde til og med +under mÃ¸tet Ã¥ motta spÃ¸rsmÃ¥l via IRC som ble besvart der og da. +Opptaket publiseres sÃ¥ snart det er kopiert over til NUUGs +webserver og komprimert.

Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100

Endelig er Debian +Lenny gitt ut. +Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye +programpakker blir nÃ¥ tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den +stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nÃ¥ Ã¥ fÃ¥ +Skolelinux / +Debian Edu ferdig +oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan +slippes lÃ¸s pÃ¥ skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har +gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt +bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken +insserv.

Kart over overvÃ¥kningskamera i Norge

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:30:00 +0100

I regi av +personvernforeningen har jeg +startet pÃ¥ +et +kart over overvÃ¥kningskamera i Norge. Bakgrunnen er at det etter +min mening bÃ¦rer galt avsted med den massive overvÃ¥kningen som +finner sted i Norge i dag, og at flere og flere overvÃ¥kningskamera +gjÃ¸r det vanskeligere og vanskeligere Ã¥ gÃ¥ igjennom livet uten at +smÃ¥ og store brÃ¸dre trenger inn i ens private sfÃ¦re. Datatilsynet +har et register over kameraovervÃ¥kning, men det viser seg Ã¥ vÃ¦re +ubrukelig bÃ¥de til Ã¥ finne ut hvor det er kamera plassert, og til Ã¥ +sjekke om et kamera en kommer over er registrert. Dette nye kartet +fikser en av disse manglene, men det vil fortsatt vÃ¦re umulig Ã¥ vite +om et kamera er registrert etter lovens krav eller ikke. Pr. nÃ¥ er +22 kamera i Oslo registrert, og det trengs flere til Ã¥ registrere +alle. Informasjonen registreres direkte inn i OpenStreetmap, sÃ¥ hentes det +automatisk over i spesialkartet.

Using bar codes at a computing center

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100

At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers +in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the +location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and +removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a +computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for +the "missing" computer.

+ +

In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project +libdmtx to write and read bar +code blocks as defined in the +The Data Matrix +Standard. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal +digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar +codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard +allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project +with a bar code +writer written in postscript capable of creating such bar codes, +but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar +codes.

+ +

It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the +machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are +tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its +computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack. +If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all +locations, and can detect movements and removals.

+ +

I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a +random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I +took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program +these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked +fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the +side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space +between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire +rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering +about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread +to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.

+ +

My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look +at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for +easier automatic tracking of computers.

Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100

At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount +of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support +contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service) +register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the +machine room location and contact information for the system owner for +each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract +status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to +include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag +machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such +machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import +information about machines into the register, to also do some screen +scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines +are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status +for the relevant machines. This make the support status information +easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer +owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract. +The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the +registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find +them. 27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us +using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract +last, to have test machines and a platform for less important +services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine +at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of +them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare +parts from other machines or move the service to another old +machine.

+ +

I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally +written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten +Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a +nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM +scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML +parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to +introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:

+ +

+use LWP::Simple;
+use POSIX;
+use WWW::Mechanize;
+use Date::Parse;
+[...]
+sub get_support_info {
+    my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
+    my $str;
+
+    if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
+        # fetch website from Dell support
+        my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&cs=nodhs1&l=no&s=dhs&ServiceTag=$serial";
+        my $webpage = get($url);
+        return undef unless ($webpage);
+
+        my $daysleft = -1;
+        my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
+        foreach my $line (@lines) {
+            next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
+            $line =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+            $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
+
+            my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
+            @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
+            my $lastend = "";
+            while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
+                my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
+
+                my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+                                            localtime(str2time($startstr)));
+                my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+                                          localtime(str2time($endstr)));
+                $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
+                @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
+                $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
+            }
+            my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+            tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+                if ($lastend lt $today);
+        }
+    } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
+        my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
+        my $url =
+            'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
+        $mech->get($url);
+        my $fields = {
+            'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
+            'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
+            'country' => 'NO',
+            'productNumber' => $productnumber,
+            'serialNumber1' => $serial,
+        };
+        $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
+                            fields      => $fields );
+        # Next step is screen scraping
+        my $content = $mech->content();
+
+        $content =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+        $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
+        $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
+        $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
+
+        my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+
+        while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
+            my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
+                m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
+            $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
+            my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+                                        localtime(str2time($startstr)));
+            my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+                                      localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
+
+            $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
+
+            tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+                if ($end lt $today);
+        }
+    } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
+        # This code ignore extended support contracts.
+        my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
+        if ($producttype && $serial) {
+            my $content =
+                get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&brandind=5000008&Submit=Submit&type=$producttype&serial=$serial");
+            if ($content) {
+                $content =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+                $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
+                $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
+                $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
+
+                $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
+                my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
+
+                $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
+
+                my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+                tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+                    if ($end lt $today);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+    return $str;
+}
+

+ +

Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake +serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched +from dmidecode.

+ +

+print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
+                       "447707-B21");
+print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
+print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
+                       "1234567");
+

+ +

I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for +everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)

+ +

Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support +contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do +not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to +do so.