April 2014 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

OpenSSH No Longer Has To Depend On OpenSSL
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

"What has been planned for a long time now, prior to the infamous heartbleed fiasco of OpenSSL (which does not affect SSH at all), is now officially a reality — with the help of some recently adopted crypto from DJ Bernstein, OpenSSH now finally has a compile-time option to no longer depend on OpenSSL. `make OPENSSL=no` has now been introduced for a reduced configuration OpenSSH to be built without OpenSSL, which would leave you with no legacy SSH-1 baggage at all, and on the SSH-2 front with only AES-CTR and chacha20+poly1305 ciphers, ECDH/curve25519 key exchange and Ed25519 public keys." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/04/30/1822209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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LED and current limiting resistors
by chris 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

Following on from Monday nights discussion about LEDs and resistors. https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/219 BTW, I acquired a pad heater and a brewing container for my set up from a colleague and its now all wired in - regulating 15 litres of water nicely at the moment.

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Linux Mint 16
by Peter Reutemann 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

Hi there Just came across the following blog post of how to install Linux Mint 16 and what to do afterwards to fine-tune it. It also discusses in length all kinds of applications (and their Windows equivalent): http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/to-do-list-after-installing-linu… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Talk Monday
by William Mckee 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

Hello wlug For her holidays im taking my sister down to wellington and going to miss the wlug meetup, where I am spose to be doing a talk on godotengine. I feel bad about pulling out so late, but im sure someone else will be able to step in and do a talk. If people are interested I could do my talk another month. Cheers, William

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Man Builds DIY Cellphone Using Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '14

26 Apr '14

"Photographer and software engineer Dave Hunt has posted an article about his most recent project: a DIY cellphone based on a Raspberry Pi (he calls it a PiPhone). It has a touchscreen dialing interface for making calls, and it's built with off-the-shelf components. The total bill of materials clocks in at about $158: $40 for the rPi, $35 for the 320x240 touchscreen, $15 for the LiPo battery, $48 for the GSM module, and about $20 for miscellaneous other minor parts. Hunt says, '[The GSM/GPRS module] allow us to send standard AT commands to it to make calls, hang up, send texts, data etc. Overall a very clever module. Towards the bottom of the white PCB, you can see the SIM Card, which allows the module to associate with my local GSM network, and it’s using a regular prepaid SIM card, bought in my local phone store for €10. Below the GSM module, you can see the on.off switch and a DC-DC converter, which converts the 3.7volts from the LiPoly battery to 5volts needed by everything else.' He points out that the phone is not terribly practical, but it's a neat project. Hunt has done several others, including turning the Raspberry Pi into a controller for time-lapse photography. He'll be publishing the code he wrote for the PiPhone next week." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/25/2220250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment
by Peter Reutemann 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

"The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/24/1544216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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OpenSSL Forked By OpenBSD Into LibreSSL
by Peter Reutemann 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

"LibreSSL is a FREE version of the SSL/TLS protocol forked from OpenSSL" -- source: http://www.libressl.org/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Private Keys Stolen Within Hours From Heartbleed OpenSSL Site
by Peter Reutemann 20 Apr '14

20 Apr '14

"It was reported when heartbleed was discovered that only passwords would be at risk and private keys were still safe. Not anymore. Cloudfare launched the heartbleed challenge on a new server with the openSSL vulnerability and offered a prize to whoever could gain the private keys. Within hours several researchers and a hacker got in and got the private signing keys. Expect many forged certificates and other login attempts to banks and other popular websites in the coming weeks unless the browser makers and CA's revoke all the old keys and certificates." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/04/13/1553258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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How To Reset A Forgotten Root Password With Knoppix
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

Today, I had the problem that I could no longer remember the user/password for one of my Xubuntu installations in Virtualbox. So I downloaded Knoppix 7.0 and had a look what the names of the installed users were. After that, I had to figure how to reset them. Here is the HOWTO that I used to reset my user's password (doesn't have to be "root"). It's scarily easy, to be honest... "This guide explains how you can reset a forgotten root password with the help of the Knoppix Linux Live-CD. Afterwards you can log in to your system as root again." -- source: http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password-with-knopp… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

"Ubuntu Linux version 14.04 LTS (code named "Trusty Tahr") has been released and available for download. This updated version includes the Linux kernel v3.13.0-24.46, Python 3.4, Xen 4.4, Libreoffice 4.2.3, MySQL 5.6/MariaDB 5.5, Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5, improvements to AppArmor allow more fine-grained control over application, and more. The latest release of Ubuntu Server is heavily focused on supporting cloud and scale-out computing platforms such as OpenStack, Docker, and more. As part of the wider Ubuntu 14.04 release efforts the Ubuntu Touch team is proud to make the latest and greatest touch experience available to our enthusiast users and developers. You can install Ubuntu on Nexus 4 Phone (mako), Nexus 7 (2013) Tablet (flo), and Nexus 10 Tablet (manta) by following these instructions. On a hardware front, ARM multiplatform support has been added, enabling you to build a single ARM kernel image that can boot across multiple hardware platforms. Additionally, the ARM64 and Power architectures are now fully supported. See detailed release notes for more information. Aquick upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu is possible over the network." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/04/17/1756254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"The GNOME Foundation is running out of money. The foundation no longer has any cash reserves so they have voted to freeze non-essential funding for running the foundation. They are also hunting down sponsors and unpaid invoices to regain some delayed revenue. Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can become a friend of GNOME." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/13/1454215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The Ubuntu smartphone actually looks pretty great
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"It has been a long time since Canonical announced the Ubuntu Edge smartphone campaign on Indiegogo. It raised an incredible $12 million dollars, but -- equally incredible -- it still fell around $20 million short of its lofty goals. However, that didn't derail Canonical's agenda of bringing its desktop Linux OS, Ubuntu, to mobile devices. In fact, judging by this video demo, the project is still going strong." -- source: http://bit.ly/1kIP1rU Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux 3.15 Will Suspend & Resume Much Faster
by Peter Reutemann 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

"The Linux 3.15 kernel now in its early life will be able to suspend and resume much faster than previous versions of the Linux kernel. A few days ago we saw ACPI and Power Management updates that enable asynchronous threads for more suspend and resume callbacks. Carrying out more async operations leads to reduced time for the system suspend and then resuming. According to one developer, it was about an 80% time savings within one of the phases. On Friday, work was merged that ensured the kernel is no longer blocked by waiting for ATA devices to resume. Multiple ATA devices can be woken up simultaneously, and any ATA commands for the device(s) will be queued until they have powered up. According to an 01.org blog post on the ATA/SCSI resume optimization patches, when tested on three Intel Linux systems the resume time was between 7x and 12x faster (not including the latest ACPI/PM S&R optimizations)." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/04/12/1833244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Princeton Students Develop Open Source Voice Control Platform For Any Device
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

"Two Princeton computer science students have created an open source platform for developing voice-controlled applications that are always on. Created by Shubhro Saha and Charlie Marsh, Jasper runs on the Raspberry Pi under Raspbian, using a collection of open source libraries to make up a development platform for building voice-controlled applications. Marsh and Saha demonstrate Jasper's capability to perform Internet searches, update social media, and control music players such as Spotify." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/09/1432244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] URGENT ALERT: *CRITICAL* OpenSSL vulnerability - heartbleed
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

Apologies if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaco ... Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 10:42 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] URGENT ALERT: *CRITICAL* OpenSSL vulnerability - heartbleed To: ... Hi boys & girls, In case you've not quite caught onto this yet - it's pretty damn bad. heartbleed.com go forth & patch/update ASAP - Jaco (been a pretty rough month) _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Hands-on with AVLinux: Crammed with multimedia goodies
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

AVLinux "is specifically intended for creating, editing and playing multimedia content," explains ZDNet.com's Jamie Watson. He says it is "crammed with multimedia goodies." During testing Jamie found that the whole system was geared towards that purpose. In conclusion, Watson said, "Besides being jam-packed with goodies, it is a very good Linux distribution to boot!" -- source: www.zdnet.com/7000028016/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Dyn.com Ends Free Dynamic DNS
by Peter Reutemann 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

"For the last 15 years, all of us at Dyn have taken pride in offering a free version of our Dynamic DNS Pro product. What was originally a product built for a small group of users has blossomed into an exciting technology used around the world. That is why with mixed emotions we announced the end of that free hostname program today, officially turning down on May 7th." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/07/1450222 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Raspberry Pi Compute Module Release
by Peter Reutemann 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation has developed a new product. It is basically a Raspberry Pi model A processor memory and flash memory on a DDR2 style SODIMM connector. Also available will be a development board that breaks out all the internal connections. The board design will be open sourced so you can develop your own devices using the BCM2835 processor. No network, but support for 2 HDMI displays and 2 cameras, so 3D TV is a possibility." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/07/1637249 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Nautilus Terminal: An Embedded Terminal for Nautilus File Browser in GNOME
by Peter Reutemann 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

"Nautilus Terminal is a Nautilus file browser embedded terminal, which follows your movement and automatically cd to your current directory. Nautilus Terminal makes it possible to work in command line while navigating in Real GUI." -- source: http://bit.ly/1mSdyYs Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Three Alternatives to Ubuntu One Cloud Service
by Peter Reutemann 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

"Many of us had hoped it was an April Fool's prank. But Ubuntu One will, in fact, no longer be available as of June 1, 2014 and all data will be wiped July 31, 2014. This will leave a great number of Ubuntu users without a cloud service. Fear not, intrepid users, there are plenty of cloud services and tools available - each with native Linux clients - ready and willing to take your Ubuntu One data and keep it in the cloud." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/769023 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Developers Consider On-Screen QR Codes For Kernel Panics
by Peter Reutemann 05 Apr '14

05 Apr '14

"Linux kernel developers are currently evaluating the possibility of using QR codes to display kernel oops/panic messages. Right now a lot of text is dumped to the screen when a kernel oops occurs, most of which isn't easily archivable by normal Linux end-users. With QR codes as Linux oops messages, a smart-phone could capture the display and either report the error string or redirect them to an error page on Kernel.org. The idea of using QR codes within the Linux kernel is still being discussed by upstream developers." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/04/05/2228251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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NYU Group Says Its Scheme Makes Cracking Individual Passwords Impossible
by Peter Reutemann 03 Apr '14

03 Apr '14

"Researchers at New York University have devised a new scheme called PolyPassHash for storing password hash data so that passwords cannot be individually cracked by an attacker. Instead of a password hash being stored directly in the database, the information is used to encode a share in a Shamir Secret Store (technical details PDF). This means that a password cannot be validated without recovering a threshold of shares, thus an attacker must crack groups of passwords together. The solution is fast, easy to implement (with C and Python implementations available), requires no changes to clients, and makes a huge difference in practice. To put the security difference into perspective, three random 6 character passwords that are stored using standard salted secure hashes can be cracked by a laptop in an hour. With a PolyPassHash store, it would take every computer on the planet longer to crack these passwords than the universe is estimated to exist. With this new technique, HoneyWords, and hardware solutions all available, does an organization have any excuse if their password database is disclosed and user passwords are cracked?." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/04/03/1440211 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO
by Peter Reutemann 03 Apr '14

03 Apr '14

"Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard ..." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/03/1924250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Canonical Shutting Down Ubuntu One File Services
by Peter Reutemann 02 Apr '14

02 Apr '14

"Wanting to focus their efforts on their most important strategic initiatives and ensuring that the company is not spread too thin, Canonical is shutting down Ubuntu One file services. With other services now regularly offering from 25 GB to 50 GB of free storage, the personal cloud storage space wasn't a sustainable place for Canonical. As of today, it will no longer be possible to purchase storage or music from the Ubuntu One store. The Ubuntu One software will not be included in the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release, and the Ubuntu One apps in older versions of Ubuntu and in the Ubuntu, Google, and Apple stores will be updated appropriately. The current services will be unavailable from 1 June 2014; user content will remain available for download until 31 July, at which time it will be deleted. For a spark of solace, the company promises to open source the backend code." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/04/02/1355244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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New Apache Allura Project For Project Development Hosting
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

"Today the Apache Software Foundation announced the Allura project for hosting software development projects. Think GitHub or SourceForge on your own servers -- Allura has git, svn, hg, wiki, tickets, forums, news, etc. It's written in python and has a modular and extensible platform so you can write your own tools and extensions. It's already used by SourceForge, DARPA, German Aerospace Center, and Open Source Projects Europe. Allura is open source; available under the Apache License v2.0. When you don't want all your project resources in the cloud on somebody else's walled garden, you can run Allura on your own servers and have full control and full data access." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/04/01/213243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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