Hace ya alg n tiempo escrib sobre el uso de libpam-ccreds y libnss-db para conseguir la implementaci n de un servicio de cach de credenciales. Sin embargo, hace casi un a o revisit el producto Likewise Open, en un proyecto grande de autenticaci n de Linux contra un Active Directory de Microsoft, o contra un dominio Windows desarrollado con Samba. En realidad Likewise Open elimina la incertidumbre de un setup artesanal de cach de credenciales, siempre y cuando el equipo se est loggeando contra un dominio Windows. Si usted tiene la necesidad de integrar una distribuci n de Linux moderna (una versi n reciente de Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, por ejemplo) con un dominio Windows servidor por un Active Directory o por Samba, mi recomendaci n es que use Likewise Open. Likewise es libre, abierto y gratuito, y viene en los repositorios de muchas distribuciones, o se baja de la p gina Web de Likewise. Tiene dos versiones (paquetes), likewise-open-gui y likewise-open; el primero instala el segundo y ofrece una interfaz gr fica sencilla para unir el equipo al dominio. Solo se requiere el nombre del dominio, el nombre del equipo (se toma de hostname) y el usuario y la clave de un usuario que pueda agregar equipos al dominio. Como siempre, la resoluci n del dominio se hace consultando al DNS provisto en la configuraci n de red (u otorgado por el DHCP) por ciertos registros SRV, para obtener la IP de uno de los controladores de dominio, y luego ciertas conexiones a algunos puertos del controlador de dominio. Por lo tanto es importante que, si va a probar este escenario en una m quina virtual, la conexi n est en modo puente con la red en la que se encuentra el controlador de dominio. Una vez que el equipo se une al dominio, se crea la cuenta de m quina en el controlador de dominio, y al cerrar la sesi n, ya pueden ingresar a Linux los usuarios del dominio, usando la sintaxis DOMINIO.AD\usuario o DOMINIO\usuario (formas largas y cortas) y la contrase a del dominio. Las pol ticas de inicio de sesi n y contrase as ser n respetadas. Tambi n se puede usar domainjoin-cli para unirse por CLI. Obviamente, Likewise ya ofrece el servicio de cach de credenciales y de cach de usuarios y grupos (importa los grupos del dominio) y lo hace de forma transparente. Por ello, en muchos casos yo recomendar a que si tienes un OpenLDAP y quieres hacer cach con pam-ccreds y nss-db, haz un upgrade de OpenLDAP a un dominio usando Samba y usa Likewise. Ahorra muchos dolores de cabeza. En Likewise Open no hay soporte para GPOs. En ning n caso funcionar n las GPO que se hacen para Windows, pero en versiones pagadas de Likewise hay una funci n que a ade nuevas GPO para GNOME y otras aplicaciones. No he probado estas funcionalidades.

In the past, I ve helped customers run native Windows applications using emulation (wine) and/or virtualization, and in few cases, native support for C# by open source projects such as Mono. But, as it s been said, there are great benefits of having source code, and I recently worked around an issue in Mono by recompiling a whole .NET project in Debian. So here s a brief guide reviewing the issues that I found and how I solved each one of them leading to a natively-compiled C# application that runs seamlessly in Debian and Windows, and please remember I m not a C#/.NET/Mono developer:

• Missing assemblies: sometimes gmcs (which is the Mono compiler) will complain about missing assemblies, that is, libraries that are requested by the C# source code (files that end with .cs) hopefully because some methods are being used in that specific file. I know they re, but I still haven t found a .NET class that is not supported in Mono. So, first and foremost, you need to actually have that library installed in your system, if you re using a Debian based system run aptitude search libmono.* or the packages.debian.org site to find which package has the library file (ends in .dll) and then, when you re calling gmcs, remember to use the r: flag, for example r:System.Drawing.dll
• Missing resource indicators: apparently .NET projects consume stuff from resource files which also seem to be XML files. Since I don t know how to handle this situation, I resorted to the fine MonoDevelop IDE, since I had a .csproj file (a Visual Studio Project file) in place which hopefully could join the dots. So just use MonoDevelop (you need to install it separately) and then open the .csproj file and rebuild the entire project (F8) which in my case just left 2 errors to go
• Issues with configuration management: it seems that the .NET Framework has some classes that help with application configuration via generic XML configuration files, and the project that I was trying to compile used that indeed, so there were some tags in the configuration file that weren t properly handled by Mono, e.g., the default system proxy configuration parameter, so I just deleted it from the XML. Be also advised that you do need to have the .config XML file in place together with the resulting .exe file if your application access configuration parameters in runtime.
• SSL- and TLS certificate-related issues: finally, if your application uses an SSL or TLS Web Service (or any other SSL/TLS application FWIW) you might get some errors like authorization or decryption failed which are basically related to non-existent certificate handling in the application. The easiest way to solve it is to download and import the CA Certificate Files from Mozilla and also download the certificate for the site you re trying to access; you can run (as the user that will run the application):
• mozroots import ask-remove
• certmgr ssl https://your.site/

That said, I had a great time fiddling with this C# application and Mono on my Debian Sid laptop. I was able to properly compile without errors nor framework-related warnings, using an IDE such as MonoDevelop, and have a full-featured native binary that s interoperable.

In the past, I ve used PCI cards providing telephony TDM for my Asterisk-based projects. I ve only worked with Digium s FXO/FXS and T1/E1 cards, both in PCI and PCI-x formats, until a client asked for a gateway solution with FXO, FXS and E1, where using the PCI cards in a 1U IPBX was simply out of the question. Using Ethernet gateways has always been a problem in those cases, since entry-to-medium level solutions lack the processing power for massive call handling, and signalling is poor, making the architecture unfit for reporting purposes and specialized apps such as call centers. But hey, that s my experience with gateways. Therefore, I looked into Xorcom s Astribank. They pack FXO, FXS and PRI/BRI ports inside a convenient 19 1U case, which can connect to an Asterisk-based IPBX server via USB and gets recognized as an integral DAHDI device in modern setups. So I ordered a composite 8xFXO, 8xFXS and 1xE1 PRI from Astribank, labelled XR0072. Getting the equipment from Arizona to Florida was easy, and since I worked with DHL, getting it to Guayaquil in Ecuador was a breeze (next-day delivery) but passing customs is, as always in Latin America, a time-consuming operation. After paying 12.5% taxes and then some for DHL operations, and 15 days waiting, I got the equipment in Quito. To my surprise, the Astribank was extremely light and small, slightly near 3 Kg in 1U form factor and under 1/4 depth in the rack. While it had a rack-mounting kit, which I used, it could also rest securely over my IPBX without rack screws. My Astribank uses a single USB cable to connect to the master PBX it could also be connected to a secondary PBX and provide a fault tolerant setup. It also depends on a DC supply, which they included. Since I was using a modern Debian, with a modern Asterisk with already-compiled modern DAHDI (formerly called Zapata/Zaptel) drivers, I just connected the equipment via USB to the IPBX, issued an invoke-rc.d dahdi restart and we were good to go. Note: you do need the fxload package in Debian for firmware loading to the Astribank. And for good to go I mean you can check the registered spans with dahdi_registration and, as soon as you connect the E1 cable that comes from the CPE to the CPE port (which in my XR0072 is the first on the lower row for PRI) you get an OK status with dahdi_tool. Also note that I use an E1/CPE port, which is the default for the Astribank, otherwise I d have to set the XPP_PRI_SETUP variable as indicated on the User Manual. DAHDI insists on configuring a crc4 parameter for the detected spans, which I needed to remove and restart DAHDI so the equipment could sync with the CPE (that is, the box that the telco provided, with the balun and the crossover RJ45 cable) and avoid some nasty noise issues on the line, that also occur with Digium s Wildcard for PRI.

usb:008/005          xpp_usb+     e4e4:1162 Astribank-modular FPGA-firmware
 LABEL=[usb:...]       CONNECTOR=@usb-0000:00:1d.7-1
	XBUS-00/XPD-00: E1       (31)  Span 1  DAHDI-SYNC
	XBUS-00/XPD-10: FXS      (8)   Span 2
	XBUS-00/XPD-20: FXO      (8)   Span 3

Using DAHDI s dahdi_genconf command writes an /etc/asterisk/dahdi-channels.conf file with the group and channel configuration as detected by DAHDI. It should be included by the chan_dahdi.conf file, which, in my case, is not necessary since I only wanted to enable one DAHDI group (DAHDI/g0) with my 31 E1 channels (1-15,17-31)

group=0
context=from-pstn
channel => 1-15,17-31

That means that when I want to use the FXO/FXS ports, it d probably be easier to include the dahdi-channels.conf (FXS ports, for example, belong to a different context, from-internal) so I don t have to type more than my laziness permits. I also found that, in my setup, some Asterisk parameters were superfluous, such as the switchtype (either national or euroisdn work, and the former is the default) or the echo-cancelling stuff, so I assume Astribank s doing a great job in negotiating that with the CPE. Do take note, however, that in my case the CPE needed to be cold-restarted so I could get an Up status in Asterisk (pri show spans) and that my only non-default, channel related configuration in chan_dahdi.conf is signalling=pri_cpe. So far, so good. I m really happy with the Astribank and I can fully understand how useful it is in terms of price (quite competitive in comparison with traditional cards, specially when bought from resellers -like me-), size/weight and functionality/ease of setup and administration. Kudos!

Last year I got my hands on an Acer Aspire 1420P. It s now running Debian GNU/Linux unstable, and I m transitioning from my older Thinkpad T400. Of course, it won t install and work flawlessly out of the box, so here are my notes. Ethernet Use a recent kernel, say, 2.6.32 (2.6.32-3-686 in Debian, for example), since the Atheros GigaEthernet card won t work in older kernels without patching (e.g., you get a link but can t actually send packets). My lspci reports the Ethernet controller as Attansic Technology Corp. Device 1063 (1969:1063) which uses the atl1c kernel driver. Wi-Fi The Wi-Fi card, an Intel WiFi Link 100, which my pci-utils report as 8086:0083, needs a recent firmware-iwlwifi (or a recent firmware for that card, if you don t use the package) which I also took from sid. Tablet touchscreen It works with the evtouch driver, but you ll need to apply a patch to xf86-input-evtouch (0.8.8 is both in sid and lucid) and calibrate the tablet. It seems like the screen rotation does not generate an ACPI event, but if you attach a button with the xrandr rotation, you don t need nothing else for evtouch to catch up. Screen s multitouch, but software doesn t support it yet. Things that work Integrated Intel Mobile graphics chipset, Huawei integrated HSDPA modem (shows up as ttyUSBn), audio, wireless provided you have firmware, webcam, ACPI events for almost everything (lid rotation doesn t seem to work), function keys it s all working nicely. This model has a Core 2 Duo U2300 processor and 2 GB. RAM.

DebConf 11 will be held in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Munich, Germany arrived on a close second and our bid, Quito, Ecuador, arrived last, allegedly because some points flipped over since DC 11 was meant to happen in Europe. So, after having three DebConfs hosted in America in the last four years, DebConf 11 will travel to Europe in 2011! Good news for all our fellow DDs and contributors over there. The Banja Luka team managed to get an important support from their Government. They even met with the Prime Minister and got him to sign an offer of full support. I think this becomes dangerous for a DebConf, given that I ve worked and have had mishaps while funding conferences with at least three governments (Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil) with stronger levels of support (Law-like level) for free software and I know that at least other two governments in the World have unfortunately done this in the past. So we need backup plans and lots of follow-up activities with the stakeholders. However, this agreement sets an important milestone in government support for free and open source software as well as Debian. I ll use it in my Debian slides, and congratulations! IMO, Munich would have made a great host for DC11 in terms of air travel connectivity, at a bigger hit on local costs, but nothing that would differ that much from DC7, though! I don t think I ll be able to make it at this moment to Bosnia (struggling for NYC) and at this point it s premature to think on supporting Quito s again for DC12. People and sponsors get gradually tired, even with spiritual commitment. The DC10 decision meeting was long and lots of things needed to be improved. At that moment I thought the Project learnt useful lessons for future meetings, but we re repeating ourselves now on the DC11 decision meeting. And now, I m just hoping for the best, for the sake of the time and sanity of all us here. Ditch the priority list altogether, increase the stakeholders on the global team, filter bids early in the process and use more technology to improve the information flow before the decision!

So, DebConf 10 will be held in New York City! Congratulations to the NYC bid team, now DC10 local team, which managed to provide a sound proposal for 2010. As time allows it, I ll be happy to help out and be there! I d also like to congratulate Boston s bid, who provided an outstanding proposal, and also the rest of Quito s team, whose bid I led: I think we provided an extraordinary bid to host an important event as DebConf in an amazing city as Quito, and as long as we can keep guaranteeing extraordinary quality, we ll be glad to present the bid for future DebConfs. Finally, the decision was taken after a long meeting, where we as a Project learnt useful things for future decision meetings. So, DC11 bidders, keep up the good work and enjoy the ride!

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Venezuela’s biggest and most important ISP, CANTV, was my first serious email provider, since it is tied to my ADSL connection, and I previously used several different dial-up providers (T-Net, IFX Networks) with no specific interest in email. CANTV mail service used to be provided with the highest standards of quality in the country, particularly as per malware and UCE control, and general abuse surveillance. Hey, even one of the former insider guys is quite known inside our FOSS community! I’ve previously (1, 2) blogged about the huge problems CANTV is facing with their mail service. They don’t answer, and sometimes even bounce, mails to abuse or postmaster, and temporarily suspended or degraded their abuse statistics web site. All in all, they are providing a poor customer service and are being listed in several blacklists all around the world. Sometimes I get warnings from mailing lists since their border MTAs are refusing to deliver messages to the mailboxes. So if you sent me my signed PGP public key, please forgive my ISP for probably bouncing your message. I thought I could live with this problem, since it’s probably temporary, but today a friend from El Salvador told me that all of his mail to cantv.net addresses is bouncing with this message.

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 ...>... Mail from
    168.243.89.79 refused: Vea http://abuso.cantv.net/bl/dul.html

So after taking a look at the whois record for that block, and doing a lookup on the reverse entry for 168.243.89.79, I think that a proper conclusion would be Venezuela’s biggest ISP is currently blocking most mail from El Salvador. And probably other countries. Terrible news. And please use my at debian.org mail address if you need to get in touch.

Me and Ail arrived at Buenos Aires on saturday. A member of the local team was waiting for people at Ezeiza, and we gave away our 2130 bus reservations in order to take a combi to Mar del Plata with Clint, four fellow german debianites and some venezuelans. The trip was quite long, around six hours IIRC. We arrived in the early morning, and slept past noon. I have no words to describe my particular experience with this year’s conference, but I do agree with our DPL: this has been the best DebConf I’ve ever attended. In general, the Annual Debian Conference is one of the most attractive events for me, since it provides us with the opportunity to share and define a little bit of the future of the universal operating system. I use, develop for and work with this operating system, so there’s the importance of this conference for me. That said, DebConf is a unique event. Some people that I know back in Venezuela are used to a different, more academic style of event, which features a tight schedule and no specific provision of group networking. They are not used to an event like DebConf, and when they attend it they feel they’ve lost their time in an event they don’t understand. And they ask for a participation certificate :) In that respect, besides the very interesting talks and events in the conference, DebConf offers an excellent opportunity for group development and general networking. On the other hand, both the local team and the venue have striked me in many good ways. I’m aware of LatAm limitations for some of the particularities of DebConf such as connectivity, provision for special food needs, special usage of the venue and general receptivity for a bunch of 24/7 geeks. The local team has made a huge effort putting this together in such a special and organized way. I don’t think the Venezuelan DC8 Bid would have made this much success in the same timeframe. Congratulations, Argentina! We will leave Mar del Plata on saturday (at 2200) and then we will spend some more days in Buenos Aires, particularly to attend Debian Day, where I’ll be giving a talk in spanish. Therefore, we’ll be writing a little more (in spanish) about Argentina later, since we loved our time in this country.

Yey! libtorrent 0.12.2-1 is now uploaded to experimental (thanks bureado for the sponsoring! :D), soon I'll get rtorrent 0.8.2-1 uploaded as well. I've been using it since a while and has been working great! In a few hours the buildd network should get them built for all arches, BTW, in this version is included the support for ARM-based machines :) Prepare your NSLU2!

Today we had the opportunity to be part of a very important event: Venezuela’s final meeting on DIS 29500 fast-tracking. Even though we’re working on this matter since 2007, and we weren’t approved official participation as a community, we managed to be there today. There was a strong discussion; and we had our chance to participate. I believe we were welcomed by the NB and hopefully we, as a community, can be part of future discussions in a very constructive way. Thanks again to all the committee members and our NB who made it possible for us to participate today.

From: "FONDONORMA" <...@fondonorma.org.ve>
To: <brannon@...>, <takahashi@...>, <gaillen@...>, <...@fondonorma.org.ve>
Subject: Modification to the vote on DIS 29500 - Venezuela (FONDONORMA)
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:04:26 -0430
(snip) Venezuela wishes to modify its position on DIS 29500 (snip)
(snip) from Approval with comments to Disapproval with comments.

Recently, chatting with some folks on the TextMotion IRC channel, I started thinking on the places I ve lived my whole life. From the bottom of my mind, this is a rough list:

• Arag n, Estado de M xico, M xico. The house where my parents lived in when I was borned in August, 1984. 1984-1989.
• Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico. 1989-1992. Although I m not completely sure if we moved on the 88 or the 89. Dad s work relocation.
• Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. 1992-1996. In spite of the myth I stupidly created among friends, I was not borned in Celaya. Where most of dad s family lives.
• Col. Moctezuma, Mexico City, Mexico. 1996-1997. Family business.
• Col. Viaducto-Piedad, Mexico City, Mexico. 1997-1999.
• Col. V rtiz-Narvarte, Mexico City, Mexico. 1999-2006. The place where my parents still live in the center of the big city.
• Bello Monte, Caracas, Venezuela. 2006. On my stay in Venezuela for a couple of months, kindly hosted by my very nice friend, Jos Parrella (now with DD-powers!) and his family.
• Col. V rtiz-Narvarte, Mexico City, Mexico. 2006-2007. Got back to my parents place.
• Col. Roma, Mexico City, Mexico. 2007. Moved here with my beloved fianc Raquel in February.
• Lower East Side, New York City, US. 2007. Lived there for two weeks while finding a place in the Big Apple.
• Harlem, New York City, US. 2007-2008. And Raquel and I are already looking for a place to move in to
• Brooklyn (or Queens), New York City, US. Some time in 2008. Coming soon! ;-)

Such is life :)

If you’re using a Virtuozzo-based VPS running Debian Testing or Unstable (and probably other modern Linux distributions), you will probably run into problems regarding the patches used in the default kernel and glibc 2.7, which were properly described in the debian-glibc mailing list. Tektonic, my current provider, will upgrade the kernel this weekend but if you’re really in a hurry, you can set your VPS on repair mode, download a 2.6 version of libc6, install it from the repair VPS using dpkg –root=/repair –force-all –install … and restart your VPS. It will boot up, but lots of things that depend on versioned packages of libc6 won’t work correctly, most notably OpenSSH and PAM. The problem is due to non-standard TUX optimization patches implemented over Red Hat’s standard kernels, which seem to be quite popular in Virtuozzo-based VPSs (at least it seems that Strato, Tektonic and Unixshell use them?)

This has been delayed for a few days, for reasons I explain in another post, so my remaining debconf posts will be published quite quickly, every few hours. Monday started with me nearly asleep in the back of the Debian-Med session. Interesting stuff and I'm starting to get involved in supplying web apps to the health sector, but I must watch the session back. Then bureado's excellent debian in venezuela talk and a big shock for me when I got called out. The afternoon and evening were mentioned in the last post. Tuesday opened with me confused in the Xen session and then I went to a good-looking session on combining the debian-installer, ubuntu OEM bits, backuppc and openvpn but lkcl didn't show. (His diary suggests he was around. Wonder what happened.) I kicked the session along a bit and learned stuff from others about preseeding, FAI, backuppc, bacula, amanda and so on, but it didn't seem like anyone had plugged these together in quite the same way. At the end of the session, I bumped into Eddie Bleasdale who it seems is working with Phil Hands and lkcl on a very interesting project. He spoke more about it in a meeting the afternoon, hoping that Phil would arrive to handle the technical side. Phil timed his entry to perfection, about 30 minutes after the end of the talk. In between the hijacked talks, I went for a walk up to the top of Arthur's Seat and back with jumpula and someone else whose name I've forgotten - sorry! Oh, and what is it with all the loldebian posts this week?

Yesterday I wrote in Planet Debian requesting information on how to copy binary files to a Linux-based Axesstel modem. Meanwhile, I wrote Axesstel Customer Service with a friendly thank you for making a great product and kindly asking them for pointers. I’ve had some degree of satisfaction when writing to the Customer Services of several enterprises, and I really hoped this would be another one. 48 hours later, they replied with this message: Dear Customer,
First, thank you very much for purchasing Axesstel product and your kind feedback.
Unfortunately, we cannot released requested information because it is against security policy. We hope for your understanding.
Also, we recommend that you refrain yourself from accessing internal commands of the unit because it may violated service agreement enforced by your local service provider.
Once again, thank you for your understanding.
Axesstel Support So, if you have an Axesstel modem or if you are interested on having a free OS in your Axesstel, you may join the Laxative project in BerliOS or just make some noise in your blog, webpages or mailing lists with your Axesstel-related projects. If you happen to work at a place where you export your Security Policy to any aspect of your relationship with your customesr and where you tell them to refrain themselves of trying to improve your products for free, please read on about Open Source Hardware and its business models. It might be the time to start sharing information and sleeping without guilt :)

A comment on El Blog de Jose that

"I plan to carry white cheese to the Cheese and Wine BoF, and I'd love any comments on how to transport them without posing a biological threat for Europe"

triggered some memories of the warning signs I saw at the port of Dover about the UK milk product import restrictions when returning from my last trip. So, I posted my concerns to debconf-discuss. Until you hear otherwise, if you're outside the EU/EEA, I suggest that you don't try bringing cheese to Edinburgh. I hope that you'd have it confiscated, rather than being fined and/or imprisoned, but I don't know how they'd treat a foreigner trying to carry in enough cheese for a party.

A few days ago, some people in Venezuela were shocked by Mark Shuttleworth’s claims against Hugo Ch vez Government and supporting Mar a Corina Machado, a minor opposition leader in the Country. Today, at 23:59:59, the nationwide open air TV broadcaster RCTV will cease operations. In Venezuela, as in several other countries in the World, the economically profitable portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is State’s property, thus requiring a concession to make use of it. RCTV concession was granted in 1987 for twenty years, and the Government has decided to deny the renewal, which is quite unusual (right-wing governments in the past simply would have shut up the antennas) Of course, RCTV is not a pro-Government channel, accounting between 90 and 100 percent of the airtime with anti Government news and opinions, which is not bad per se, though in Venezuela there’s a law requiring equilibrium in times devoted to political ads. Both situations (Mark’s comments and the Government’s decision) pose the threats of a now common situation in our Country: people taking very valid decisions with somewhat doubtful consequences. In the first case, Mark is using his right to freely write what he likes in his blog but it seems that it has damaged a little bit Ubuntu’s image in Venezuela (not that it’s Mark’s fault, of course) In the second case, the Government is taking a lawful decision, but it has actually raised an important discomfort in the population (polls, which are not always accountable, point out as much as 80% rejection rate), the journalists of other media and most foreign observers, which state that they’re actually closing a TV channel and destroying freedom of speech in the Country. Expressing political POVs is quite critical nowadays in Venezuela. Some famous etiquette bookwriters, such as the one at Emily Post’s, always tend to promote a be honest, be respectful position while listening or expressing your points of views in order to keep a productive attitude. I do think that politics are important: I just think mixing them with practical daily tasks, including FLOSS development and promotion, is becoming obnoxious and dangerous. Cheeseconf On June 15th., I’ll be departing to DC7 in Edimburgh. I’ll stay a night in Frankfurt, probably in a hostel, and then I’ll stay at one of the hostels in EDI. I plan to carry white cheese to the Cheese and Wine BoF, and I’d love any comments on how to transport them without posing a biological threat for Europe. I’ll be carrying a 65 liters backpack. How long will it take for the cheese to become a lifeform? Any special tips and tricks to avoid that? Copying files to embedded devices I’ve been trying to copy some binary files into an Axesstel D800 EvDO modem which runs Linux over a tiny ARM processor on less than 16 MB. of memory. I’m actually trying to get netcat in so I can get more useful stuff such as snmpd in. The modem has telnetd, but it has no zmodem utilities, particularly rz. Neither it has wget, nor ftpd. It has thttpd to serve the administrative webpages, but it can’t process shell CGI programs so I can’t send the file through a CGI form. Any ideas? I would love to read comments from hackers who have already managed their ways into embedded devices such as 802.11 devices with Linux, and any generic ideas on how to provide new firmware images for devices such as this Axesstel modem.

Desde su concepci n, Planeta Linux ha exhortado a sus participantes a sindicar contenido exclusivamente relacionado con tecnolog a, computaci n, software libre y Linux, en orden incremental de preferencia. Pronto se determin que la exhortaci n no era suficiente y se pas al requerimiento. H ctor Colina y Milton Mazzarri, por nombrar dos venezolanos, estuvieron involucrados en los Lineamientos y las Preguntas Frecuentes de Planeta Linux Venezuela. Como para ese momento ya hab amos hecho un grupo inicial de “venezolanos con blog que hablan de Linux” (b sicamente gente de VELUG, SOLVE, Debian Venezuela y de unplug.org.ve), no tuvimos la oportunidad de requerirles que tuvieran una categor a dedicada a Planeta Linux. A las nuevas personas que se inscrib an por la lista, en ocasiones se les requer a la categor a si su blog conten a, a primera vista, contenido no relacionado con Linux. En todos los casos, se requer a estar de acuerdo con los Lineamientos. En el caso de las personas que me solicitaban a mi directamente (que desde hace no mucho tengo acceso al SVN de Planeta Linux) yo les requer a una categor a particular, a menos de que su software no lo permitiera. En este ltimo caso, muy a pesar de los quejones de oficio, elimin bamos a la persona de PL. Es el caso de Luigino Bracci, quien en alguna ocasi n lleg a llenar todo Planeta Linux con contenido pol tico parcializado, y quien manifest que su sistema de blogs no le permit a agregar categor as. Hay casos en los que una persona que escribe poco o que suele escribir de Linux llega y hace algun desastre al estilo Alberto Capella con su foto a tama o gigante. En esos casos alguien se da cuenta y me avisa (aunque es un error, al final de la p gina hay direcciones de contacto y en Venezuela somos varios que administramos!) pero estoy involucrado en muchas cosas como para dar respuesta inmediata a ese tipo de casos. Y ah viene otro problema. En Planeta Linux NO PODEMOS moderar un post o a una persona. Solo podemos suspenderlo o eliminarlo. No podemos borrar una imagen ni un post ni nada, porque en 15 minutos perdemos los cambios. Espero que eso de algunas luces cuando haya algo de que quejarse en Planeta Linux. El ltimo caso es particular. Jes s Lara hizo varios posts no relacionados con Linux en su blog. Particularmente hubo gente que reclam que hab an recien escrito algo relacionado con Linux y los posts de Jes s “empujaron” los posts relacionados con Linux hacia el final del Planeta. Por lo tanto suspendi la suscripci n de Jes s y lo contact el 9 de Abril. Cre una categor a y me lo comunic . Eso es suficiente para volver a reactivar su suscripci n (en este caso me tard unos d as porque el commit fall y nunca me enter de ello, ni Jes s me lo inform , realmente) Ya hay mucha gente que sindica categor as en PL, y pronto ser n muchos m s. Cont ctenme si quieren hacer el proceso pronto. Por favor, la pr xima vez que encuentren un problema en Planeta Linux:

• Av sennos a Milton Mazzarri, David Moreno Garza o a mi, o a trav s de los medios de contacto de Planeta Linux. Podemos ayudarles, y el trabajo voluntario no nos excluye de responsabilidades.
• Den ideas y soluciones, que son muy bien recibidas. No den cr ticas ni flameen, porque recibir n lo mismo de vuelta (aqu son bienvenidos todos los que usen Linux en Venezuela, no traigan los vicios de los grupos de usuarios y las listas de amor y dolor)
• Descarten la teor a de la conspiraci n. No todos los que est n involucrados en proyectos comunitarios de Software Libre tienen problemas de cari o ni necesitan pensar que otros los atacan o necesitan meterse en la vida de los dem s. Lo m s probable es que lo hayamos olvidado o no tengamos tiempo. Usen el sentido com n.

In two weeks (Dec 3rd) there will be presidential elections in Venezuela. This will be the third time where Hugo Chavez, the current President, will be participating in the elections. The first time, in 1998, he won by 62%, then dropped to 59% in 2000 and currently some polls are giving him between 50 and 60 percent of vote intention. Since 1998, we’ve got a very active electoral movement and controversial situations which have raised very diverse opinions about our electoral system. If I recall correctly, in 1998 people voted using optic forms. In that moment, spanish Indra was the company in charge for the machines and most of the technology used in the elections. That was the time where the Supreme Electoral Council depended on the Executive power, i.e., the President. In 1999, Chavez proposed to rewrite the Constitution, and the National Electoral Council became an independent power. This Constitution was approved in two referenda in 1999, where touchscreen machines were used. In 2000, after the new Constitution was approved, new presidential elections were made. The same touchscreen machines were used and we made a transition between Indra and a multinational holding named Smartmatic. In 2004, after two millions and a half of signatures were gathered to recall Chavez presidency, the revocatory referendum was made, using the Smartmatic machines. Almost six million people voted to maintain Chavez in power. Of course, after eight years of the same party in the power, as well as other problems (namely a national strike and a Coup d’Etat in 2002), several ideas arised regarding the legitimacy of the election process.
Today, the National Electoral Council released a flyer in the press, where they try to issue these topics. I must recognize that, being a newbie voter, I was unaware of several of the things they published today. For example, 8 of every 10 venezuelans over 18 are signed for voting in the elections. That’s one of the higher percentages of public awareness about elections in Latin America, higher than, for example, Colombia. That means 16 million people are able to vote, and we’re used to get around 60 percent of participation. We do vote with touchscreen machines, and the results are completely computerized. The military guards all the equipment, and provides security to the randomly elected civilian which work as temporary personnel. Members of every involved party are present in all the election centers, as well as national and international observers. After you’re checked to vote, you have to give your fingerprint in a special biometric device. This is transmitted live, were possible, avoiding two people voting in the same day. After you vote, your finger is marked with silver nitrate, which goes away after two days or so. Of course, you’re only allowed to vote if you don’t have the mark in your fingers. The touchscreen machines prints a paper which you put into the traditional box. After the voting has concluded, more than half of the boxes will be opened and checked against the information in the machine. The boxes subject to this check are randomly selected, as well. A brief thought about the software used in the machines. In 2004 or so, we (the Free Software Community in Venezuela) struggled and made pressure to the National Electoral Council to reveal the code and publish it wide open. This has been achieved until some point, since every interested person or organization is allowed to take a peek at the code. Dozens of organizations have already done so and are impressed by the features that are now present in the code. Before the first vote is registered, the machine prints a zero-vote confirmation, and then subsequently randomizes the order of the votes registered in memory. Only after all the election centers are closed, the machines start transmitting information. This year, three hours past the closing time we’ll have the results. The final and most important, from my point of view, argument held to support our election system is the random queue organization at the election centres. The registry is sorted by ID number, the votes are randomly stored in the memory and the biometric device is used in a per-arrival basis. Therefore, since nobody takes the same time to vote, the queues will be unarranged therefore making it quite difficult to determine a possible vote sequence. This has been certified lately by the European Union, the Organization of American States and other organizations. Whoever wins this election, I’m quite confident about our election system. I just hope that other institutions in our Country start using reliable systems (for example, the national ID office) in order to give at least the feeling of being in a rightful State.

WebGUI and DateTime::Cron::Simple If you use WebGUI and feel concerned about the removal of DateTime::Cron::Simple (due to license, or more precisely, non-license issues promptly noticed by Ernesto Hern ndez-Novich), you can use DateTime::Cron::Parser, which has a compatible API. Since more people were interested in rewriting the module, an official discussion at the DateTime mailing list is going on, and therefore this module does not aim to be an official replacement. Some people point out that DateTime::Event::Cron might do what’s needed here with a little tweaking and patching. Choose what you need. MiniDebConf in Venezuela If you are subscribed to debian-devel-announce, you might have read (eng) about the Venezuelan Minidebconf, taking place from October 14th. in Maturin. While this is not the first event we organize (we’ve celebrated the Debian Day two years in a row, nation-wide) we’re pretty excited about having international visitors participating with us in a joint effort to promote collaboration with Debian. If you’re interested in following the event, you can take a look at the Wikipage (eng). Every comment and collaboration is greatly appreciated.