/srv/irclogs.ubuntu.com/2008/11/04/#ubuntu-classroom.txt

woody86Hi pinkey :)00:44
komputesboredandblogging: hi there nick, nice podcast01:16
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PatrickAupperlehello02:34
PatrickAupperlehi02:43
PatrickAupperlehi02:43
Shailuhii02:43
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PatrickAupperle=)02:44
PatrickAupperle:)02:44
morphwvutubaignore: #ubuntu-classroom CRAP NOTICES SNOTES CTCPS JOINS PARTS QUITS KICKS MODES WALLOPS NICKS DCC DCCMSGS CLIENTNOTICES CLIENTCRAP CLIENTERRORS HILIGHTS02:50
jribthilmegil: I assume you want it to be writable by users other than root?02:52
thilmegiljrib: yes i want all partitions except for / to be writtable by me02:52
jribthilmegil: so what chown command did you try?02:52
thilmegiljrib: before my latest re install i had tried sudo chown R- kenny:kenny /path/to/drive02:53
jribthilmegil: the - goes before the R02:54
thilmegiljrib: the dash may have been in front of the R i was being walked through by a person from #ubuntu02:54
jribdo that now02:54
thilmegiljrib: ok02:54
jribthilmegil: and by /path/to/drive you mean /path/to/mount/point right?02:54
thilmegiljrib: yes02:55
thilmegiljrib: sorry still switching from windows in my head02:55
thilmegiljrib: chown has been run02:56
jribls -ld again02:56
thilmegiljrib: now it says kenny kenny where before it said root root02:57
jribthilmegil: you should be able to write now02:57
thilmegilso i have to do this for all of my mount points?02:57
jribthilmegil: for the ext ones, yes02:57
thilmegiljrib: what about chmod? do i need to do that?02:57
jribthilmegil: no02:58
thilmegilwhat about my ntfs mount points?02:58
jribthilmegil: use ntfs-config02:58
thilmegilis this a program or a command?02:58
jribprograms are commands, no?02:58
jribthilmegil: you install it in synaptic though02:59
jribit shows up in your menu somewhere02:59
thilmegilok thank you. a program is a list of commands where as a command alone is one command02:59
thilmegilat least thats my simpleton view of it02:59
thilmegili could be way off base02:59
thilmegilbut thank you for your help02:59
jribthilmegil: no problem03:01
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EGCdigital...08:15
slackBudahi08:23
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sumitmay i ask when will be the next session ?10:34
zirodaysumit: look in the topic10:35
sumitthankx10:36
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junaidhow to uninstall kubuntu from ubuntu13:41
GFORGXjunaid, sudo apt-get remove kubuntu-desktop13:45
tuspakhi13:49
oscarxhi13:50
tsatbichi14:02
psicus78hi14:22
hophetwhen the classroom start?14:22
hophethi14:22
knomehophet, topic14:22
hophetknome: lets go14:30
knome30mins until the first session.14:30
hophet"How to help maintain the packages"14:32
hophetor the tree14:32
knomeedubuntu.14:33
hophetsorry, i get it!14:35
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LaserJockGood morning everybody!15:02
telebovichhello15:02
LaserJockWelcome to the 2nd day of the Ubuntu Open Week15:02
Nabigood morning15:02
evandargood evening15:03
LaserJockyou'll have to forgive me a little bit, it's 7am local time and I'm still waking up ;-)15:03
LaserJockOK, so we're going to start off the day with a project that is near and dear to my heart, Edubuntu15:04
LaserJockhas everybody heard about Edubuntu?15:04
kippyyep15:04
Nabiyes15:04
LaserJockawesome15:04
fules67üdv15:05
LaserJockfor those of you who don't know, Edubuntu is the Ubuntu "derivative" dedicated to education15:05
LaserJockit's an officially supported derivatives, just like Kubuntu15:05
LaserJockbut rather than focusing on a different desktop environment, it's focused on a different target15:05
LaserJockspecifically, bringing Ubuntu, open source, free software to kids, students of all ages, teachers, and schools15:06
LaserJockEdubuntu has worked on that target by creating a great classroom server15:07
LaserJockEdubuntu had pushed LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) into schools around the world15:08
LaserJockit's also tried to include the best the free software world has to offer in educational tools, such as gcompris, KDE Edu, tux4kids15:08
LaserJockQUESTION: can you explain about ltsp a little bit?15:09
LaserJockwell, I'm not going to go into huge detail about it here, but it's really pretty awesome, IMO15:09
lordnoidlol15:09
LaserJockthe basic idea is that you have a central server, where all the programs and administration takes place15:09
LaserJockthen "thin clients" connect to that server and an "image" is loaded up in RAM on the client that then connects to the server15:10
LaserJockso you can run say 30 clients off of one server15:10
LaserJockand you have *1* machine to administrate15:10
LaserJockthe thin clients don't even need a hard drive15:10
LaserJockI would point people to http://ltsp.org and #ltsp for more info15:11
LaserJockLTSP is not only used a lot in education, but also in corporate settings15:11
LaserJockand you can install it from the Ubuntu Alternate CD15:12
LaserJockany other questions so far?15:12
LaserJockok, moving on then :-)15:12
LaserJockQUESTION: Can Edubuntu used in primary school and in secondary school as well?15:13
LaserJockEdubuntu can be used in *any* school, IMO15:13
LaserJockwe've used it in university labs before15:13
LaserJockthe "theme" is quite a bit more suited for young children and elementary schools15:13
LaserJockbut that can easily be changed15:14
LaserJockwe try to have 2 themes generally, a "young" one and one that's more suitable for secondary and tertiary15:14
gmorenoQuestion: How edubuntu protects or promote the free knowledge?15:14
LaserJockin terms of applications, it's mostly focused on pre-school and elementary right now, but I'm trying to move us more into secondary and tertiary as well15:15
LaserJockWell, Edubuntu certainly tries to protect and promote free knowledge by protecting and promoting free software15:15
LaserJockAs the project develops I think we are going to start seeing more "free" content as well, we've thought about things like including free, scaled down Wikipedia content for instance15:16
LaserJockUESTION: Are there any architectural differences in Edubuntu vs Ubuntu? or is there difference in softwares only?15:17
LaserJockQUESTION: What are the most obvious difference for a desktop user between Edubuntu and Ubuntu?15:17
LaserJockok, so that brings me to some technical bits of what exactly Edubuntu is15:17
LaserJockso technically right now Edubuntu is shipped as an addon CD to Ubuntu15:17
LaserJockEdubuntu started it's history (ancient by Ubuntu standards ;-) ) as a normal derivative15:18
LaserJock1 CD installer with LTSP and some educational apps15:18
LaserJockhowever we out grew our single CD15:18
LaserJockso over a year ago we split into 1 installer CD + 1 addon CD15:19
LaserJockthen for Hardy (8.04) we decided to drop the installer CD as it was mostly redundant with the existing Ubuntu CD15:19
LaserJockso LTSP now resides on the Ubuntu Alternate CD15:19
LaserJockand the educational programs are on the Edubuntu CD15:19
LaserJockbut Edubuntu is really educational content15:20
LaserJockwe "derive" from Ubuntu in that we require an Ubuntu desktop as a base15:20
LaserJockwe're also working some on package that would base off of Kubuntu, but we haven't had a ton of interest there15:21
LaserJockso the most obvious differences are going to be 1) theme, artwork 2) a lot of educational programs in the menu15:21
LaserJock3) LTSP goodness if you want it15:22
LaserJockQUESTION: What about the communication with other similar project like skolelinux, etc? Is it going to be extended?15:22
LaserJockWe naturally have pretty good communication with Debian, as Ubuntu as a whole derives from Debian15:22
ys76q/win 2115:22
LaserJockin the past people from K12LTSP and skolelinux have come to some of the Ubuntu Developer Summits15:23
LaserJockwe try to keep good communication open, especially around LTSP, but of course that can always be improved15:23
LaserJockQUESTION: what edubuntu can offer to a programmer student for example?15:23
LaserJockwell, Edubuntu specifically isn't going to offer you much right now15:24
LaserJockUbuntu is simply *awesome* for programming students though15:24
LaserJockand Edubuntu has had a Google Summer of Code project for instance working on a Python "test" grader and teaching tool15:25
LaserJockbut people should realize that Edubuntu is a very small community15:25
LaserJockwith only 2-3 developers at any given time15:25
LaserJockso we'd love to see people join and work on new educational apps, but we mostly rely on other people (called upstreams) to write software15:26
LaserJocktelebovich: does that answer your question some?15:26
telebovichyes15:26
LaserJockso Edubuntu is the first official derivative to do the addon thing15:26
LaserJockI think we might see more of it15:27
LaserJockbut it does create some unique issues15:27
LaserJockas people are used to 1 CD installs15:27
LaserJockbut it gives us 700MB of room for the stuff that kids, students, teachers, and schools really care about15:27
LaserJocknow we want to fill that up with the best open source/free software and content15:28
LaserJockso that's most of the info on what Edubuntu actually is: a addon CD on top of Ubuntu that can be used to either set up a Classroom Server (via LTSP) or a educational workstation15:29
LaserJockQUESTION: What are the biggest challenges facing Edubuntu and getting it into schools?15:29
LaserJockok, that's a really good question15:29
LaserJockit really surprised me how hard it is to get Edubuntu (or any Linux OS) into schools15:30
LaserJockon the face of it one my think, "well it's so much cheaper, it's simple"15:30
LaserJock*might15:30
LaserJockbut there are 2 primary challenges15:30
LaserJock1) cost of transition15:30
LaserJockit takes quite a bit of work to completely convert a school from all-Microsoft to all-Edubuntu15:31
LaserJockand in fact most schools will never reach that15:31
LaserJockmost schools have a mixed environment of Edubuntu in classroom labs and Microsoft elswhere15:31
denisbrHello !!15:31
LaserJock2) curriculum inertia or curriculum conformance15:32
LaserJockschools have standard ways of doing things15:32
LaserJockmany schools are mandated as to what they must teach in a computer curriculum15:32
LaserJockand quite often standards are wrapped around Microsoft products (such as MS Office)15:32
LaserJockor there are programs that students must use for testing, etc. that only run on Windows15:33
LaserJockthat's a pretty big hurdle there, but in many areas of the world we're gaining ground15:33
LaserJockthe Latin American countries really seem to be grabbing on to open source/free software15:33
LaserJocksome European countries also are doing quite a bit15:34
LaserJockQUESTION: i'd like to know more about whether you plan on supporting common windows packages through wine/vms etc15:35
LaserJock;-)15:35
LaserJockat this time we really don't have any plans to no15:35
catonanoSome european countries ? Which ones ? I'm just curious15:35
LaserJockSpain and Macedonia are the ones that come to mind15:35
catonanothanks15:36
LaserJockMacedonia ordered up 100k Edubuntu computers for it's schools15:36
gmorenocomment: in latin american, especially Venezuela, the Free Software is winning big battles against the bussiness model of Microsoft... elementary school is right now teaching Ubuntu an Debian as the first Operative Sysytem15:36
LaserJockthe problem with supporting particular windows programs, is that there are so very many of them15:37
LaserJockand this is a general issue with educational OSes in general15:37
Nuc134rB0ti live in Venezuela :)15:37
gmorenome too :P15:37
LaserJockeach country require different programs, each state, district, town, etc. may have it's own requirements15:37
LaserJockso it's very difficult for use to go through all the possibilities15:37
catonanoI see15:38
LaserJockso our current strategy is to provide the best free/open source bits and let schools adapt them and put them together as needed15:38
LaserJock*however* wine is certainly available to them15:38
LaserJockbut with only 2-3 developers we don't have resources to go through and make sure Windows apps work in wine15:38
LaserJockbut it would be, IMO, a very cool project to have somebody test common Windows educational apps and put that on a wiki page15:39
LaserJockUESTION: there are any ideas about the fact that not only help the schools using Edubuntu, but as something to interact with school-developers?15:39
LaserJockdarn, I keep missing that Q :-)15:39
Nuc134rB0tno problem we know what you meant15:40
LaserJockwell, we really try to get the whole "stack" of people involved in education sort of "in the loop"15:41
LaserJockwe talk to students, teachers, IT admins, school administrators, all the way up to occasionally Ministers of Education or similar15:41
LaserJockI'd personally *love* to interact with people who are writing educational code15:42
LaserJockI want to know how I, as an Edubuntu developer, can make their life easier as well as perhaps give a place for their code to live that will help other people15:42
LaserJockwe have had a couple Ubuntu Education Summits15:43
LaserJockthat are similar to the Ubuntu Developer Summits, but more about education and how we can get Linux into schools15:43
LaserJockwe also have a fairly active mailing list, edubuntu-users (on lists.ubuntu.com) that often has discussion on new apps, etc.15:44
LaserJockUESTION: Are there any other projects that are available as addon CDs like Edubuntu is? The idea of having a common base system and being able to add specific functionality by downloading one CD seems quite useful15:44
LaserJocknot in the "official" Ubuntu landscape no15:44
LaserJockmost derivatives need to have a different CD because they're changing core "bits"15:45
LaserJocklike the desktop environment (for Xubuntu and Kubuntu)15:45
kippyperhaps outside the Ubuntu bioshpere?15:45
LaserJockI think as we work on smoothing out some of the rough spots of having and addon CD it might get better15:45
LaserJockwell, there are a number of projects that do "addon" stuff15:46
LaserJockbut usually it's sort of unofficial and scripted15:46
LaserJocki.e. "run this shell script and it will install all the goodies"15:46
LaserJockwe actually use Ubuntu's Add/Remove technology and have our own little "installer" hook15:46
LaserJockso that when you pop in an Edubuntu CD it pops up a dialog for you to start installing software15:47
LaserJockand we try to bundle it in such a way as to make it easy for people to install "bundles" of software15:47
LaserJockand we'll certainly be developing that as we go along15:47
LaserJockQUESTION: As it's unlikely developers will target only Linux, do Edubuntu developers recommend a particular development environment for cross platform educational tools?  Java, Flash, .Net, Web/AJAX?15:48
LaserJockwell, Ubuntu loves Python15:48
LaserJockand so do I15:48
LaserJockif you're going to either teach programming or are comfortable enough to use a "real" programming environment I'd certainly recommend Python15:49
LaserJockFlash is always tricky as we don't yet have a very stable/reliable free flash player15:49
LaserJockbetween Java, .Net/mono, and python I'd personally pick Python15:49
LaserJockfor toolkits it's sort of up to you15:50
LaserJockI think Qt is particularly good in terms of having a nice looking, cross-platform, and easy to code GUI toolkit15:51
LaserJockso PyQT is a good option to look at15:51
LaserJockRuby rocks for sure15:51
LaserJockbut it doesn't quite have as much as Python in terms of libraries that would be relevant for education, IMO15:52
LaserJockif you look at things like pygame and even scipy/matplotlib for sciences15:52
LaserJock*but* bottom line15:52
LaserJockUbuntu is a great place to code15:52
LaserJockjust like most Linux distros15:53
LaserJockbecause we have C/C++, ruby, python, Java, .Net/mono, ....15:53
LaserJockand it's all free and open source software15:53
LaserJockso students can dig into their computers and learn about things15:53
LaserJockrather than just being stuck learning how to run menus on some proprietary app15:54
LaserJockI think that's one of the true goals of Edubuntu15:54
LaserJockto get students to not just use their computer but to really think about how they can effectively change their software to suit their needs15:55
LaserJockok, we're getting close to the end here15:55
LaserJockare there any last questions?15:55
gmorenothanks for the answers15:55
catonanoThank you15:56
LaserJockQUESTION: Why doesn't Shipit distribute Edubuntu?15:56
LaserJockI think that could be due to being an Addon CD15:56
LaserJockfor us to completely ship the everything you need we'd have to ship 2 CDs15:56
LaserJockas postage/printing isn't free Canonical makes decisions on what it can afford15:57
LaserJockI'd like to get it back for sure in the future though15:57
Maurici1Thanks Laserjock, it was a very nice presentation....clap, clap, clap, clap15:58
LaserJockOK, in the last couple minutes here I'd like to give you some resource and give a bit about what you can do to help15:58
LaserJockOur website is http://www.edubuntu.org15:58
LaserJockwe also use the ubuntu wiki so there's resources at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Edubuntu15:58
Nuc134rB0tthanks a lot LaserJock15:59
dholbachthanks LaserJock!15:59
LaserJockwe have an IRC channel, #edubuntu, and 2 mailing lists, edubuntu-devel and edubuntu-users on lists.ubuntu.com15:59
LaserJockwe also have a number of Launchpad teams that people can join15:59
LaserJockwe need *all* kinds of contributors from all technical levels15:59
LaserJockartists, documentation writers, bug squashers, packagers, coders, support people, etc.16:00
LaserJockNOTE: we will be having a planning IRC meeting tomorrow at 18:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting16:00
LaserJockif you have *any* interest in Edubuntu please try to stop by, we'll make it worth your time16:01
LaserJockand with that I'm done :-)16:01
dholbachHELLO MY FRIENDS! :-)16:01
* sebner hugs dholbach =)16:01
dholbachWho's here for the "Packaging 101" session? :-)16:01
alexharringtonme16:01
lvzimmerme16:01
* lobo-ptr puts his fiiiiiiiinger up16:01
radixhi :-)16:01
kippy+116:01
charlie-tcame16:01
Webspotyup16:01
NetClap, clap, clap!16:02
dholbachand I guess the rest of the 237 people in here are just too shy to say "me me me!" :-)16:02
chillitomCheers LaserJock.. Good luck!16:02
dholbachalright... let's get cracking16:02
* stefanlsd hugs dholbach!16:02
niemeyerdholbach: Thay all agree16:02
* dholbach hugs stefanlsd back :)16:02
RainCTheh16:03
* sebner feels ignored by dholbach :P16:03
dholbachmy name is Daniel Holbach, I've been member of the MOTU team for quite a while, have been involved in all kinds of teams but what I always got back to was: listening to new contributors, trying to find out what could make their lives easier and hear lots of enthusiasm in our ubuntu development community every day16:04
* dholbach hugs sebner back :)16:04
sebner:)16:04
dholbachas you can see (first lesson maybe): we hug a lot in the Ubuntu community :-)16:04
dholbachso what are we going to do in the session?16:04
dholbachwe'll take a look at a simple package, identify all the key parts and I'll try to answer all the questions that come up16:05
dholbachthese key parts you will find in any package you might touch later on16:05
dholbachthere's one tool we're going to need, so please run16:05
dholbach  sudo apt-get install devscripts16:05
dholbachand afterwards:16:05
dholbach  dget -xu http://daniel.holba.ch/motu/hello-debhelper_2.2-2.dsc16:05
dholbachplease let me know in #ubuntu-classroom-chat if you have any questions or run into trouble16:06
ciprian_topalam2a16:06
dholbachwhat this does is: get the source package of hello-debhelper (eqivalent of 'apt-get source hello-debhelper' - I just wanted to make sure we all have the same source package we're looking at)16:07
dholbach(you might need to run    dget -x <url>   if you're on hardy) :)16:08
dholbachif you look at your current working directory, you'll see three files and a directory16:08
dholbach... at least ... :)16:08
dholbachhello-debhelper_2.2.orig.tar.gz is the unchanged upstream tarball that was released on the GNU FTP page16:09
dholbachhello-debhelper_2.2-2.diff.gz is the compressed patch (set of changes) we need to apply to make the source package build in the debian/ubuntu world16:09
dholbachhello-debhelper_2.2-2.dsc contains some metadata like md5sums, etc16:10
dholbachthe   hello-debhelper-2.2   directory is the extracted tarball plus the applied packaging changes16:10
dholbach<demas_> QUESTION: When I install devscripts, apt-get install Exim.  Why?16:10
dholbachdemas_: it's pulled in via some recommends - you can safely remove it (or install without recommends - can somebody help demas_?)16:11
demas_thanks16:11
dholbach  cd hello-debhelper-2.216:11
stefanlsddemas_: I like to install ssmtp first instead. exim wont be pulled in then.16:11
RainCTdemas_: try with --no-install-recommends16:12
dholbachif you check the contents of the directory you will see that it looks and feels like a regular source tarball you downloaded16:12
dholbachwith the exception of the    debian/   directory16:12
dholbach  cd debian/16:12
dholbachthis directory contains all the files that are needed to make the package build "our way"16:13
dholbachwhat does that mean?16:13
dholbachhello-debhelper is a simple project written in C, if you'd build it yourself, you'd probably run something like: ./configure --make-it-extra-fancy; make; sudo make install16:13
dholbachif it was a python project, you'd probably run:   python setup.py build;   sudo python setup.py install  or some such16:14
dholbachetc. etc.16:14
dholbacha lot of projects require different methods to make them build or install stuff to some directory16:14
dholbachin the Debian / Ubuntu packaging world we just apply one build process, for all kinds of packages16:15
dholbachok, let's check out the contents one by one16:15
dholbachchangelog is what the name says: it describes all the changes that were made16:15
dholbachbut only the changes necessary for the packaging - it's not an upstream changelog16:16
dholbachif you look at the top line you can see16:16
dholbach<source package name> (<upstreamversion>-<debian/ubuntu revision>) <distro-release>; urgency=<something>16:17
dholbachupstream version is 2.216:17
dholbachdebian revision is -216:17
dholbachthat means 2 revisions of the upstream 2.2 have been uploaded to debian16:17
dholbachit was not modified in Ubuntu at all16:17
dholbach(you can ignore the urgency setting, we don't use it in Ubuntu)16:18
catonanosorry in the changelog, the first rows are like this, to me:16:18
catonano2006-11-23  Karl Berry  <karl@gnu.org>16:18
catonano* Version 2.2.16:18
catonano16:18
catonano* Makefile.am (po-check): add utility target (from coreutils).16:18
dholbachcatonano: we're in the  debian/  directory16:18
dholbachcatonano: take a look at debian/changelog16:18
catonanooh yes, sorry16:18
dholbachbut you're right... ChangeLog is the upstream changelog (containing information from the software authors)16:19
dholbachevery changelog entry should contain useful information about what was changed16:19
dholbachthis is very important, especially in Ubuntu16:19
dholbachwe maintain all packages as a team - even if you don't mind figuring out what the hell you changed half a year ago, it's very nice if you colleagues and friends don't have to guess what16:20
dholbach  * did some changes to make it work again16:20
dholbachmeans :)16:20
dholbachalso it contains the timestamp of the change and who changed it16:20
dholbachwe have a fancy tool in devscripts called  dch  that automatically adds templates for you, so you don't have to figure it out yourself :)16:21
dholbachwe can ignore the  compat  file, it's not so interesting (compatibility setting for debhelper, that was used for the packaging)16:21
catonanoahem...I'm sorry I have to ask a stupid question again :-(16:22
dholbachcatonano: no problem - would you mind asking in #ubuntu-classroom-chat the next time? :)16:22
dholbachcatonano: shoot16:22
catonanoI can't find the debian folder. This is what I see:16:22
catonanoadriano@adriano-laptop:~/debhelper/hello-2.2$ ls16:22
catonanoABOUT-NLS   ChangeLog    configure.ac  INSTALL      NEWS    tests16:22
catonanoaclocal.m4  ChangeLog.O  contrib       Makefile.am  po      THANKS16:22
catonanoAUTHORS     config.in    COPYING       Makefile.in  README  TODO16:22
catonanobuild-aux   configure    gnulib        man          src16:22
catonanoadriano@adriano-laptop:~/debhelper/hello-2.2$16:22
dholbachcatonano: go back to the directory with the .dsc .diff.gz and .orig.tar.gz files16:23
catonanoI'm there16:23
dholbachand run  dpkg-source -x hello-debhelper_2.2-2.dsc16:23
dholbachit's the magic command that   dget -x(u)   runs for you16:23
dholbachalright... let's crack on16:24
dholbachthe next file is important and maybe a bit less obvious16:24
catonanothanks, I saw that16:24
dholbach  control   contains information about the source package and the binary packages16:24
dholbachso what's the difference?16:24
dholbachthe source package comprises of the .diff.gz .dsc and .orig.tar.gz files and is what we need to hack on packages, it contains source16:25
dholbachthe binary packages are the .deb files that my mother does not know about, but installs and updates regularly :)16:25
dholbach<demas_> QUESTION: Where can I find more information about dch? Do I need to launch this script or it is a part another script?16:25
dholbachdemas_: just run   man dch   - I'll give you a couple of links for more infos and tutorials later on16:26
demas_thanks16:26
dholbachalright... control file16:26
dholbachif you take a closer look at it, you will see that it's split into two stanzas16:26
dholbachthe first one is always about the source package16:26
dholbachand the following ones (in our case luckily just one) are about the resulting binary packages16:26
dholbachthe source package definition contains: the name of the source (usually just what the upstream developers decided to call it), some section, some priority and a maintainer field16:27
dholbachthese should be pretty obvious (the debian policy explains which values are allowed for the priority and the section)16:28
dholbachStandards-Version describes which version of the debian-policy the package complys with16:28
dholbachin this case it's 3.7.216:28
dholbachthe next line is very interesting: it tells us which packages are required to build the package16:29
dholbachthis is nothing my mother has to install to get the all the goodness that hello-debhelper is, it's what we need to build the package16:29
dholbachand also what the build machines in the data center need to build the package16:29
dholbachso what happens when I upload a source package to the build machines?16:30
dholbachfirst it will check the GPG signature to see if it was really me who uploaded it, it will check if it knows about me at all16:30
dholbachthen unpack the source package, then enter a minimal environment (that contains nothing but just a few build tools), then install the build-depends16:30
dholbachthis is to make sure that it builds in a clean environment16:31
dholbachyou will explicitly have to point out what's required :)16:31
dholbach<cyphermox> QUESTION: what is the Standards-Version used for? Won't lintian complain in different contexts, about the Standards-Version you use?16:31
=== syslogd_ is now known as syslogd
dholbachcyphermox: if you're the package maintainer and you learn that the new debian policy requires something, you will make the necessary fixes and update the Standards-Version16:32
dholbachfor those of you who don't know: lintian is a tool that checks for all kinds of mistakes in packaging, it's seriously good stuff16:32
dholbachcyphermox: lintian will always want you to use the newest debian-policy it knows about :)16:33
cyphermoxalright!16:33
dholbachbut bumping the standards-version just for the sake of bumping it is unnecessary and you shouldn't do an upload of a package just for that :)16:33
dholbach<wolfger> QUESTION: What would Depends look like if we had some real dependencies?16:33
dholbachwolfger: I'll get to the depends in just a sec16:33
dholbachlet's get to the binary package section now16:33
dholbachthe name is pretty obvious: it's the name of the package that my mother might install16:34
dholbachArchitecture is interesting: in our case it's "Any" and will tell the build machines to build this on every architecture that's available in the data center16:34
dholbachso i386, amd64, powerpc, hppa, lpia, sparc, etc16:34
dholbachthis is necessary if you have architecture dependent code16:35
dholbachcompiling C code on i386 and on amd64 will give you different results16:35
dholbachif your package just needs a few python scripts or just ships some HTML files (something-doc package), you will set  Architecture: all16:35
dholbachwhich means: all architectures will use one and the same package (and the package gets only built on one build machine)16:36
dholbachnow we get to "Depends:"16:36
dholbachthis is the packages you need to install to make the package work16:36
dholbachin our cases it's pretty funny: ${shlibs:Depends}16:36
dholbachthis doesn't look like a package name, right you are :)16:37
dholbachit's a substitution variable16:37
dholbach${shlibs:Depends} will at the end of the build be replaced with all the names of packages that contain libraries that the binary files in hello-debhelper are linked against16:38
dholbachI hope that was not too cryptic :)16:38
dholbachso if /usr/bin/hello in the resulting hello-debhelper package is linked against /lib/libc.so.6 the package will automagically depends on libc616:39
dholbach<bhk_f> dholbach: QUESTION: "Architecture: all" Vs. "Architecture: any" difference ?16:39
dholbachbhk_f: I explained it above, in short: "any" => build on every release architecture because of architecture dependant resulting code (C, C++, etc, etc), "all": all architectures use the same package, architecture indepedent16:40
dholbach<poef> QUESTION: If I modify someone elses package and build new sources (and binaries), should I use Original-Maintainer or XSBC-Original-Maintainer? What's XSBC?16:40
dholbachpoef: that's an Ubuntu speciality. our friends at Debian asked us to change the maintainer fields whenever we do changes so they don't get mails from our users about bugs, etc16:41
dholbachhttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebianMaintainerField has more info about that and the  update-maintainer  tool (ubuntu-dev-tools package) is useful for that16:41
dholbachXSBC stand for:16:42
dholbachX = custom header entry16:42
dholbachS = add it to the source package16:42
dholbachB = add it to the binary package16:42
dholbachC = add it to the .changes file16:42
dholbach<demas_> QUESTION: Can I rely on ${shlibs:Depends} variable or sometimes I need to fill this field manually16:42
dholbachdemas_: yes, it's really good stuff and you should never have to explicitly list library package names16:43
dholbachbecause sometimes library package change their names (ABI breakage, etc), in those cases you can just rebuild the package and it will have the new library package name as a resulting depends16:43
dholbachit's REALLY good stuff16:43
dholbach<demas_> QUESTION: How system can know really packages to replace Depends variable?  Where can it find this information?16:43
dholbachI can't go into too much detail here about it, but if you check the output of  ldd <some binary>  you will see the libraries it's linked against16:44
dholbachthe library packages contain SHLIBS information, which will show which library with which soname relates to which library package16:46
dholbachthis is automatically generated as well16:46
dholbach<demas_> QUESTION:  For example, I create python program which uses sql-alchemy.  How Depends variable can understand that my package depends on the python-sqlalchemy package ?16:46
dholbachdemas_: unforunately there is no automagic for python16:46
dholbachdemas_: ${python:Depends} will just give you the current python versions16:47
dholbachalright... let's move on :)16:47
dholbachConflicts: hello16:47
dholbachProvides: hello16:47
dholbachReplaces: hello16:47
dholbachthese entries basically make sure that hello and hello-debhelper are not installed at the same time16:47
dholbachthey are both the same examples, just one time built with debhelper (packaging tool) and one time without it16:48
dholbachthe rest of the   control   file is just a short and along description which you will see in aptitude/synaptic/adept/etc.16:49
dholbachI picked an easy example for this session, but there are packages the build like literally 100 binary packages from one source16:49
dholbachjust for kicks, try out16:49
dholbach  $ apt-cache showsrc mono16:49
dholbachtake a look at the "Binary:" section16:50
dholbach:-)16:50
dholbach<bhk_f> QUESTION: last time i packaged a python app, it needed a setup.py before i could debianize it, so thats twice the effort, even ubuntu wiki suggested this way, is this the only recommended approach ?16:50
dholbachbhk_f: unfortunately there are lots and lots of different ways to package something - I like using distutils (in setup.py) because it makes writing debian/rules trivial, but there are other ways for sure16:50
dholbachlet's move on, we're running late :)16:50
dholbachthe  copyright  file explains who the authors of the package are, what licenses each and every part are under and who the copyright holders are16:51
dholbachgetting all this information is time-consuming and something we shouldn't take lightly16:51
RainCTbhk_f: if you use cdbs but there's no setup.py you can just ommit the python-distutils.mk include and call dh_pycentral/dh_pysupport directly in the binary-install/<pkgname>:: target (and more or less the same is true if you don't use cdbs)16:52
dholbachit's important to get this right before you upload the package, because the archive admins look at every bit and make sure that we can ship it at all and that you got all the licensing bits right16:52
dholbachsaying "but COPYRIGHT said it was GPLv3" is not enough16:52
dholbachyou need to check all the source ane make sure you listed all the bits that were "borrowed from somewhere else" as well16:52
dholbach<cyphermox> dholbach: QUESTION: in the mono example, what does dfsg stand for in the Version line: Version: 1.9.1+dfsg-4ubuntu216:53
dholbachcyphermox: DFSG stands for debian free software guidelines - this is something we follow as well16:53
dholbachsometimes we have to remove certain bits from the upstream code we're shipping to comply with the DFSG16:53
lvzimmerll16:53
dholbachin this case   1.9.1   is not the "upstream version number", but "1.9.1+dfsg"16:54
dholbachsometimes just having a chat with the upstream developers about it is enough to get the issue resolved16:54
cyphermoxok.16:54
dholbachin the particular case of mono, I don't know what the issue was16:54
dholbachok, let's come to the last piece of the puzzle: debian/rules16:54
dholbachthis is the heart of the packaging process and it would take very long to go through it very carefully16:55
dholbachbasically it's a Makefile with specific targets16:55
dholbachthe clean target is similar to what "make clean" would normally do16:55
dholbachthe install target takes care of installing the resulting files into the right places16:55
dholbachyou can see that we run ./configure as well, etc.16:56
dholbachnote all the   dh_*  calls towards the bottom of the file16:56
dholbachthese are all debhelper commands that make packaging very simple, common packaging tasks: like compress the changefiles, update the database of menu entries, etc are done almost automatically for us16:57
dholbachthere are toolkits like CDBS that simplify this Makefile even more16:57
dholbachif you're interested in packaging and getting involved, please check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/GettingStarted16:57
dholbachit links to the packaging guide (including tutorials)16:57
dholbachit links to tutorial videos on youtube16:57
dholbachit explains how to get in touch with developers and lists simple tasks you can get started with16:58
dholbach<dsestero> QUESTION: I am considering packaging Java J2EE applications. Is that a viable route? Are there any special steps needed to package this kind of applications that run in a container like JBoss AS? Are there any tutorial you would suggest?16:58
dholbachdsestero: definitely, watch out for the next Ubuntu Java meeting - there are people who can explain much better what's required for that16:58
dholbach<hophet> QUESTION: I packed a binary tool from ibm, but i havent the source code. Can i put it in the tree? (Sorry by my poor english)16:59
dholbachhophet: if the resulting binary is redistributable at all, it might get into multiverse, I'm not sure how likely that is - it really depends on the licensing terms16:59
dholbachgetting it to build from source would be MUCH MUCH better16:59
dholbachOK my friends... thanks a lot for this great session - I had a lot of fun and hope so did you17:00
dholbachI hope to see you all in #ubuntu-motu soon17:00
dholbachjaunty is   Y O U R   development cycle - make me proud :-)17:00
Nuc134rB0tthanks dholbach for this session17:01
dholbachthanks Nuc134rB0t - I'm glad you're happy :)17:01
* RainCT hugs dholbach :)17:01
* dholbach hugs y'all!17:01
dholbachnext up is Mr James james_w Westby!17:01
cyphermoxthanks dholbach17:01
rizitisdholbach thank you!17:02
=== stdin changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: Debian and Ubuntu with James Westby | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
dholbachdelivering a great session about Debian and Ubuntu17:02
james_wthanks dholbach17:02
james_wI'll give you all a minute or two to calm down after a whole hour with dholbach :-)17:02
dholbachhehe17:02
* sebner hugs james_w in the meantime =)17:02
chillitomthanks dholbach, great stuff17:02
Nuc134rB0thaha thank would be rly helpful17:02
james_wright17:04
james_ware we all sitting comfortably?17:04
barcc+117:04
james_wthen let us begin17:05
james_wHi, my name is James Westby, and I am an Ubuntu MOTU, and a Debian contributor, and I'm going to tell you more about the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian.17:05
Nuc134rB0twelcome james17:05
james_wFirst though, I'll go over a really simple question for those that don't know, "What is Debian?"17:05
james_wDebian is another Operating System that has been around for many years. It is linux-based, though there are people working on making it work on top of other kernels.17:06
james_wYou can read more about it if you go to http://www.debian.org/17:07
james_wIt's a really great OS, and it has a lot of users who really care for it, and a huge number of developers, including Mr. Mark Shuttlewoth himself.17:07
james_wSo, what does that have to do with Ubuntu?17:08
james_wWhen Mark was creating Ubuntu he looked at Debian (because he was part of it), and wanted to change a few things about it, so he created Ubuntu.17:08
james_wThey differ in a few ways, for instance the way we organise ourselves, the process to get membership, and some technical differences.17:09
james_wThe major difference for me is that they differ in aims. The sort of motto of Debian is "The Universal OS", and they would like to support many things that people want to do.17:10
james_wFor instance, as well as normal PC architectures you can run Debian on many different architectures, like your big-iron servers, or your tiny embedded computer, and it is all the same Debian.17:11
james_wThis however takes a lot of effort. Ubuntu sacrifices this to only work on a few architectures, and so doesn't need to do all of the work, meaning that effort can be focused on other places.17:12
james_wIt works the same in other areas too. Ubuntu tends to pick one solution to a problem and make that work really well, whereas Debian will often try and support every solution.17:12
james_wThey are equally valid approaches, it just depends what you want out of your distribution.17:13
james_wAnother big difference is that it's a lot harder to become a member of the Debian project, and it's almost impossible for non-developers.17:13
james_wPerhaps because of this Debian is lacking in people for non-development tasks.17:14
james_wThere is some discussion currently about changing this, so we will wait to see what happens.17:14
james_w<catonano> QUESTION: does that mean that, for example, Debian would support both ALSA and Pulseaudio, ehile Debian would support Pulseaudio only ?17:15
james_wcatonano: assuming you meant the second "Debian" to be "Ubuntu", then yes, sort of.17:15
james_wit doesn't always work that way, for instance Ubuntu supports GNOME, KDE and Xfce.17:16
james_wbut look at MTAs, Ubuntu mainly focuses on postfix, but Debian spreads its effort between exim, postfix, sendmail, etc.17:16
james_wAny more questions about what Debian is, or how it differs from Ubuntu?17:17
mneptokjames_w: let's be clear, though. the Ubuntu project supports people creating derivatives with other WMs or DEs, but Canonical as a corporate entity behind the Ubuntu Project does not offer commercial support for such derivatives.17:17
mneptok(i.e. you can buy professional support for Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but not XubuntuA)17:18
mneptok-A17:18
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james_wmneptok: true. However, development focus is often on picking the best and making it better.17:19
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* mneptok nods17:19
james_w<Nuc134rB0t> QUESTION: Which one would you recommend to a new Gnu/Linux user non-developer as the best ditro to start with Free Software? Debian or Ubuntu17:19
james_wthat's a hard question to answer.17:19
james_wmany people will recommend Ubuntu to new users, as it puts a lot of effort in to working "out of the box"17:20
james_wDebian is catching up in that respect though17:20
james_wapart from that, it kind of depends what you are looking for17:20
macacobien dia17:20
james_wso I would suggest you try a live-CD of both, and see which you prefer.17:20
Nuc134rB0tthanks17:21
james_wI said that Ubuntu is based on Debian, what did I mean by that?17:22
james_wI meant that when Ubuntu started it just imported Debian, and then started modifying things from there.17:23
james_wThis process carries on. We are just starting development on Jaunty, and just about to start the activity known as "merging".17:23
james_wDuring this time we pull in all of the updates done in Debian since the last time we did this, and integrate them in to the Ubuntu packages, so all the improvements (and some new bugs, unfortunately) in Debian end up in Ubuntu.17:24
james_wWe don't have to do this manually for all 15000 source packages in Ubuntu though, it's only a small fraction of packages that are modified in Ubuntu, for the rest we just pull in whatever Debian currently has.17:25
james_w<jimbodoors> QUESTION: do you think is better debian for a new user tooking about stability?17:25
james_wjimbodoors: Ubuntu releases every 6 months, Debian releases "when it's ready", typically every 6 months17:26
james_wer, typically around every 18 months sorry17:26
james_wso Debian stable releases will typically be more stable than Ubuntu releases17:27
jimbodoorsbut have a relly stability distribution17:27
rizitis-james_w: what is your opinion for this (” - When’s the new debian release? - When it’s ready!”) ?17:27
james_whowever, there is a trade off. To do this Debian freezes earlier in it's development cycle, so the packages it releases with are already a bit more out of date.17:27
james_wand as you have to wait 18 months for a new release they become very out of date.17:28
james_wThis long-term stability is good for large deployments and the like, and is the reason that Ubuntu has its LTS releases17:28
james_wso you can find the release that balances stability with updates that suits you17:29
james_wnote though that long-term support and bug-free are two different things17:30
james_wthere is another way though. Debian has rolling releases known as "testing" and "unstable".17:30
james_wUsing them you can get fairly recent stuff, but it would be like running an Ubuntu beta release, not for those who can't deal with their X server not starting17:31
james_wor who don't want a lot of changes17:31
james_wI could debate the merits of different release strategies all day, but we should move on17:31
james_wWe also send some of our improvements and bug-fixes back to Debian, so that they can benefit too. This is a great help for both sides, as Debian gets the improvements, and Ubuntu can stop maintaining them.17:32
james_wMerging is a good activity if you want to get involved in Ubuntu development, so join #ubuntu-motu if you want to join in.17:32
james_wIt does require some technical knowledge, but it doesn't usually require actual coding or patching, but just working out what has changed, and what you need to do.17:33
james_w<chillitom> QUESTION: what is being done to fight the commonly expressed opinion (not mine) that Ubuntu doesn't contribute enough to upstream/Debian?17:33
james_wchillitom: two things really.17:33
james_wfirstly, contributing to Debian.17:33
james_wUbuntu hasn't always done as it should here, but we are trying to improve things in that area17:34
james_wit's never been as bad as some people would have you believe though17:34
james_wthe second one is making sure our contributions are visible.17:34
james_wbhk_f> QUESTION: Any statistics on contribution of Ubuntu to Debian Stable ?17:35
james_wI doubt Ubuntu contributes anything to Debian stable17:35
james_wDebian doesn't contribute much (proportionally) to Debian stable17:35
james_wthey only push critical and security fixes to stable, and they are quite capable of taking care of that17:36
james_walso, Ubuntu development is based of Debian unstable, and is currently about 18 months away from Debian stable, so the issues we are hitting are probably not the ones Debian stable users are hitting17:36
james_whaving said that the Ubuntu security team typically ensures that security patches we have are in the Debian BTS to make things easy for the Debian security team for those cases where we patch it first.17:37
james_wwe try and push our fixes to Debian unstable, as that is the correct place for them.17:39
james_wwe do have some information on that, but it's not complete (it requires action from the submitter and some people forget/don't bother)17:39
james_wsee https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Debian/Usertagging for details17:40
james_whttp://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=origin-ubuntu;users=ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com shows the bugs forwarded by Ubuntu where the person that did it tagged it17:40
james_w<gscholz> QUESTION: Does Ubuntu only get fixes from Debian or is there also a knowledge flow in the oposite direction?17:42
james_wgscholz: we get a log of fixes from Debian, either directly, or indirectly17:42
james_wdirectly when the Debian maintainer fixes something17:42
james_windirectly when they package a new version of the software, with all the juicy bug fixes17:42
james_whowever, Ubuntu also fixes some things17:43
james_wwe don't have nearly as many developers as Debian, so we can't do as much, but we do what we can17:43
james_wUbuntu will typically only fix critical bugs ourselves, for some definition of critical17:44
james_w<weboide> QUESTION: Instead of developping for Ubuntu, should we develop for debian and "port" it onto Ubuntu (so that we contribute to both)?17:45
james_wthat's one way to do things17:45
james_wand many people do do it that way17:45
james_whowever it's not always possible17:45
james_wsome things aren't applicable to Debian, either due to freezes etc., or other reasons.17:45
james_w<hophet> QUESTION: Lets say that Debian die or they stop the work on it. How Ubuntu will moving on?17:46
james_whophet: I've no idea17:46
james_wI doubt it will ever happen, and I don't think there is a contingency plan in place for if it does17:46
james_wif Debian dies then there will be a lot of debian developers with time on their hands, and they might like to develop for Ubuntu as it would be familiar, but that won't be the full story17:47
james_w<bhk_f> james_w: QUESTION: with progeny gone, who's still doing paid support for debian ?17:47
james_wI've no idea17:47
james_wthere are a few small firms17:48
james_wbut I don't think there is anyone currently trying to do something like Progeny with Debian17:48
james_w<billybigrigger> QUESTION: why would it matter if Debian fell off the face of the earth, couldn't Ubuntu just continue from where its going with 8.10? or is Ubuntu specifically dependant on Debian? It would just mean Ubuntu needs more developers to continue keeping up-to-date security fixes no?17:49
james_wbillybigrigger: more than security fixes17:49
james_wwe would need developers to help us make the next release17:50
james_wand *lots* of them17:50
james_w<gscholz> QUESTION: Ubuntu has a nice tool called Launchpad for monitoring bugs. I personally used it several times not only to file bugs but also to provide patches (which were accepted). Are those Launchpad-patches passed over to upstream (Debian or original author)?17:50
james_wyeah, they generally end up where they are supposed to, but it depends on a few things to how efficient that is17:50
james_wif you send the patch to upstream yourself, then you can be sure it will happen. If it's important and you want to see it in Ubuntu sooner then you can send it to both.17:51
james_wif you do that then I would give you a HUGE hug, as that's a great help17:52
james_wI wanted to talk about bugs for a bit17:52
james_whowever, I haven't got much time left17:52
james_wso I'll be really quick17:52
james_wthe Debian bug tracker is at http://bugs.debian.org/17:53
james_wwhen you file a bug in Ubuntu checking the bugs against the Debian package and seeing if you bug is reported there to is a HUGE HUGE HUGE help17:53
james_wif you find it then linking it in the Ubuntu bug report helps us track it17:54
james_wif you don't find it then saying so can also be helpful17:54
james_wjcastro did a fantastic post about the linking and why it helps here: http://stompbox.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/feeding-the-har.html17:55
james_was I said, it helps us to track it, but it also increases the chance that it will be fixed, which is always good right?17:56
james_wI wanted to go in to this a bit more, but I don't have time17:56
james_wsuffice to say that if you file an Ubuntu bug and find a matching upstream one then jump on #ubuntu-bugs and explain the situation and someone will be glad to help?17:56
james_wany last questions?17:57
james_wIf you don't find a Debian bug report then it's possible to file one, but you have to be careful that the bug isn't Ubuntu-specific17:57
james_wchecking that is hard, and it's easy to make mistakes, but sometimes you know it's not and you can file them.17:58
james_wok, as I seem to have put everyone to sleep I'll wrap up17:58
james_wthanks everyone for your attention and your great questions17:58
hophetthank u17:58
cyphermoxthanks james_w!!17:58
hophetcongrats17:58
KiNnaZthanks indeed17:59
charlie-tca%C5Thank you%O17:59
catonanothanks !17:59
rizitisjames_w thanks17:59
weboidethanks james_w17:59
james_wnext up is mathiaz17:59
Txt_filecongratulations17:59
zeroathomethanks for the great insight17:59
james_wwith some server-love17:59
* mathiaz waves at james_w17:59
gladkthanx17:59
james_whey mathiaz, the stage is all yours17:59
mathiazjames_w: thanks!17:59
=== stdin changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: An Intrepid journey in Ubuntu Server land with Mathias Gug | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
mathiazNow that you all you know how we closely work with Debian, I'll give you an overview of the Ubuntu Server Team and how we design the Ubuntu Server product.18:01
mathiazSo who are we?18:01
mathiazWe are a group of people that have an interest in server related software.18:01
mathiazAs an extension we tend also to deal with setups found in corporate environments, such as directory services (ldap, AD) web services, or network authentication.18:02
mathiazSome of us are working for Canonical in the Server team, lead by Rick Clark (dendrobates on IRC).18:02
mathiazOthers have services running on Ubuntu and are interested in fixing bugs.18:03
mathiazRegular contributors takes on important tasks and lead them to completion.18:03
mathiazHere is a short list of some of the features that have been developed during the last release cycle:18:03
mathiazDustin Kirkland (kirland) added the possibility to create an encrypted private directory in the Home folder. The implementation is based on the ecryptfs project.18:03
mathiazDustin closely worked with the upstream project. As a result he got commit access to the upstream git tree. He is now looking after the user space part of the project.18:04
mathiazFor Jaunty he is looking into adding a GUI to manage the ~/Private/ directory as well as making it more i18n-friendly.18:04
mathiazHelp in designing, coding and testing this feature is welcome.18:05
mathiazSoren Hansen (soren) rewrote the popular ubuntu-vm-builder application in python. It now comes with a plugin architecture so that new releases, custom fstab templates and multiple hypervisors are supported.18:05
mathiazDustin Kirkland (kirkland) worked on improving the RAID experience. He added an option at boot time so that sysadmins can choose to automatically boot the system even if the RAID array is degraded.18:06
mathiazThis was a long-standing issue in Ubuntu and has finally been fixed.18:06
=== billybigrigger_ is now known as billybigrigger
mathiazScott Kitterman (ScottK) lead an effort to improve the mail server stack in Ubuntu. Both spamassassin and clamav have been moved to main and can easily been enabled in a postfix environment via amavisd-new.18:07
mathiazFor Jaunty he is pursuing better and easier integration. The goal would be to be able to script installation of postfix, amavisd-new, spamasassin, and clamav in an integrated, working configuration with no hand editing of config files needed.18:08
mathiazIf you're interested in helping out implementing this feature get in touch with Scott!18:08
mathiazMathias Gug (mathiaz) worked on adding support for the cn=config backend to the slapd package. Migration from the old slapd.conf file is done automatically when updating to Intrepid.18:08
mathiazUsing the new configuration backend will make it easier to load new schemas or define ldap databases by other programs.18:09
mathiazThis work will serve as a foundation for better package integration in an LDAP environment.18:09
mathiazAdam Sommer (sommer) is our documentation guru. He reviewed and updated the Server Guide.18:10
mathiazThe virtualization section has been revamped to closely follow what has been done in the virtulization stack.18:10
mathiazSo you can see that we are a diverse group that have different interests. We're also involved in other teams from the Ubuntu project.18:11
mathiazThis is one of the characteristics of the Server Team: we all share a common interest in server technologies, but have different skills.18:11
mathiazBeing part of the team often means representing the Server Team in other areas of the Ubuntu project and the Free Sofware ecosystem in general.18:12
mathiazBeing a contributor to the server team can be taken under different roles:18:13
mathiazThe helpers answers questions on the ubuntu-server mailing list and the #ubuntu-server irc channel.18:13
mathiazTriagers dig into bugs the ubuntu-server LP team is subscribed to.18:13
mathiazOur LP team is a bug contact for a list packages, such as samba, openldap, mysql or apache2.18:14
mathiazThe current list of packages can be found in Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-server/+packagebugs) and is growing every release.18:14
mathiazA mailing list gathers all the bugs related to the ubuntu-server team: ubuntu-server-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com. To get started in triaging signup here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server-bugs18:14
mathiazThis is a great way to start with the LP bug tracker and doesn't require any knowledge of programming languages.18:15
mathiazWe're working closely with the BugSquad team - triagers participate on the bugsquad mailing list https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/18:15
mathiazAnd once in a while with have the honor of having our own HugDay where the whole bug triaging community helps us.18:15
mathiazOnce bugs have been triaged, it's time to fix them. This is when the packagers come into the game.18:16
mathiazThis role requires an interest in packaging.18:17
mathiazWe maintain a list of bugs that are easy to fix: https://bugs.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-server/+mentoring18:17
mathiazFixes can easily make their way into the ubuntu repositories via the sponsorship process as described in the wiki page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SponsorshipProcess18:18
mathiazDoing work on the packaging front leads to a close a collaboration with the MOTU team and is a great way to gain experience to become a MOTU - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU18:18
mathiazTesting is another way to take part of the Server Team activity. This role doesn't require a lot of deep technical knowledge.18:19
mathiaze work with the Ubuntu QA team - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam.18:19
mathiazWe work with the Ubuntu QA team - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam.18:19
mathiazTesters are taking a more and more important role the more we advance in the release cycle:18:20
mathiazWe're responsible for ensuring that the ubuntu-server isos are working correctly, which involves performing a dozen of tests for two isos.18:20
mathiazThe list of tests can be found in the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Cases/ServerInstall.18:20
mathiazResults are tracked via the Iso testing tracker located at http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/.18:21
mathiazServer hardware support is another area where testing is welcome.18:21
mathiazWe're trying to make sure that ubuntu can be used on the main server hardware, so if you have access to such hardware, popping a cd into the machine, installing a standard ubuntu server and reporting whether it has successfully installed or failed is an easy way to contribute to the server team.18:22
mathiazThis work is coordinated in the ServerTesting Team wiki pages: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTestingTeam18:22
mathiazBrowsing the ubuntu-server mailing list archive, lurking in the #ubuntu-server irc channel or going through the forum posts shows patterns in user's questions.18:23
mathiazRecurring themes are identified and turned into documentation. A wiki page in the community section of help.ubuntu.com is first created. Once the quality has improved, a new section is added to the server guide.18:24
mathiazAll this work is undertaken by the Documentors of the Server Team.18:24
mathiazCollaboration with the Documentation team is done on a daily basis to achieve consistency with other help resources.18:25
mathiazMore information about the Documentation team can be found on their website located at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam18:26
mathiazAdam Sommer (sommer) leads the update and review of the Ubuntu Server guide. The source document is maintained in a bzr tree. Helping Adam will introduce you to docbook and distributed versioning with bazaar.18:26
=== Guest81984 is now known as WelshDragon
mathiazGetting started involves following 3 steps outlined in the Server Team Knowledge base: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/KnowledgeBase#Ubuntu%20Server%20Guide18:27
mathiazThere is also the option to go over server related wiki pages on the community help pages. A good starting point is the Server page that has links to lots of other howtos. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Servers18:28
mathiazAnother hat you can wear in the Server Team is the Developer one.18:29
mathiazThey develop new features usually specified during the Ubuntu Developer Summit that takes place at the beginning of each release cycle. Tracked by a blueprint we have around 3 months to get a new feature into Ubuntu.18:30
mathiazAs we are at the beginning of a release cycle most members of the Server Team are thinking about new features that could be implemented for Jaunty. These ideas should be added to the Server Team IdeaPool page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/IdeaPool.18:31
mathiazAnyone is welcome to give input on existing ideas and help out refining them.18:32
mathiazAs you can see, contributing to the Server Team can be undertaken in more than one way. It usually involves a lot of interaction with other teams from the Ubuntu project.18:33
mathiazIt's also a good way to show your contribution to Ubuntu and helps getting Ubuntu membership.18:34
mathiazThe GettingInvolved page gives an overview of the roles I've talked about above: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/GettingInvolved18:35
mathiazSo how do we work ?18:35
mathiazWe track our progress on the Roadmap and meet once a week to discuss outstanding issues.18:36
mathiazOur current work can be tracked on the Roadmap wiki page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/Roadmap18:36
mathiazWe use the ubuntu-server mailing to coordinate our activities, discuss policy change in the team as well as helping out users.18:37
mathiazYou can subscribe to the mailing list here: Join our mailing list at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server.18:37
mathiazThere is also an Ubuntu Server blog maintained by some members of the Server Tea18:39
mathiazm. Minutes of the meeting as well as other topics related to the Ubuntu Server T18:39
mathiazeam activities are regularly posted there: http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/18:39
mathiazHow to join the Server Team and start contributing ?18:39
mathiazJoining the ubuntu-server team on LP is as simple as subscribing to the ubuntu-server mailing list and applying for membership on LP https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-server/18:40
mathiazIf you already know which role you'd like to contribute as, you can find a list of tasks in the Roadmap. Don't hesitate to ask one of the team members involved in your area of interest.18:41
mathiazMost of the information related to the ServerTeam can be found in the ServerTeam wiki pages: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam.18:41
mathiazIf you're overwhelmed by all the available information and you're lost, come talk to me. You can find me in #ubuntu-server amongst other channels. I'll help get out of the mist and we'll find a way you can get involved in the Server Team.18:42
mathiazThat was a short overview of the Ubuntu Server Team18:43
mathiazWhat kind of tasks we do and how we work together.18:43
mathiazI'll answer now questions posted in #ubuntu-classroom-chat.18:44
mathiaz< bhk_f> QUESTION: Hows the level of support for RAID under ubuntu server, please compare with Redhat.18:44
mathiazAs of intrepid we're at the same level as redhat. The ubuntu server installer supports raid installation and we've integrated support for dmraid and other ataraid devices.18:45
mathiazkirkland is currently working on backporting the boot from degraded raid support for hardy.18:46
mathiaz< rgreening> QUESTION: I notice tacacs+ isn't one of the packages available in the repos. who would I contact to work on adding this package? It's an authentication server used in networking (like Cisco routers).18:47
mathiazAs it has already been suggested, going through REVU is the best option.18:47
mathiazhttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages18:48
mathiaz^^ this wiki page outlines the process to the get a new package in ubuntu.18:48
mathiazAs mentionned above when I presented the packager role Ubuntu Server team members are participating in REVU days hold by the MOTU team.18:49
mathiazIf such a package is uploaded to REVU one of us will probably have a look at it.18:49
mathiaz< bhk_f> QUESTION: is there any possibility of collaboration on documentation between ubuntu-server & debian documentation ?18:50
mathiazI would hope so although I'm not too familiar with the documentation processes in Debian.18:51
mathiazThe Server Guide is released under a Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.5 License (CC-BY-SA)18:52
mathiazIf there are any other question fell free to post them in #ubuntu-classroom-chat18:53
mathiazI'll answer them while we wait for pedro_ and his session on Bug squashing!18:54
nealmcbThanks, Mathiaz!18:57
* nxvl waves on mathiaz 18:58
mathiazallright - then - time to wrap up18:59
mathiazthanks all for attending this session19:00
mathiazI'll leave the floor to pedro_  for a bug squashing how-to!19:00
pedro_thanks mathiaz you rock!19:00
=== stdin changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: Bug Squashing!(How To Triage bugs in Ubuntu) with Pedro Villavicencio | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
pedro_Hello everybody!, my name is Pedro Villavicencio I'm from the lovely Chile and i work for Canonical as a Desktop QA Engineer19:02
pedro_Today i'm going to talk to you a bit about the Bugsquad and the Triage process19:02
pedro_if you have questions just post them to ubuntu-classroom-chat19:02
pedro_ok so let's roll19:03
pedro_If you ask what's the Ubuntu Bugsquad is well the Bugsquad is the first point of contacts for the bugs filed in Ubuntu19:03
pedro_we keep track of them and try to make sure that major bugs do not go unnoticed by developers19:04
pedro_we do this with a process called "Triage"19:05
pedro_Working with the Bug Squad it's an excellent way to start helping and learn a lot about Ubuntu and it's infrastructure19:05
pedro_You do not need any programming knowledge to join the team19:05
pedro_in fact it is a great way to return something to our precious Ubuntu project if you cannot program at all19:06
pedro_We have a team on LP https://launchpad.net/~bugsquad it's an open team which means that everybody can join19:07
pedro_we also have couple of IRC Channels where bugs are discussed #ubuntu-bugs, and where the new bugs are  announced #ubuntu-bugs-announce19:07
pedro_there's also a mailing list https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugsquad that we use for all kind of coordination and discussions19:08
pedro_Ok so, Bug triage is an essential part of Ubuntu's development. And daily we get a *huge* number of bugs so we're always looking for help19:10
pedro_Triaging consists of a few things:19:10
pedro_* Responding to new bugs as they are filed19:10
pedro_* Ensuring that new bugs have all the necessary information19:11
pedro_We often got bugs with titles and summaries like "This Does not work" or "I don't know" which aren't really helpful to the developers in order to fix them19:11
pedro_the summary is one of the things that should be improved too when you face a bug report19:12
pedro_because later on it'll be more easy to search trough them if you have a really good one19:13
pedro_summaries like the one previous described doesn't help too much and make the work of the developers really hard so we should change that to reflect what's really is going on with the bug for example:19:14
pedro_having a summary with "gedit crashed while trying to open an xml file" is way better to having one like "it just crashed!"19:15
pedro_bugslayr: yes and i'll explain that further ;-)19:16
pedro_Ok in order to gather more information for reports we have the debugging pages https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures19:17
pedro_which contains information on how to get more information for packages in Ubuntu like firefox, openoffice.org, the kernel, apache, etc.19:18
pedro_But based in my experience most of new triagers don't know what to ask the very first times they're doing triage work19:18
pedro_for example if a bug isn't not described too well, you know one of those doesn't work reports, what you'd ask to the reporter?19:19
pedro_well for those kind of things we have a really neat page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses19:20
pedro_with a lot of stock responses you can use for your daily triage work19:20
pedro_as per the example you can use the "Not described well" stock response: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses#Not%20described%20well19:21
pedro_Another triage process is:19:22
pedro_* Assigning bugs to the proper package19:22
pedro_This is also another important part of the triage process if you look at http://tinyurl.com/bugswithoutahome you'll see ~1800 reports without a package assigned to it19:22
pedro_almost every report on that list needs to be assigned to one with the exception of reports like "needs-packaging" which are request for new packages19:23
pedro_I'd say that assigning bugs to packages is one of the easier tasks in the triage process and if you want to start doing triage you probably want to start triaging them19:24
pedro_you can also find more info about this on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage19:25
pedro_<jpugh> QUESTION: I noticed there are many bugs that are VERY old. Do these ever get cleaned up or closed due to lack of response?19:26
pedro_Incomplete bugs are closed after 4 weeks if they don't have a response19:27
pedro_if you find some that aren't yet , please do close it ;-)19:27
pedro_If you found a really old report in a New status you probably want to ask to the reporter if the bug is still reproducible with a newer version of Ubuntu and set the status to Incomplete19:28
pedro_QUESTION: Is there an easy way to determine the bugs that do not have packages assigned?19:29
pedro_yes, if you look at this bug for example https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/29199819:30
ubot5`Launchpad bug 291998 in ubuntu "Kubuntu 8.10 DNS problem" [Undecided,New]19:30
pedro_you'll see that it only have a affects "Ubuntu" package selected, that bug doesn't have a package and you might want to triage it with the steps previously described (asking for more info, etc)19:31
pedro_if you look at the launchpad list of bugs, you know the typical one, go to -> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ -> click on search bugs -> and later order them by newest first19:32
pedro_you'll see a column that said "In", basically the one that says "Ubuntu" is a bug without a package19:33
pedro_another process of the triage is:19:34
pedro_* Confirming bug reports by trying to reproduce them19:34
pedro_* Setting the priority of bugs reports19:34
pedro_* Searching for and marking duplicates in the bug tracking system, which is very important since a big quantity of reports we got are duplicates.19:34
pedro_* Sending bugs to their upstream authors, when applicable and the awesome Jorge Castro have a session tomorrow about this19:35
pedro_* Cross-referencing bugs from other distributions19:36
pedro_And * Closing old reports, like the Incompletes one I've explained before19:36
pedro_All of these activities help the bug get fixed and subsequently making Ubuntu even better19:36
pedro_As soon as you have done enough good triage work, you can apply to the ubuntu-bugcontrol team19:37
pedro_which is the one with more rights over the reports19:37
pedro_so basically you can see the Private reports, change the Importance of the bugs and set a couple of bug status (Triaged, Won't Fix) we will talk about both in a min19:37
pedro_the requirements for join the team are available here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugControl19:38
pedro_* Bug Status:19:39
pedro_We currently have 9 status, they are19:39
pedro_New, Incomplete, Invalid, Confirmed, Triaged, In Progress, Fix Committed, Fix Released and Won't Fix19:40
pedro_The first ones are kinda clear, New status means that no one has triaged or confirmed the bug19:40
pedro_<homy> QUESTION: when we start to triage a bug and leave a comment, do we automatically get email if new comments area added? Or do we need to subscribe the bug manually?19:41
pedro_homy: if you start doing triage you should subscribe to the bug you're triaging, just click on the checkbox that says "E-mail me about changes to this bug report" and you're done19:41
pedro_after that, you'll receive an email if someone makes a change to the report, add a new comment, etc19:42
pedro_The Incomplete status means that the bug is missing some information for example a debugging backtrace of a crash or steps in order to trigger the bug19:43
pedro_A Confirmed is almost self explanatory, someone else than the reporter have the same bug, please  please please pleeease only confirm other people bugs not your own ones :-)19:43
pedro_The Triaged state is set by a member of the Ubuntu Bug Control team (hopefully you in a few weeks ;-) ) when they think that the bug has enough information for a developer to start working on fix the issue19:44
pedro_If a bug was marked as Triaged and a Developer is working on fixing the bug, that report needs to be marked as "In Progress", because there's a person working on it19:45
pedro_If that developer committed the fix to a bzr branch the bug needs to be marked as Fix Committed19:46
pedro_And when that fix get released the status of the bug is changed to Fix Released19:48
pedro_<fluteflute> QUESTION: bugs are often marked as fix commited against ubuntu packages when actually the fix is commited upstream (going by the policy at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status). Is this acceptable?19:48
pedro_fluteflute: good questions, for some teams in Ubuntu, yes, launchpad currently doesnt have a method to know which bugs are fixed upstream in their bug list19:49
pedro_for example if you look at https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit19:49
pedro_at the desktop team we mark the bugs fixed upstream as fix committed19:50
pedro_so we can look at that list and known which bug is fixed upstream and which isn't19:50
pedro_as soon as launchpad provides us of a way to see that on the default list of bugs we can probably discuss again the Fix Committed status ;-)19:51
pedro_will do a quick review of the Importances of a bug since we don't have enough time19:52
pedro_the Importances can only be changed by the bug control team19:52
pedro_we have 6 importances, Undecided, Wishlist, Low, Medium, High and Critical19:53
pedro_and you can read more about them here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance19:53
pedro_One of the nicest thing the Ubuntu Community do is the19:53
pedro_Hug days!19:53
pedro_he very brave Bugsquad team also organize Bug Days also known as Hug Days (triage a bug and win a hug!)19:53
pedro_s/he/the19:53
pedro_well the idea of a hug day is to work together with the bugsquad and project maintainers on a specific task, weekly we organize two hug days19:54
pedro_one the Tuesday and another one the Thursdays, today we're running the New bugs without a package since Intrepid came out bug day. If you want to join us at Hug Days just come to #ubuntu-bugs and join the fun!19:54
pedro_If you want to propose a hug day you can also do it just say it at the bugsquad mailing list and take a look to the proposed hug days in case the hug day you're proposing is already on the list, that list is available here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning19:55
pedro_and if you also want to help us to organize that day (which i think would be the case) you might want to read the organizing a hug day page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Organizing19:55
evan_pedro_:  question: what is the best to do ? apply a patch on a broken program ( like gnome-session ) or wait untill its fixed?19:55
pedro_ok we have 5 minutes left, so 5-a-day!19:56
pedro_5-A-Day means everybody will do 5 (or more) bugs a day every day, you can look for 5-a-day stats at http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/ and for example if you want to work with your LoCo team on a specific task or do a bug jam session you can use 5-a-day too to show other people your team progress19:56
pedro_in Chile we use 5-a-day to keep track of our Monthly bug jam sessions if you look to almost the bottom of the page you'll see what i'm talking about19:57
pedro_last saturday we had our bug jam for November, the tag used there was bugjam-november-08-chile, so feel free to use this for doing bug activities with your loco team!19:57
pedro_if you have questions on how to organize them just mail us or ask us in the #ubuntu-bugs channel19:57
pedro_<homy> QUESTION: when exactly is a "confirmed" bug changed to "triaged"? I mean, you can't know if it really is enough information before a developer starts working on it.19:58
pedro_homy: for example if you don't have sound with a xxx sound card and someone has the same problem with the same card he probably is going to mark the bug as confirmed19:58
pedro_but since the bug doesn't have more info that two persons having the same problem , ie: no logs of your card, etc19:59
pedro_that bug needs to be triaged by someone and request all the information as soon as the bug has all the info requested by the bug triager19:59
pedro_the bug is changed to triage19:59
pedro_we're running out of time19:59
pedro_thanks a lot to everyone and happy triaging!20:00
charlie-tcaThank you20:00
popeyThanks pedro_20:00
andre__well done. kudos!20:00
homyThanks pedro_!20:00
* pedro_ hugs you all20:00
* homy hugs pedro_20:00
popeyUp next is tonytiger (Tony Whitmore) who is going to talk about media production on Ubuntu...20:01
tonytigerHi. That's me.20:01
tonytigerDoes the topic get updated automatically?20:01
popeyIf anyone has questions as usual, post them in #ubuntu-classroom-chat20:01
=== stdin changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: Media Production on Ubuntu with Tony Whitmore | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
tonytigerAh, clever.20:01
=== popey changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: Media Production with Tony Whitmore | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
* tonytiger clears his throat and starts.20:02
tonytigerI'm Tony Whitmore and apparently I'm running this session on media production on Ubuntu.20:02
tonytigerThis is my first Open Week session, so please be gentle.20:02
tonytigerMy glamourous assistant is popey who will triage questions for me if I get swamped20:02
tonytigerThe structure of the session will be like this: Video, Photography, Audio, Q&A20:02
* popey twirls20:02
tonytiger:)20:02
tonytigerI'm hoping the Q&A will be quite a large part of this session20:03
tonytigerSo during the Q&A I'd like your questions about creating, producing and managing media on Ubuntu. I can't promise to answer them all well, but I'll try!20:03
tonytigerI should add that all of this is based on my own experience with media production on Ubuntu. I'd be interested to hear if you have other suggestions, particularly from KDE users. I use the GNOME desktop and I think most of the packages I'm going to talk about are GNOME based.20:03
tonytigerThat said, I can only talk from my own experience, so errors and omissions excepted!20:03
tonytigerWhy am I qualified to talk about this? Well, I've been using Ubuntu for media production for years. It started out as a very painful experience but is now much better.20:04
tonytigerAs part of the Ubuntu UK Podcast team, (http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org) I record, edit, mix and encode the episodes. I have captured, edited and encoded digital video from UDS in Prague (http://www.youtube.com/ubuntudevelopers) as well as talks at LUG Radio Live and local LUG meetings. I use Ubuntu to import, process and manage digital photos from my Canon DSLR.20:04
tonytigerThe vast majority of the software I'll talk about this evening is packaged in Ubuntu. Installing Ubuntu Studio http://ubuntustudio.org/ is a great way to get all these packages set up and installed.20:04
tonytigerSo, let's get under way by talking about digital video20:05
tonytigerThe first part of working with digital video is recording something in the first place! This is beyond the scope of the session, so I'll assume you've got some fantastic footage on a digital video (DV) tape, all reading to be turned into a finished product.20:05
tonytiger*ready20:05
tonytiger"Capturing" is the process of importing all the DV from the tape onto the PC for editing. This is usually done by playing the tape in the video camera, but you can use a dedicated DV player if you're really serious about it.20:05
tonytigerDV takes up a lot of disk space. Having several gigabytes of hard disk space free is a must. I often use external USB hard disks as a cheap way of accessing large amounts of storage space. When I've finished working on one project I can put the disk back on the shelf and get the next one down.20:05
tonytigerIf you use external hard disks, think carefully about the filesystem. FAT32 is the only option for seemless sharing of data between Windows, Mac and Linux systems, but only supports files up to 4GB.20:05
tonytigerThat's not a problem unless you are capturing a single shot over 20 minutes in length, but bear in mind that FAT32 isn't a very robust filesystem in general either.20:06
tonytigerCapturing DV is well supported on Linux. Digital video cameras have a firewire (IEEE1394) output, and these can be connected to a computer equipped with a firewire port.20:06
tonytigerThere are two applications I would recommend for capturing your digital video for processing. The first is Kino. It's not a KDE application, despite the "K" at the start. It's a GTK application so fits well with the GNOME desktop.20:06
tonytigerThe second option is dvgrab, which is a command line utility to do the same thing.20:06
tonytigerBoth programs have various options to split the capture into separate files automatically, for example when the file reaches 1GB in size. That's about 5 minutes of recording!20:06
tonytigerThe applications also support capturing a "live" stream from your camera, i.e. without recording, as long as your camera supports sending its output through the firewire port in "record" mode.20:07
tonytigerThe biggest problem people have with capturing DV from their cameras is permissions on the device node - the special file used to capture the data from the camera.20:07
tonytigerThis file is /dev/raw1394 and by default isn't configured to give users access to it. This might seem counter-intuitive, but there's a good reason. As the rules file which configures the permissions notes:20:07
tonytiger# Please note that raw1394 gives unrestricted, raw access to every single20:07
tonytiger# device on the bus and those devices may do anything as root on your system.20:07
tonytiger# Yes, I know it also happens to be the only way to rewind your video camera,20:07
tonytiger# but it's not going to be group "video", okay?20:07
tonytigerKERNEL=="raw1394",                      GROUP="disk"20:07
tonytigerThat last line means the /dev/raw1394 device node will have group ownership "disk"20:08
tonytigerBy default, users on Ubuntu aren't in group "disk"20:08
tonytigerand they probably shouldn't be, unless you like trashing your hard disks :)20:08
tonytigerAnyway, this situation sucks and it's annoying, but it's done with the best of intentions.20:08
tonytigerNow, you could resolve this problem in two different ways. But you should really heed the warning above.20:08
tonytigerSeriously, it's there for a reason.20:09
tonytigerYou could do what I do, and amend the permissions on /dev/raw1394 manually. This will persist until you reboot. I do this because I only tend to capture in batches and rarely reboot whilst in the middle of a big capturing session.20:09
tonytigerI tend to use the command line, so I issue a command like "sudo chgrp adm /dev/raw1394"20:09
tonytigerMy user, like the first user on any ubuntu system, is in the "adm" group20:09
tonytigerYou could alter the rules file to change the group ownership to a group of which you are a member, say "video" which will persist across reboots. I'll leave that as an exercise for the, erm, reader. :)20:09
tonytigerEither way, once you've done that you can capture your DV. Kino will also control the camera (play, stop, rewind etc.) from within the application.20:09
tonytigerThis isn't really a tutorial on using each of these applications, so I'll summarise by saying that I find Kino great for simple editing and effects. You can trim, split and join clips as well as applying titles and other effects.20:10
tonytigerI produced the trailer for LUG Radio Live USA 2008 using Kino. All the video effects were generated in Kino. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD1zatyNSok20:10
tonytigerKino can also export in a number of different formats, which is an easy way to produce a file that is ready for sharing.20:10
tonytigerBear in mind that exporting from DV will take a long time, often multiples of the duration of the edited piece, as converting DV to other formats is very processor intensive.20:10
tonytigerKino also supports jog/shuttle wheels but as with the Firewire device node, there are permissions problems on a default Ubuntu system.20:10
tonytigerIf your needs are more complex than Kino can manage, then you are entering the joyous world of video editing on Linux. There are a lot of video editing programs out there but none of them brilliant. Some of the options are:20:10
tonytiger* Kdenlive. KDE's video editor and the one with the most potential to match iMovie. Simple track-based editing and a fair few features. Main issue is stability but it's a relatively young project.20:11
tonytiger* Pitivi. Written in Python / GTK and based on the gstreamer framework, this project has been knocking around for years. It's made slow progress, but may now speed up as a developer has been hired to work on it full time. Also quite like iMovie in remit.20:11
tonytiger* Diva. After some promising promotional videos, this project died out.20:11
tonytiger* OpenMovie Editor. I had huge stability issues with this.20:11
tonytiger* Main Actor. Proprietary software, now withdrawn.20:11
tonytiger* Cinelerra. A hugely complex package, aiming to match professional software like Final Cut. I've had huge stability problems with it, and it hasn't been packaged in Ubuntu due to some licencing issues. However the project is addressing these issues and reinvigorating itself.20:11
tonytiger* LiVES. Aimed for live video-jockeying, and real-time effects processing, but can be used for editing too.20:11
tonytiger* Blender. Apparently this includes a fairly full-featured non-linear video editing toolset. Never tried it myself mind, as Blender scares me.20:12
tonytiger* Avidemux. A useful program for processing video files, resizing, cropping and changing various video properties. Only very simple editing features, but a useful part of the toolbox.20:12
tonytigerYou might tell from the above that I'm not in love with any one video editor on Linux. Sadly, this is true.20:12
tonytigerMost of the time Kino does what I need, but when I try to do anything more complex, I have struggled a bit. kdenlive is really promising, if they can address some of the stability issues. I would love to see pitivi develop quickly. Cinelerra should be where it's at, but it's a huge learning curve, and is not the prettiest application.20:12
tonytigerMy motto with video stuff on Linux is "I'll believe it when I've used it". :) However I believe in eating one's own dog food, so persist in trying!20:13
tonytigerSo hopefully you've captured and edited your project.20:13
tonytigerYou can now export it to a single file.20:13
tonytigerThe final step being to prepare it for distribution.20:14
tonytigerIf you've exported your file in a format you're happy with, then go for it. E-mail, upload, whatever.20:14
tonytigerIf you want your file to "just play" on Windows and Linux you will probably need to make at least two versions.20:14
tonytigerWhat I tend to do in this case is produce one high quality output file from my video editor, typically an MPEG2 file.20:14
tonytigerI then encode it to a WMV file for Windows users and an OGG Theora / Vorbis file for Linux users.20:14
tonytigerI do this using "ffmpeg" and "ffmpeg2theora". These commands are packaged on Ubuntu and have various options which control the quality of the output file.20:14
tonytigerYou can find the settings I use documented at http://tonywhitmore.co.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UsefulNotes/LugTalkVideos20:14
tonytigerOK, I think we've had some questions on video stuff, so I'll break for them now.20:15
popey20:05:47 #ubuntu-classroom-chat: < jpugh> QUESTION: Brief description of your hardware setup for each of the topics?20:15
tonytigerHeh20:15
tonytigerOK20:15
tonytigerI have a PC and a laptop. The laptop has 2GB RAM, 1.8GHz dual core CPU.20:16
tonytiger80GB disk, I think.20:16
tonytigerThe desktop has about the same spec, to be honest.20:16
tonytigerJust much more disk.20:16
tonytigerCPU is the real bottle neck when it comes to working with video.20:16
jpughFirewire is xfer mech of choice?20:16
tonytigerAnd even then the bottleneck is not in playing or capturing the video, it's in applying effects and exporting.20:17
tonytigerjpugh: In that it's what every decent DV camera I've seen comes with, yes. :) Although I have seen some that do USB too.20:17
tonytigerFirewire is pretty prevalent on main stream motherboards these days, but less so in laptops.20:17
tonytigerSo in terms of hardware, it's not that new. A couple of years old in both cases, I think,.20:18
tonytigerDisk space is the biggest resource, hence me using lots of USB HDDs :)20:18
tonytigerOK, was there another question about video?20:18
popey < DoruHush> QUESTION: What application can be used to edit ogg video files? thanks20:18
tonytigerHmm, that's a good question.20:19
tonytigerPitivi can.20:19
tonytigerOther programs like avidemux (and kino, I think) can export to OGG Theora files, but can't open them.20:20
tonytigerIf pitivi doesn't meet your needs yet, you will probably have to convert your OGG file to a different format for editing.20:20
tonytigerPossibly to DV or to MPEG2 would be your best bets20:20
tonytigerI would use ffmpeg to do this.20:20
popeyThere are two more questions, want them now, or want to move on?20:21
tonytigerAre they about video?20:21
popeyyes, kinda20:21
tonytigerok20:21
tonytigerGo for it :)20:21
popey<@popey> QUESTION: Does using the realtime kernel (as used in ubuntu studio make any real difference?20:21
tonytigerHeh20:21
tonytigerPromoting your own questions. :)20:22
tonytigerI was going to touch on this in the audio segment, because it's not really any use for video processing, as far as I know.20:22
popeyit was next in the queue20:22
tonytiger:)20:22
popeyok, one more..20:22
* tonytiger nods20:22
popey < gourgi> QUESTION:i have some screencasts using recordmydesktop and i want to add annotations._comments_comment-clouds  (not sure how they called :)) , what software does what i want20:22
popey:D20:22
tonytigerheh20:22
tonytigerI might have to delegate to Mr. Screencasts, popey.20:23
popeyThere is no product I know of, but I'd love to talk to someone about writing one.20:23
tonytigerHeh, that's a "no" then. :)20:23
tonytigerI might add that you could use cinelerra or kino or kdenlive to add captions manually to your video.20:24
tonytigerIt might get a bit tiring and would be a pain in the backside if you spotted a typo after you'd done it all. :)20:24
tonytigerOK, let's press on to photography.20:24
tonytigerIn some ways this is the simplest of the three areas I'm talking about tonight. Most digital cameras appear as USB mass storage when connected to a computer running Ubuntu. This means that the camera's memory card will be automatically mounted and the application for managing photographs will be started.20:24
tonytigerSome cameras, notably older Canon ones, don't appear as a mass storage device because they use a different protocol. You can use a USB card reader or a program like gtkam to copy the files off these cameras.20:25
tonytigerUbuntu comes with F-spot as the default photo management application. It's what I use. I didn't really see the need for photo management software until I'd had my digital camera for a couple of years. Before long I'd built up gigabytes of photographs and was spending ages manually sorting them into folders.20:25
tonytigerOne of my favourite things about F-spot is that it sorts imported photographs into a nice, neat, date-based directory structure. A perfect way of finding your photos, even if you don't want to fire up F-spot at that time.20:25
tonytigerF-spot allows you to tag photos. This is a pain the backside to do initially, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of photos in your initial import.20:25
tonytigerHowever, once you've processed your backlog (or perhaps you just elect not to do so) it's easy to keep on top of, just tagging new photos as you import them.20:25
tonytigerSo, why bother? Tagging is a good way to locate photos. Really. You can also search for photos based on multiple criteria, for example you could search for photos tagged "Wales" and "Buster" but not "Frank".20:26
tonytigerF-spot also allows you to browse and view your photo collection, as well as exporting it to a number of different online galleries. (The export functionality for some of these is provided by plugins, and these aren't always compatible with the latest release of F-spot though, so watch out.)20:26
tonytigerYou can also retouch photos in F-spot and each new release seems to add more features in this area. You can crop, re-colour and touch up photos all from within F-Spot.20:26
tonytigerBut F-spot can also open photos in other graphics packages for editing. It will create a separate revision of the photo each time it is opened, allowing you to keep the original and any other versions you produce and switch between them easily.20:26
tonytigerSo, what external application are you likely to want to open photos in? The obvious candidate is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP for short.20:27
tonytigerGIMP is the closest that the Free Software world has to Photoshop. That isn't to say that a Photoshop user can just sit down and use the GIMP, the two have different interfaces.20:27
tonytigerThe KDE world has Krita http://www.koffice.org/krita/ which seems to be quite popular.20:27
tonytigerThe GIMP provides a similar range of effects, features and filters to Photoshop. It supports layers, masks, blending, cloning, filters and batch scripting.20:27
tonytigerIt also supports graphics tablets, which are a more intuitive interface for artistic work. I have a Wacom tablet and it works really well with that, allowing multiple "tools", like eraser and brush and pressure sensitivity.20:27
tonytigerOne of the common complaints about GIMP is that it only uses 8-bit of data per "channel" internally. This is less than Photoshop, so often leads to accusations that the GIMP isn't a "professional" level tool. Fortunately the new 2.6 release has revised internals which, whilst not "on" by default, address these concerns.20:28
tonytigerLike any complex application there's a bit of a learning curve whilst you get used to the tools and techniques which the GIMP provides.20:28
tonytigerBut it is rewarding to be able to process and improve your photographs, especially without paying a fortune for expensive software to do so!20:29
tonytigerThere is a book from Rocky Nook which is well worth looking at if you're interested in using the GIMP for photographic work.20:29
tonytigerhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/GIMP-Photographers-Editing-Source-Software/dp/1933952032/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225817533&sr=1-220:29
tonytigerIt's also worth mentioning RAW photos. Most digital SLR cameras allow you to take photos in RAW mode. RAW photos are unprocessed and uncompressed data from the sensor in the camera. They can produce better quality results than shooting in standard JPEG mode, but require processing to do so.20:29
tonytigerUnlike the JPEG format, different manufacturers have different RAW formats. Fortunately you can still work with and process RAW photos on Linux.20:29
tonytigerApplications like dcraw http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/ ufraw http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/ and rawstudio http://rawstudio.org/ allow manipulation of RAW images.20:29
tonytigerF-spot, as already discussed, can import RAW photos directly and by default will open a RAW photo for editing in UFRaw before importing to the GIMP.20:30
tonytigerIf you are really geeky about these things, you can get into colour management and monitor calibration to ensure better colour matching between what you see on screen and what you get when printed. The software for measuring your monitor and producing a profile is still quite new but seems to work.20:30
tonytigerMany people will be happy viewing pictures on a monitor or digital photo frame, but if you want to produce high quality photo prints under Linux, please make sure you read reviews of printers before you purchase. CUPS can provide more and more advanced features, but if you are really counting on high print quality it pays to make sure your printer will produce the results you need under Linux.20:30
tonytigerOK, are there any questions about digital photography?20:31
popeyyou've answered them :)20:31
tonytigerexcellent, what a well though through session :)20:31
tonytigerI'll give people a minute to think of anything else photography related before moving on to audio stuff20:32
popey20:33:12 < jerichokb> QUESTION: how well do the apps you've mentioned cope with a dual-monitor set-up?20:33
tonytigerOoh, good question. :)20:33
tonytigerI use a dual monitor set up on my desktop.20:33
tonytigerI probably should have mentioned that in my hardware spec. :)20:33
tonytigerAnd yes, I have a dual-head nVidia card.20:34
tonytigerAnd yes, I use the evil binary driver.20:34
tonytigerI'd love not to.20:34
tonytigerF-spot is a single window application, so you can either stretch it across two heads, or just keep it on one.20:34
tonytigerGIMP scales to two heads somewhat better though, as is has multiple windows in addition to the main image window20:35
tonytigerSo you could have the tools on one head, a smaller image perhaps on the same head, and a large image on the second head.20:35
tonytigerOr, if you're launching GIMP from F-spot, F-spot on one head, GIMP toolbars etc. on the same head and the image on the second head.20:36
tonytigerIt's worth noting that the graphics tablet doesn't fit quite so well with dual head.20:36
tonytigerMine at least is in the correct aspect ratio for a 4:3 monitor.20:36
tonytigerThis means that the cursor moves twice as far on screen for a given move of the stylus left to right than it does up-down.20:37
tonytigerWhich is a bit of a pain.20:37
tonytigerHowever, I adapted.20:37
tonytigerNot sure that any other OS would cope any better mind, I think it's a limitation of the tablets.20:38
tonytigerOK, if that's all for photography for now, I'll move onto audio.20:38
tonytigerLinux is pretty well catered for in terms of digital audio. USB sound cards work well and are a great way of improving the performance of audio applications. You might not be able to hear a difference straight away, but on-board sound cards are not really suitable for anything more than the random beeps and bleeps that your system makes.20:39
tonytigerOnboard sound cards respond slower to requests from applications to play noises, for a start. :)20:39
tonytigerI have personally used devices which appear to the operating system as USB sounds cards, including a Centrance Mic Port Pro http://www.frontendaudio.com/Centrance_MicPort_Pro_p/9999-01463.htm and a USB interface with my mixer.20:39
tonytigerIf you want use more than a handful of channels then you'll need to look at Firewire interfaces. Some mixers have Firewire interfaces built in, or you can use an external unit like the Presonus FP10 http://www.studiospares.com/Audio-Interfaces/Presonus-FP10/invt/32811020:40
brobostigonso a seperare soundcard is always the most ideal?20:40
tonytigerThese present each channel as a separate input to your audio application, so you can control the volume level, apply different filters and processes to each.20:40
tonytigerThese /should/ Just Work with Linux as it's a standardised interface, but it's worth using your favourite search engine to find out if other people have had positive experiences with that hardware under Linux.20:40
popeybrobostigon: questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please20:40
brobostigonsorry20:41
tonytigerbrobostigon: In terms of performance, yes. There's a definite delay in playing in, for example, audacity, when using the onboard sound card than with an external one.20:41
brobostigonthank you tonytiger, sorry for interrupting20:41
tonytigerIt doesn't have to be external, there are great PCI sound cards for internal use.20:41
tonytigerNo problem, popey is my bouncher.20:41
tonytiger*bouncer20:41
tonytigerThe most basic GUI audio application available on Ubuntu is Sound Recorder, like the Sound Recorder application on Windows.20:42
tonytigerYou can record, stop, play and save. That's about it! Useful for very basic operations, you'll quickly outgrow it if you have any more creative ideas.20:42
tonytigerThere are command line applications that will do the same too, asound being one. This might be useful if you wanted a script to record something.20:43
tonytigerPerhaps triggered from a cronjob? Erm, the mind boggles.20:43
tonytigerAudacity is a fantastic application to use for recording and editing audio. The best thing about it is that you can get started with it really quickly and keep uncovering new features for ages.20:43
tonytigerAudacity is great for recording a stereo or mono tracks, editing bits out and applying some effects.20:43
tonytigerOne of the nice things about Audacity is that it supports LADSPA plugins. There are a lot of plugins packaged for Ubuntu which can be used on a number of different packages, including Audacity.20:43
tonytigerAudacity can also be used for multi-track editing and mixing. You can build up quite complex mixes with lots of tracks with Audacity.20:43
tonytigerThe main problem with Audacity is that applying effects and edits is a destructive process. For example you can't change the settings of a particular filter without using the "undo" function to reverse the filter, alter the settings and re-apply it.20:43
tonytigerThis is OK if you are only applying a single filter but with complex sequences of filters it becomes impractical quite quickly.20:44
tonytigerThat said, I use Audacity for editing the podcast as it is quick and has handy keyboard shortcuts which allow for rapid use - handy when you've got hours of waffle to go through!20:44
tonytigerThe next step up is Ardour. This is the Linux equivalent of Logic ProTools and is a sophisticated "digital audio workstation". http://ardour.org/20:44
tonytigerIt can manage dozens of tracks and apply effects non-destructively. It's ardour that you want to use if you're thinking about multi-channel USB or firewire interfaces. It supports LADSPA plugins, but applies them non-destructively and allows you to alter and automate changes to the plugin settings through the course of your project.20:44
tonytigerIt even supports processing audio for video tracks, allowing you to make changes to the audio track and preview the audio along with the video.20:44
Daviey*cough*20:44
tonytigerArdour uses the JACK audio engine, which is basically a process responsible for making other applications talk to each other. http://jackaudio.org20:44
tonytigerLadies and gentlemen, the cause of most of the waffle, Daviey. :)20:45
tonytigerThe clever thing about JACK is that it can connect different audio applications together, so you can use different applications to work on different parts of your project.20:45
tonytigerThere are lots of applications which support JACK. Not all of them are as dependent on JACK to run as Ardour though. http://jackaudio.org/applications20:45
tonytigerIf you're making a multi-track music piece, recording one instrument whilst listening to the ones you've already recording, you'll probably want to use a low latency kernel. This is packaged in Ubuntu as "linux-rt".20:45
tonytigerBy installing this kernel then rebooting and selecting it on boot, you can configure JACK to run in "real time" or low latency mode. This means there is a greatly reduced delay between playing a sound and hearing it coming back out of the sound card again.20:46
tonytigerThis is turn means you can keep in time with the pre-recorded music tracks.20:46
tonytiger(In my notes I had substituted "tracks" with "interviews". How bizarre.)20:46
tonytigerIf you're not doing multi-tracked music projects then I wouldn't worry about setting up the low latency kernel unless you're super keen.20:46
tonytigerThere is a great tutorial on episode 92 of Linux Reality which will get you up and running with ardour in 40 minutes or so. http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-92-ardour/20:46
tonytigerI also made some screencasts on how I use Ardour to mix the Ubuntu UK podcast which you can get from http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/20:46
=== WastePotato_ is now known as WastePotato
tonytiger(Additional ones about editing in Audacity will appear at some point, if they're not already up.)20:47
popey(they are)20:47
tonytigerCool, thanks popey20:47
tonytigerThere are other options too, like Traverso http://traverso-daw.org/ and ReZound http://rezound.sourceforge.net/20:48
tonytigerTraverso is quite interesting as it uses a "cut list" approach, only applying cuts when the project is exported.20:48
tonytigerI must confess that I'm not a creative musical type when it comes to audio, but there are sequencers and notation packages like Rosegarden http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/ and Swami http://swami.resonance.org/trac and drum generators like Hydrogen http://www.hydrogen-music.org/20:48
tonytigerThe list of JACK applications is quite impressive, it has mastering software and DJ / radio station stuff too.20:48
tonytigerOK, let's go with any audio questions20:49
popey20:42:54 < DoruHush> QUESTION: What audio server it is (or will be) used and how the cofig. process works? thanks20:49
popey20:46:07 <@popey> DoruHush: so you want to know what configuration changes tony makes to his setup with respect to pulse?20:49
popey20:47:00 < DoruHush> yes, or what options should be set to configure the sound cards, (5.1 etc.)20:49
tonytigerJACK is its own audio server.20:49
tonytigerEffectively.20:50
tonytigerI've never had to change pulse to use JACK.20:50
tonytigerI think pulse only starts one instance on login, so if I connect by USB sound device, there's no pulse instance trying to address it.20:50
tonytigerThat makes it a null-issue.20:50
tonytigerBut I've never had to fiddle with pulse to use JACK when using an internal sound card either, I don't think.20:51
tonytigerI terms of 5.1 sound, I've never created 5.1 channel sound!20:52
tonytigerIn terms of playing back 5.1 channel sound from a DVD or similar, Xine has an option for it.20:52
tonytigerSorry, I can't be of more help in that respect. :)20:52
tonytigerAny more questions?20:52
popey20:49:12 < yusuf_> Question: what is the best way to do live audio streaming?20:52
DoruHushthanks20:53
tonytigeryusuf_: I'd suggest looking at Icecast20:53
tonytigerhttp://www.icecast.org/20:53
tonytigerThere are other options which may be more appropriate if you're on limited bandwidth or have other restrictions20:54
popey20:54:17 < yusuf_> Question: most of the listners will be windows listners20:54
tonytigerIcecast is based on the MP3 format, so this will be fine for Windows listeners.20:54
tonytigerI think it is also possible to use gstreamer to create a streaming server of some kind.20:55
tonytigerThis would support OGG streams as well as the less-Free formats.20:55
tonytigerAny more questions?20:55
popeynope20:55
tonytigerAny more questions on anything discussed here tonight?20:56
tonytigerI'll wrap up then.20:56
tonytigerThanks for having me here this evening, it's been fun!20:56
tonytigerI hope it's been a useful session.20:56
popeyThanks tonytiger !20:56
tonytigerListen to the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Tean20:57
tonytiger*Team20:57
tonytigerhttp://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/20:57
tonytiger:)20:57
tonytigerThanks to my glamourous assistant popey20:57
* popey twirls again20:57
tonytigerYou don't want to see his sequinned outfit, trust me.20:57
DavieyQuestion: Does the Ubuntu UK Podcast rock?20:58
tonytigerDaviey: It does.20:58
popeyWhy yes, yes it does.20:58
tonytiger:)20:59
=== popey changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Current session: Private Directories with Dustin Kirkland | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
kirklandHowdy all!21:00
cyphermoxhowdy!21:00
* popey encrypts his greeting before storing it in ~/Private21:00
kirklandI'm hear to talk about a fancy new feature in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex ... Encrypted Private Directories21:01
kirklandpopey: are you doing introductions?21:01
popeyno, you go right ahead21:01
kirklandrighto....21:01
kirklandso the executive summary of usage looks like this....21:02
kirklandOn an Intrepid system....21:02
kirkland$ sudo apt-get update21:02
kirkland$ sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils21:02
kirkland$ ecryptfs-setup-private21:02
kirklandYou will be prompted for your *login* password (the one that you use to login to your system)21:02
kirklandAnd then, you will be prompted for a *mount* passphrase21:02
kirklandthis should be different from your login passphrase21:03
kirklandoptionally, you can let ecryptfs-setup-private generate this from /dev/urandom21:03
kirklandthat will ensure a long, difficult to guess (but equally difficult to remember) mount passphrase21:03
kirklandin either case, it's absolutely ***essential*** that you print that out, or write it down and store it somewhere safe21:04
kirklandlike a safety deposit box, or something ;-)21:04
kirklandif you loose that passphrase, you will not be able to access your encrypted data if you have to recover it manually later21:04
kirklandokay........21:04
kirklandso once you've done that, you should be able to logout of your system, and log back in21:05
kirklandthat's via ssh, console, or even graphical desktop clients, in Gnome, KDE, XFCE21:05
kirklandhere's where the magic happens....21:05
kirklandwhen you installed ecryptfs-utils, it inserted a new module into the PAM stack21:05
kirklandpam_ecryptfs21:06
kirklandyou can see it if you 'grep pam_ecryptfs /etc/pam.d/*'21:06
kirklandwhenever you give your login password, pam_ecryptfs will take that password, and use it to decrypt a file, ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase, which contains that mount passphrase21:06
kirklandonce that mount passphrase is obtained, pam_ecryptfs will call /sbin/mount.ecryptfs_private21:07
kirkland /sbin/mount.ecryptfs_private is a special utility, that is installed with "setuid" capabilities21:07
kirklandthis allows it to elevate your privileges from a normal user, to the root user for one particular operation....21:08
kirklanddoing a "mount"21:08
kirklandso mount.ecryptfs_private will do a few things ...21:08
kirklandit will first check that the mount passphrase that was decrypted with your login passphrase *is* the correct mount passphrase21:08
kirklandit does this by looking at the "signature" of the passphrase, and compares that with another file, ~/.ecryptfs/Private.sig21:09
kirklandif these match, it will mount your ~/.Private directory on top of ~/Private using a special filesystem, called "ecryptfs"21:09
kirklandecryptfs stands for "Enterprise Cryptographic Filesystem", and was developed by some of my former colleagues at IBM21:10
kirklandnamely, Michael Halcrow, and Tyler Hicks21:10
kirklandi chose ecryptfs for a couple of reasons21:10
kirklandhowever, I will note that the same principles I used to deliver Encrypted Private Directories could be used with anyone of a number of other cryptographic filesystems21:11
kirklandfor one thing, ecryptfs is in the Linux Kernel, and has been there since the 2.6.19 release (they're currently on 2.6.28)21:12
kirklandi believe that this gives it heavy exposure, in a number of different fields of computing and numerous distributions21:12
kirklandthe code in there is heavily vetted, and while not perfect, there are plenty of experts working on it21:12
kirklandit's also not "going away" any time soon21:13
kirklandthis is important to me, as I store some very important data in my ecryptfs mounts21:13
kirklandthere are also some (theoretic) performance benefits of a filesystem implemented in the kernel, rather than userspace21:14
kirklandi put the "theoretic" in parentheses as I haven't tested this myself21:14
kirklandI'll leave that to someone else ;-)21:14
kirklandbut it does simplify matters, and reduce context switches required21:14
kirklandthe nice thing is that there are now cryptographic algorithms built into the kernel itself21:15
kirklandthus, ecryptfs really didn't implement any encryption21:15
kirklandthat's a "good thing" from your point of view, i think21:15
kirklandcryptographic algorithms must be reviewed very, very thoroughly, and the ones already in the kernel have been21:16
kirklandin any case, there other other crypto filesystem methods out there21:16
kirklandencfs, is one21:16
kirklandtruecrypt, is another21:16
=== lordnoid_ is now known as lordnoid
kirklanddmcrypt is still another21:16
kirklandand so on21:16
kirklandanother advantage of ecryptfs is that each file is individually encrypted in the underlying filesystem21:17
kirklandwhere as with block-level encryption, the entire device is encrypted21:17
kirklandthere are cases where perhaps this makes sense21:17
kirklandswap, for instance21:17
kirklandor, if you want to encrypt your entire hard drive (LVM encryption)21:17
kirklandhowever, there are a couple of disadvantages ....21:18
kirklandit's not really possible to incrementally backup a block-level encrypted device21:18
kirklandin my case, though, I can simply rsync -aP .Private to my remote storage21:18
kirklandand be assured that even the root user on that remote system (perhaps a co-lo, or a commercial backup site) won't be able to access my most sensitive data21:19
kirklandi will warn, however, that the ecryptfs implementation in the 2.6.27 kernel which is used in Intrepid does not yet encrypt filenames21:19
kirklandthat's a known issue, we have a bug tracking it in Launchpad21:20
kirklandbut mhalcrow is working on it, and has code being integrated in the kernel as we speak21:20
kirklandi think it's realistic to expect encrypted filenames in Jaunty21:20
kirklandthis bothers some people, but it doesn't really bother me that much ....21:20
kirklandi posted a sample, encrypted id_rsa file, named as such, identified as an ssh private key to that bug21:21
kirklandif someone cracks that encryption, and can do it regularly, we have a problem on our hands ;-)21:21
kirklandbut i trust the Linux kernel's built in encryption21:21
kirklandokay, question from the classroom....21:22
kirkland<hhlp> <QUESTION> what happen with ecryptfs when you have automatic login user...21:22
kirklandthat's a great one, and a bug that I actually spent all day yesterday fixing21:22
kirklandit should be in intrepid-proposed later today, and uploaded to intrepid soon after21:22
kirklandif you automatically login, you don't enter your password21:22
kirklandand so your Private directory won't automatically be mounted21:23
kirklandobviously, that's by design21:23
kirklandif all someone has to do is turn on your computer, then encrypted data isn't worth much21:23
kirklandso, i have a fix in the works ....21:23
kirklandbasically, when you boot a system that automatically logs in21:24
kirklandyou would open your "Private" folder using Nautilus or Konqueror, etc.21:24
kirklandand you won't see your data (yet), but you will see a link to an application that says21:25
kirkland"Access Your Private Data"21:25
kirklandthis will run a program, /usr/bin/ecryptfs-mount-private21:25
kirklandwhich will prompt you for your login password, and mount your Private folder21:25
kirklandquestion from the audience:21:25
kirkland<stdin> QUESTION: what sort of performance hit is there, anything noticeable?21:25
kirklandhere are the contents of my Private directory:21:26
kirkland$ ls -alF Private/21:26
kirklandtotal 4021:26
kirklanddrwx------ 10 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-03 09:02 ./21:26
kirklanddrwx------ 98 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-04 14:28 ../21:26
kirklanddrwx------  4 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-10-03 10:23 Documents/21:26
kirklanddrwxr-xr-x  9 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-04 11:28 .evolution/21:26
kirklanddrwx------  2 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-04 14:29 .gnupg/21:26
kirklanddrwx------  4 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-02-14 06:59 .mozilla/21:26
kirklanddrwx------  6 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-04 15:25 .purple/21:26
kirklanddrwx------  2 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-10-28 13:02 .ssh/21:26
kirklanddrwx------  4 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-08-20 08:46 .Trash-1000/21:26
kirklanddrwx------ 10 kirkland kirkland 4096 2008-11-02 20:08 .xchat2/21:26
kirklandI don't have any performance issues with any of those programs using encrypted Private21:26
kirklandthat includes:21:27
kirklandEvolution21:27
kirklandGnuPG21:27
kirklandFirefox21:27
kirklandPidgin21:27
kirklandSSH21:27
kirklandXChat221:27
kirklandI don't do my development in there, though21:27
kirklandI would imagine something like compiling software would probably take a 10% performance hit, if i had to guess21:28
kirklandbut, fortunately, i work on open source software, which isn't really secret :-)21:28
kirklandthat brings up a very good point ....21:28
kirklandanother motivation for using an Encrypted Private Directory is a performance one ...21:28
kirklandyou can choose to install your entire system to an encrypted LVM21:28
kirklandand then, all of your data on your entire hard drive is encrypted21:29
kirklandbut there almost certainly is a performance penalty for doing this21:29
kirklandto run anything in /usr/bin, or access libraries in /lib, or configuratoin files in /etc ...21:29
kirklandall of that takes decrypt operations21:29
kirklandand writing data does too21:29
kirklandwith an Encrypted Private Directory, you consciously choose what data you want to protect21:30
kirklandand what you are willing to pay the encryption performance penalty21:30
kirklandanother advantage is that LVM encryption requires a password just to boot the system21:30
kirklandthis is a no-no for servers21:30
kirklandwhere the system might be in a data center 2000 miles away21:31
kirklandand it's expected to boot "unattended"21:31
kirklandwith Encrypted Private, you enter the password when you login, or when you access that directory21:31
kirkland<gourgi> QUESTION: are there plans to extend encryption options to entire /home ? or this has some disadvantages, eg performance?21:31
kirklandI intend on proposing this again at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in December of 2008 for Jaunty21:32
kirklandthis was, in fact my original proposal21:32
kirklandbut we scaled it back to just ~/Private for Intrepid21:32
kirklandwhich is just as well ...  there were plenty of issues to solve for just that!21:33
kirklandi would like to eventually allow for each user to choose to encrypt their entire /home/USERNAME directory, with a key that's unique to them21:33
kirklandit would, of course, be an opt-in program ;-)21:33
kirklandthis isn't desired by everyone, and i respect that21:34
kirklandi think it would remove some of the complexity, though21:34
kirklandi showed you the contents of my Private directory21:34
kirklandI have established symbolic links from those directories' natural locations to their storage in Private21:34
kirklandln -s /home/kirkland/Private/.ssh /home/kirkland/.ssh21:35
kirklandthis is slightly more complex than I'd like it to be21:35
kirklandthere are a number problems we're going to have to solve to do this21:36
kirklandand it will be up to the powers that be at UDS to determine if this is something we are interested in solving in Ubuntu21:36
kirkland<nizarus> QUESTION: actually mounting and unmounting private directory is done in command line, is there any plan to got a nautilus integration21:36
kirklandyes, see my response earlier to the question about auto-mounting ....21:36
kirklandi created a desktop shortcut just yesterday21:37
kirklandthat hasn't made it quite into Intrepid yet, but it's coming21:37
kirklandi also just created a similar desktop link yesterday for the ecryptfs-setup-private program21:37
kirklandi'm hoping we can get both of those updates out for Intrepid in the coming days21:37
kirklandi have high hopes for some better graphical utilities in time for Jaunty21:38
kirkland<cyphermox> QUESTION: How about encrypting with a physical key, instead of a passphrase? I'm thinking something like a USB pen drive that allows you access to the data in ~/Private, for example.21:38
kirklandgreat question ....21:38
kirklandecryptfs, itself has a *very* flexible key management framework21:38
kirklandit currently supports:21:39
kirkland 1) pkcs11-helper21:39
kirkland 2) openssl21:39
kirkland 3) passphrase21:39
kirkland 4) tspi21:39
kirklandthe only one of which we're using for Encrypted Private is the passphrase21:39
kirklandi have another open bug asking about support for Thinkpad fingerprint readers21:39
kirklandthat's a very reasonable request, and if I can ever put my hands on one for a few hours, I think I could probably hack it up :-)21:40
kirklandthe USB pen drive one is actually easier than that21:40
kirklandcyphermox: i'd ask you to please file a bug against ecryptfs-utils21:41
kirklandthough you could hack around it very easily ....21:41
kirklandcyphermox: move your ~/.ecryptfs directory to that USB key21:41
kirklandcyphermox: and setup a symlink21:42
kirklandcyphermox: i think that's about it ;-)21:42
kirklandcyphermox: or, just move ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase21:42
kirklandi actually might play with that one a bit myself ;-)  great idea!21:43
kirkland<tonytiger> QUESTION: Can OpenGPG cards be used as keys too? Are they part of the PKCS11 support?21:44
kirklandtonytiger: good question ... i'm not familiar with OpenGPG cards.  i'll need to do some research on that one21:44
kirklandfor what it's worth ...21:44
kirklandtspi is support for the "Trusted Computing" chips found in most modern machines21:45
kirklandyou can debate among yourselves all the horrible things that Trusted Computing can do with your systems21:45
kirkland:-)21:45
kirklandbut support is there for storing your keys in the tspi itself21:46
kirklandi've not used it though21:46
kirklandbut the pkcs11 support should support any of the public-key crypto tokens21:46
kirklandi doubt that i would personally push any of those other mechanisms into Ubuntu any time soon21:47
kirkland(tspi, pkcs11, openssl)21:47
kirklandbut i'm certainly not opposed to patches!  :-)21:47
kirklandfingerprint readers, and .ecryptfs on a usb stick are some low hanging fruit that I'll try to tackle in Jaunty21:48
kirkland<lvzimmer> QUESTION: If you encript all you home directory (as the original idea) you still need password (login) and mount passphrase?21:48
kirklandyes.  auto-login will almost certainly *not* work21:48
kirklandwith respect to the 2 passphrase (login, and mount) ...21:49
kirklandi'll remind you that in normal Encrypted Private operation, *all* you really need is your login passphrase21:49
kirklandyour mount passphrase is decrypted and used on the fly, under the covers21:49
kirklandthey *only* time you should ever need to manually use your mount passphrase is when/if you have to manually recover your data elsewhere, later21:50
kirklandlet's say you've kept good backups of your encrypted data in .Private offsite21:50
kirklandand you're at a friend's house, or a client site, or something21:50
kirklandand you need access to one of your files, let's say .Private/foobar21:50
kirklandassuming you have access to a Linux machine with at least a 2.6.19 kernel with ecryptfs support (ideally, more like 2.6.27 or later)21:51
kirklandyou could:21:51
kirklandmkdir /tmp/1 /tmp/221:51
kirklandcp .Private/foobar /tmp/121:51
kirklandsudo mount -t ecryptfs /tmp/1 /tmp/221:52
kirklandand then you'll get a series of interactive questions:21:52
kirklandSelect key type to use for newly created files:21:52
kirkland 1) pkcs11-helper21:52
kirkland 2) openssl21:52
kirkland 3) passphrase21:52
kirkland 4) tspi21:52
kirklandSelection:21:52
kirkland(these answers will be for the default Intrepid Encrypted Private setup)21:52
kirkland->  3) passphrase21:52
kirklandPassphrase:21:52
kirkland-> your_mount_passphrase_that_you_wrote_down_and_stored_somewhere_safe21:53
kirklandSelect cipher:21:53
kirkland 1) aes: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (not loaded)21:53
kirkland 2) blowfish: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (not loaded)21:53
kirkland 3) des3_ede: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 24; max keysize = 24 (not loaded)21:53
kirkland 4) twofish: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (not loaded)21:53
kirkland 5) cast6: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (not loaded)21:53
kirkland 6) cast5: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 5; max keysize = 16 (not loaded)21:53
kirklandSelection [aes]:21:53
kirkland-> aes21:53
kirkland(note that these are the other ciphers that ecryptfs supports)21:53
kirklandSelect key bytes:21:54
kirkland 1) 1621:54
kirkland 2) 3221:54
kirkland 3) 2421:54
kirklandSelection [16]:21:54
kirkland-> 1621:54
kirkland(we might consider moving this up in Jaunty)21:54
kirklandEnable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]:21:54
kirkland-> n21:54
kirkland(I'll explain this if someone really wants to know)21:54
kirklandAttempting to mount with the following options:21:54
kirkland  ecryptfs_key_bytes=1621:54
kirkland  ecryptfs_cipher=aes21:54
kirkland  ecryptfs_sig=c7fed37c0a341e1921:54
kirklandMounted eCryptfs21:54
kirklandthen, you can look at /tmp/2/foobar and your data is available in the clear21:55
kirklandsudo umount /tmp/221:55
kirklandand it's protected again21:55
kirklandnote that you could have done this with the entire directory hierarchy21:55
kirklandthat's pretty much all i have on my mind at the moment :-)21:56
kirklandany other questions?21:56
kirklandmaybe time for 1 more?21:56
kirklandwell you've been a great audience :-)  thanks for your time and attention!21:57
kirkland<lvzimmer> QUESTION: where do I find more info?21:58
kirklandlet's see ...21:58
kirklandthe design docs for Intrepid's Encrypted Private are: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EncryptedPrivateDirectory21:58
kirklandthe quickstart help guide is: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedPrivateDirectory21:59
kirklandthe upstream project page is https://launchpad.net/ecryptfs21:59
kirklandubuntu bugs in ecryptfs is: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ecryptfs-utils21:59
kirklandthe user's mailing list is: ecryptfs-users@lists.launchpad.net21:59
kirklandjoin the launchpad team: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ecryptfs-users22:00
kirklandand get a little badge :-)22:00
kirklandif you're interested in development: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ecryptfs-devel22:01
kirklandokay, i think that's all from me22:01
quintalethanks a lot22:02
kirklandand i just checked my email ... encrypted filename patches just hit LKML in the last hour :-)22:02
komputeskirkland: and implemented into intrepid by when?22:03
kirklandkomputes: this one will not be implemented in intrepid22:03
komputesjaunty it is... :(22:03
kirklandkomputes: think jaunty22:03
kirklandit's a major change that involves a large kernel patch, and userspace changes22:04
kirklandanyway, i think i'm done!22:04
komputesthanks for the presentation man22:04
tonytigerthanks kirkland22:04
gv0rrthanks22:04
kirklandcome visit in #ubuntu-hardened sometime ;-)22:04
Rafikkirkland: thank you22:04
=== stdin changed the topic of #ubuntu-classroom to: Next session starts at 5 Nov 15:00 UTC | Welcome to Openweek, questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat please | Session details here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek
=== Silvy is now known as Fierelin
danbhfivetest23:56
jmk2danbhfive: ?23:56
danbhfivemk, its just quieter here23:57
danbhfivedo you have a terminal open?23:57
jmk2yep23:57
woody86is UTC the same as GMT?23:57
danbhfivejmk2: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade23:58
stdinwoody86: yes23:59
jmk2i get the following:23:59
jmk2E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)23:59
jmk2E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?23:59
woody86stdin, thanks :D just checking23:59
stdindanbhfive, jmk2: please don't use here as a support channel. use /msg23:59
woody86stdin, I seem to keep on missing the classes, and I don't like it :(23:59
danbhfivemk23:59
stdinwoody86: logs are already up23:59

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