- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Chrome Switching To NIST-Approved ML-KEM Quantum Encryption
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '24

18 Sep '24

'Google is updating the post-quantum cryptography in Chrome, replacing the experimental Kyber with the fully standardized Module Lattice Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) to enhance protection against quantum computing attacks. BleepingComputer reports: This change comes roughly five months after Google rolled out the post-quantum secure TLS key encapsulation system on Chrome stable for all users, which also caused some problems with TLS exchanges. The move from Kyber to ML-KEM though is not related to those early problems, that got resolved soon after manifesting. Rather, its a strategic choice to abandon an experimental system for a NIST-approved and fully standardized mechanism. ML-KEM was fully endorsed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in mid-August, with the agency publishing the complete technical specifications of the final version at the time. Google explains that despite the technical changes from Kyber to ML-KEM being minor, the two are essentially incompatible, so a switch had to be made. "The changes to the final version of ML-KEM make it incompatible with the previously deployed version of Kyber," explains Google. "As a result, the codepoint in TLS for hybrid post-quantum key exchange is changing from 0x6399 for Kyber768+X25519, to 0x11EC for ML-KEM768+X25519." ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/17/0455248 Cheers, Peter

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Linus Torvalds Muses About Maintainer Gray Hairs, Next 'King of Linux'
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '24

17 Sep '24

'A report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: In a candid keynote chat at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds shared his thoughts on kernel development, the integration of Rust, and the future of open source. Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Open Source Program Office head and Torvalds friend, moderated their conversation about the Linux ecosystem. Torvalds emphasized that kernel releases, like the recent 6.11 version, are intentionally not exciting. "For almost 15 years, we've had a very good regular cadence of releases," he explained. With releases every nine weeks, this regularity aims for timeliness and reliability rather than flashy new features. The Linux creator noted that while drivers still make up the bulk of changes, core kernel development continues to evolve. "I'm still surprised that we're doing very core development," Torvalds said, mentioning ongoing work in virtual file systems and memory management. [...] Shifting back to another contentious subject -- maintainer burnout and succession planning -- Hohndel observed that "maintainers are aging. Strangely, some of us have, you know, not quite as much or the right hair color anymore." (Torvalds interjected that "gray is the right color.") Hohndel continued, "So the question that I always ask myself: Is it about time to talk about there being a mini-Linus?" Torvalds turned the question around. True, the Linux maintainers are getting older and people do burn out and go away. "But that's kind of normal. What is not normal is that people actually stay around for decades. That's the unusual thing, and I think that's a good sign." At the same time, Torvalds admitted, it can be intimidating for a younger developer to join the Linux kernel team "when you see all these people who have been around for decades, but at the same time, we have many new developers. Some of those new developers come in, and three years later, they are top maintainers." Hohndel noted that "to be the king of Linux, the main maintainer, you have to have a lot of experience. And the backup right now is Greg KH (Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the stable Linux kernel), who is about the same age as we are and has even less hair." True, Torvalds responded, "But the thing is, Greg hasn't always been Greg. Before Greg, there's been Andrew {Morton) and Alan (Cox). After Greg, there will be Shannon and Steve. The real issue is you have to have a person or a group of people that the development community can trust, and part of trust is fundamentally about having been around for long enough that people know how you work, but long enough does not mean to be 30 years." Hohndel made one last comment: "What I'm trying to say is, you've been doing this for 33 years. I don't want to be morbid, but I think in 33 years, you may no longer be doing this?" Torvalds, making motions as though he was using a walker, replied, "I would love to still do this conference with you." The report notes the contention around the integration of Rust, highlighted by the recent departure of Rust for Linux maintainer Wedson Filho. Despite resistance from some devs who prefer C and are skeptical of Rust, Torvalds remains optimistic about Rust's future in the kernel. He said: "Rust is a very different thing, and there are a lot of people who are used to the C model. They don't like the differences, but that's OK. In the kernel itself, absolutely nobody understands everything. I don't. I rely heavily on maintainers of various subsystems. I think the same can be true of Rust and C. I think it's one of our strengths in the kernel that we can specialize. Clearly, some people just don't like the notion of Rust and having Rust encroach on their area. But we've only been doing Rust for a couple of years, so it's way too early to say Rust is a failure." Meanwhile, Torvalds confirmed that the long-anticipated real-time Linux (RTLinux) project will finally be integrated into the kernel with the upcoming release of Linux 6.12.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/09/16/2047217 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Kernel 6.11 is Out
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '24

17 Sep '24

'Linux creator Linus Torvalds has released version 6.11 of the open-source operating system kernel. The new release, while not considered major by Torvalds, introduces several notable improvements for AMD hardware users and Arch Linux developers. ZDNet: This latest version introduces several enhancements, particularly for AMD hardware users, while offering broader system improvements and new capabilities. These include: RDNA4 Graphics Support: The kernel now includes baseline support for AMD's upcoming RDNA4 graphics architecture. This early integration bodes well for future AMD GPU releases, ensuring Linux users have day-one support. Core Performance Boost: The AMD P-State driver now includes handling for AMD Core Performance Boost. This driver gives AMD Core users more granular control over turbo and boost frequency ranges. Fast Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) Support: Overclockers who want the most power possible from their computers will be happy with this improvement to the AMD P-State driver. This feature enhances power efficiency on recent Ryzen (Zen 4) mobile processors. This can improve performance by 2-6% without increasing power consumption. AES-GCM Crypto Performance: AMD and Intel CPUs benefit from significantly faster AES-GCM encryption and decryption processing, up to 160% faster than previous versions.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/09/16/1928224 Cheers, Peter

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Neofetch is over, but many screenshot system info tools stand ready
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '24

16 Sep '24

'Almost nobody truly needed Neofetch, but the people who did use it? They really liked it. Neofetch, run from a terminal, displayed key system information alongside an ASCII-art image of the operating system or distribution running on that system. You knew most of this data, but if you're taking a screenshot of your system, it looked cool and conveyed a lot of data in a small space. "The overall purpose of Neofetch is to be used in screen-shots of your system," wrote Neofetch's creator, Dylan Araps, on its Github repository. "Neofetch shows the information other people want to see." Neofetch did that, providing cool screenshots and proof-of-life images across nearly 150 OS versions until late April. The last update to the tool was made three years before that, and Araps' Github profile now contains a rather succinct coda: "Have taken up farming." Araps joins "going to a commune in Vermont" and "I now make furniture out of wood" in the pantheon of programmers who do not just leave the field, but flee into another realm entirely. As sometimes happens, the void was filled not by one decent replacement but many.' Alternatives from the article: - https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch - https://github.com/ThatOneCalculator/NerdFetch - https://github.com/hykilpikonna/hyfetch - https://github.com/Macchina-CLI/macchina - https://github.com/Dr-Noob/cpufetch -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/neofetch-is-over-but-many-screensho… Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) Is Now Available Powered by Linux Kernel 6.8
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '24

16 Sep '24

'Canonical released today Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS as the fifth and last planned point release to the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) long-term supported operating system series bringing the latest security patches and updated components. Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS is here six and a half months after Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS as an up-to-date installation media designed for those of you who want to install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) on a new computer and don’t want to download hundreds of updated packages from the repositories after the installation. Apart from the security patches and updated packages that have been released during the past six months, the Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS point release is powered by a newer kernel from the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series, namely Linux kernel 6.8, to better support installations on newer hardware.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-22-04-5-lts-jammy-jellyfish-is-now-available-p… Cheers, Peter

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Haiku (Originally 'OpenBeOS') Releases Long Awaited R1/Beta5
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '24

16 Sep '24

'Haiku (the MIT-licensed operating system, inspired by BeOS) has released its fifth beta for Haiku R1. Some new features include improved UI color management, improved dark mode coloring, Tracker improvements, TUN/TAP support for VPN connections, TCP throughput improvements, performance optimizations, UFS2 (BSD's filesystem) read-only support, new FAT filesystem driver, improved hardware support, improved POSIX compliance, improved performance, and more. Slashdot has been covering the fate of the BeOS since 2000 (as well as the short-lived derivative project ZETA — and Haiku). And now "With a history of over two decades and previously known as OpenBeOS, today's Haiku is pushing forward..." writes the site NotebookCheck: Haiku is a spiritual successor to BeOS, with a focus on a clean and user-friendly design paired with low system requirements. The minimum system requirements are still an Intel Pentium II/AMD Athlon CPU or better, at least 384 MB RAM, an 800x600 screen, and at least 3GB storage. It works on both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 PCs, and the 32-bit version can run many unmodified BeOS applications. It might be the best desktop open-source operating system not based on Linux or Unix... It works well in a virtual machine like VirtualBox or UTM. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/14/158240 Anybody ever tried running/using Haiku? Cheers, Peter

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'Samba' Networking Protocol Project Gets Big Funding from the German Sovereign Tech Fund
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '24

16 Sep '24

'Samba is "a free software re-implementation of the SMB networking protocol," according to Wikipedia. And now the Samba project "has secured significant funding (€688,800.00) from the German Sovereign Tech Fund to advance the project," writes Jeremy Allison — Sam (who is Slashdot reader #8,157 — and also a long standing member of Samba's core team): The investment was successfully applied for by [information security service provider] SerNet. Over the next 18 months, Samba developers from SerNet will tackle 17 key development subprojects aimed at enhancing Samba's security, scalability, and functionality. The Sovereign Tech Fund is a German federal government funding program that supports the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital infrastructure. Their goal is to sustainably strengthen the open source ecosystem. The project's focus is on areas like SMB3 Transparent Failover, SMB3 UNIX extensions, SMB-Direct, Performance and modern security protocols such as SMB over QUIC. These improvements are designed to ensure that Samba remains a robust and secure solution for organizations that rely on a sovereign IT infrastructure. Development work began as early as September the 1st and is expected to be completed by the end of February 2026 for all sub-projects. All development will be done in the open following the existing Samba development process. First gitlab CI pipelines have already been running and gitlab MRs will appear soon! Back in 2000, Jeremy Allison answered questions from Slashdot readers about Samba. Allison is now a board member at both the GNOME Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy, a distinguished engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ, and a long-time free software advocate.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/14/1726252 Cheers, Peter

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copying random sample of files
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Hi everyone I was just wondering how I can copy a random subset of files from one folder to another. And, of course, there bash utilities for that... ;-) I came across two solutions for copying 20 files from the current directory into DEST: - shuf cp `ls | shuf -n 20` DEST - sort (using random sort) ls | sort -R | tail -20 | while read file do cp $file DEST done source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/414164/ Man pages: - shuf: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/shuf.1.html - sort: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/sort.1.html Cheers, Peter

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Rogue WHOIS server gives researcher superpowers no one should ever have
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

'It’s not every day that a security researcher acquires the ability to generate counterfeit HTTPS certificates, track email activity, and the position to execute code of his choice on thousands of servers—all in a single blow that cost only $20 and a few minutes to land. But that’s exactly what happened recently to Benjamin Harris. Harris, the CEO and founder of security firm watchTowr, did all of this by registering the domain dotmobiregistry.net. The domain was once the official home of the authoritative WHOIS server for .mobi, a top-level domain used to indicate that a website is optimized for mobile devices. At some point—it’s not clear precisely when—this WHOIS server, which acts as the official directory for every domain ending in .mobi, was relocated, from whois.dotmobiregistry.net to whois.nic.mobi. While retreating to his Las Vegas hotel room during last month’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Harris noticed that the previous dotmobiregistry.net owners had allowed the domain to expire. He then scooped it up and set up his own .mobi WHOIS server there.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/rogue-whois-server-gives-researche… Cheers, Peter

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Floorp browser
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Hi everyone Just came across the Floorp browser, which is based on Firefox. Refreshing news, as most new browsers nowadays seem to be Chromium-based... 'Floorp, an amazing free and open-source browser backed by a Japanese company, has gained quite a bit of attention recently for offering data and privacy protection, including high customization options such as Vivaldi in relation to Chrome. The browser's performance was quite fascinating, as it was able to achieve 60% more speed compared to Firefox when tested with Speedometer and JetStream 2 benchmarking tools. If your current browser is Firefox and you love to tweak your browser, then I highly recommend you give it a try. The following is a list of data privacy and customization options offered by Floorp: - An option to enable strong fingerprints, disabling WebGL, and HTTPs for every site is available. - Open the link, image, and media in a new tab and immediately move to it. - Provide a vertical tab on the right side of the browser to quickly open certain sites or browser settings. - Built-in option to change between different user agents. - Offers a preset of 80 keyboard shortcuts for different browser actions. - It comes with Floorp Notes Sync, similar to Vivialdi, to keep your notes. - Integrated with Firefox sync to synchronize your browser bookmarks, cookies, logins, open tabs, etc.' -- source: https://ubuntushell.com/install-floorp/ -- project: https://floorp.app/ Cheers, Peter

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SynthSaga -- A Good Use For AI
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Sep '24

09 Sep '24

Have a look at some of the stuff on this channel <https://www.youtube.com/@SynthSaga/videos> -- science-fiction-themed, steampunk, dieselpunk, alternative realities, whatever you want to call it. Mostly monochrome, but I still found several of them mind-blowing. Not sure if the audio was part of the same AI process, or if the artist (yes, I’d call them an artist) created that separately. Yeah, there are lots of glitches and bugs and hilariously impossible occlusions and the like. But that just adds to the hallucinatory feel. And each one is short, which leaves you wanting more. Wouldn’t you like to spend some time in a world like one of those? Just try to ignore the glitches in the matrix and go with the flow. ;)

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3D Volumetric Voxel Display
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Sep '24

09 Sep '24

A guy from Weta Workshop has created a “volumetric voxel” display for showing 3D images, by spinning a regular 2D panel at a dizzyingly high speed (more than 300rpm). The images are fairly low-res: think 1980s pixelated graphics extended to the third dimension. <https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/6/24238004/doom-volumetric-voxel-display-an…> I hope it’s covered in some shield, not just to keep errant fingers (and other body parts away), but in case something ... um ... comes apart unexpectedly ...

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Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund Injects €686,400 into FreeBSD
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

'Sovereign Tech Fund, a funding pot supported financially by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and hosted by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, has once again been one of Open Source’s great friends and supporters. After providing €1 million in financial support to GNOME at the end of last year and investing €203K in GStreamer and €157K in FFmpeg earlier this year, the company is now making another impressive donation to the open-source ecosystem. The FreeBSD Foundation has announced a €686,400 investment from STF to enhance the FreeBSD operating system’s infrastructure and security.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/sovereign-tech-fund-injects-686400-into-freebsd/ Cheers, Peter

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Elasticsearch Will Be Open Source Again as CTO Declares Changed Landscape
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

'Elastic, creator of popular search engine Elasticsearch and visualization tool Kibana, plans to introduce the AGPL open-source license alongside its existing licenses. The move comes three years after Elastic ditched the Apache 2.0 license, sparking controversy in the tech community. Founder Shay Banon says the change aims to clarify Elastic's market position following AWS's creation of OpenSearch, a fork of Elasticsearch. Despite initial friction, Banon claims Elastic's relationship with AWS has improved, citing growth in Elastic Cloud revenue and customer base.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/03/0511245 Cheers, Peter

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YubiKeys Are Vulnerable To Cloning Attacks Thanks To Newly Discovered Side Channel
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '24

04 Sep '24

'The YubiKey 5, the most widely used hardware token for two-factor authentication based on the FIDO standard, contains a cryptographic flaw that makes the finger-size device vulnerable to cloning when an attacker gains brief physical access to it, researchers said Tuesday. ArsTechnica: The cryptographic flaw, known as a side channel, resides in a small microcontroller that's used in a vast number of other authentication devices, including smartcards used in banking, electronic passports, and the accessing of secure areas. While the researchers have confirmed all YubiKey 5 series models can be cloned, they haven't tested other devices using the microcontroller, which is SLE78 made by Infineon and successor microcontrollers known as the Infineon Optiga Trust M and the Infineon Optiga TPM. The researchers suspect that any device using any of these three microcontrollers and the Infineon cryptographic library contain the same vulnerability. YubiKey-maker Yubico issued an advisory in coordination with a detailed disclosure report from NinjaLab, the security firm that reverse-engineered the YubiKey 5 series and devised the cloning attack. All YubiKeys running firmware prior to version 5.7 -- which was released in May and replaces the Infineon cryptolibrary with a custom one -- are vulnerable. Updating key firmware on the YubiKey isn't possible. That leaves all affected YubiKeys permanently vulnerable.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/03/1810216 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft Says Its Recall Uninstall Option in Windows 11 is Just a Bug
by Peter Reutemann 03 Sep '24

03 Sep '24

'While the latest update to Windows 11 makes it look like the upcoming Recall feature can be easily removed by users, Microsoft tells us it's just a bug and a fix is coming. Deskmodder spotted the change last week in the latest 24H2 version of Windows 11, with KB5041865 seemingly delivering the ability to uninstall Recall from the Windows Features section. "We are aware of an issue where Recall is incorrectly listed as an option under the 'Turn Windows features on or off' dialog in Control Panel," says Windows senior product manager Brandon LeBlanc in a statement to The Verge. "This will be fixed in an upcoming update."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/02/2241242 The only way to push a feature that users don't want: make it mandatory! I think, the technical term for this approach is "enshittification": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification Cheers, Peter

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Rust for Linux Maintainer Steps Down in Frustration With 'Nontechnical Nonsense'
by Peter Reutemann 03 Sep '24

03 Sep '24

'Efforts to add Rust code to the Linux kernel has suffered a setback as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project has stepped down -- citing frustration with "nontechnical nonsense." The Register: Wedson Almeida Filho, a software engineer at Microsoft who has overseen the Rust for Linux project, announced his resignation in a message to the Linux kernel development mailing list. "I am retiring from the project," Filho declared. "After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them." [...] Memory safety bugs are regularly cited as the major source of serious software vulnerabilities by organizations overseeing large projects written in C and C++. So in recent years there's been a concerted push from large developers like Microsoft and Google, and well as from government entities like the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to use memory-safe programming languages -- among them Rust. Discussions about adding Rust to Linux date back to 2020 and were realized in late 2022 with the release of Linux 6.1. "I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages," Filho's note continued. "I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/09/02/194205 Cheers, Peter

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Public DNS Services
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

So I finally got connected to fibre today, and I was pleased to discover that the ISP (https://simplybroadband.co.nz/) offers IPv6 as well. Is this common nowadays? We all know about the public DNS services offered by Google (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1); did you know these addresses have names as well? And of course there are IPv6 addresses to go with the IPv4 ones. Try this command to find out all the related Google DNS services: host -a dns.google. (Yup, that’s “dns.google.”, no “.com” or anything else on the end.) That’s quite a breathtaking list of entries. For Cloudflare, try host one.one.one.one. Note that the “-a” option (“tell me everything”) doesn’t work with Cloudflare; quite a few online services are now imposing restrictions on these “all info” lookups, but clearly not Google, at least not on this domain: obviously they want it to remain easy for people to discover the services they’re offering.

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Linux 6.12 To Optionally Display A QR Code During Kernel Panics
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '24

31 Aug '24

'A new feature has been submitted for inclusion in Linux 6.12, allowing the display of a QR code when a kernel panic occurs using the DRM Panic handler. This QR code can capture detailed error information that is often missed in traditional text-based panic messages, making it more user-friendly. The feature, written in Rust, is optional and can be enabled via a specific build switch. This implementation follows similar ideas from other operating systems and earlier discussions in the Linux community.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/1856206 Cheers, Peter

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Malware Infiltrates Pidgin Messenger's Official Plugin Repository
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '24

31 Aug '24

'The Pidgin messaging app removed the ScreenShareOTR plugin from its third-party plugin list after it was found to be used to install keyloggers, information stealers, and malware targeting corporate networks. BleepingComputer reports: The plugin was promoted as a screen-sharing tool for secure Off-The-Record (OTR) protocol and was available for both Windows and Linux versions of Pidgin. According to ESET, the malicious plugin was configured to infect unsuspecting users with DarkGate malware, a powerful malware threat actors use to breach networks since QBot's dismantling by the authorities. [...] Those who installed it are recommended to remove it immediately and perform a full system scan with an antivirus tool, as DarkGate may be lurking on their system. After publishing our story, Pidgin's maintainer and lead developer, Gary Kramlich, notified us on Mastodon to say that they do not keep track of how many times a plugin is installed. To prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, Pidgin announced that, from now on, it will only accept third-party plugins that have an OSI Approved Open Source License, allowing scrutiny into their code and internal functionality.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/2047211 Cheers, Peter

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$50 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 comes with a lower price and a tweaked, cheaper CPU
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '24

30 Aug '24

'We're many months past the worst of the Raspberry Pi shortages, and the board is finally widely available at its suggested retail price at most sites without wait times or quantity limitations. One sign that the Pi Foundation is feeling more confident about the stock situation: the launch of a new 2GB configuration of the Raspberry Pi 5, available starting today for $50. That's $10 less than the 4GB configuration and $30 less than the 8GB version of the board. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton writes that the 2GB version of the board includes a revised version of the Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC that is slightly cheaper to manufacture. Upton says that the D0 stepping of the BCM2712C1 strips out some "dark silicon" built-in functionality that the Pi wasn't using but was still taking up space on the silicon die and increasing the cost of the chip. "From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, [the chip] is functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; the same multimedia capabilities; and the same PCI Express bus that has proven to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform," Upton writes. "However, it is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost. And this, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, has allowed us to take $10 out of the cost of the finished product." At $50, the price tag is still north of the baseline $35 price that the Pi started at for many years. The Pi 4 had a 1GB model for $35 when it launched, and there was a $35 2GB model available for a while in 2020, but widespread shortages and supply chain issues led to a "temporary" price increase in late 2021 that is, as of this writing, still in place. At least the 2GB Pi 5 is only $5 more expensive than the 2GB version of the Pi 4, which is still in stock for $45 at many retailers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/new-2gb-raspberry-pi-5-option-knock… Cheers, Peter

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'Uncertainty' Drives LinkedIn To Migrate From CentOS To Azure Linux
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '24

30 Aug '24

'The Register's Liam Proven reports: Microsoft's in-house professional networking site is moving to Microsoft's in-house Linux. This could mean that big changes are coming for the former CBL-Mariner distro. Ievgen Priadka's post on the LinkedIn Engineering blog, titled Navigating the transition: adopting Azure Linux as LinkedIn's operating system, is the visible sign of what we suspect has been a massive internal engineering effort. It describes some of the changes needed to migrate what the post calls "most of our fleet" from the end-of-life CentOS 7 to Microsoft Azure Linux -- the distro that grew out of and replaced its previous internal distro, CBL-Mariner. This is an important stage in a long process. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn way back in 2016. Even so, as recently as the end of last year, we reported that a move to Azure had been abandoned, which came a few months after it laid off almost 700 LinkedIn staff -- the majority in R&D. The blog post is over 3,500 words long, so there's quite a lot to chew on -- and we're certain that this has been passed through and approved by numerous marketing and management people and scoured of any potentially embarrassing admissions. Some interesting nuggets remain, though. We enjoyed the modest comment that: "However, with the shift to CentOS Stream, users felt uncertain about the project's direction and the timeline for updates. This uncertainty created some concerns about the reliability and support of CentOS as an operating system." [...] There are some interesting technical details in the post too. It seems LinkedIn is running on XFS -- also the RHEL default file system, of course -- with the notable exception of Hadoop, and so the Azure Linux team had to add XFS support. Some CentOS and actual RHEL is still used in there somewhere. That fits perfectly with using any of the RHELatives. However, the post also mentions that the team developed a tool to aid with deploying via MaaS, which it explicitly defines as Metal as a Service. MaaS is a Canonical service, although it does support other distros -- so as well as CentOS, there may have been some Ubuntu in the LinkedIn stack as well. Some details hint at what we suspect were probably major deployment headaches. [...] Some of the other information covers things the teams did not do, which is equally informative. [...] ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/08/28/2345255 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft Donates the Mono Project To Wine
by Peter Reutemann 28 Aug '24

28 Aug '24

'Microsoft has decided to donate the Mono Project to the developers of Wine, FOSS that allows Windows applications to run on Unix-like operating systems. "Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications," notes GameOnLinux's Liam Dawe. "It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime." "Wine already makes use of Mono and this move makes sense with Microsoft focusing on open-source .NET and other efforts," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "Formally handing over control of the upstream Mono project to WineHQ is a nice move by Microsoft rather than just letting the upstream Mono die off or otherwise forked." Microsoft's Jeff Schwartz announced the move on the Mono website and in a GitHub post: The Mono Project (mono/mono) ('original mono') has been an important part of the .NET ecosystem since it was launched in 2001. Microsoft became the steward of the Mono Project when it acquired Xamarin in 2016. The last major release of the Mono Project was in July 2019, with minor patch releases since that time. The last patch release was February 2024. We are happy to announce that the WineHQ organization will be taking over as the stewards of the Mono Project upstream at wine-mono / Mono - GitLab ( winehq.org) Source code in existing mono/mono and other repos will remain available, although repos may be archived. Binaries will remain available for up to four years. Microsoft maintains a modern fork of Mono runtime in the dotnet/runtime repo and has been progressively moving workloads to that fork. That work is now complete, and we recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET which includes work from this fork. We want to recognize that the Mono Project was the first .NET implementation on Android, iOS, Linux, and other operating systems. The Mono Project was a trailblazer for the .NET platform across many operating systems. It helped make cross-platform .NET a reality and enabled .NET in many new places and we appreciate the work of those who came before us. Thank you to all the Mono developers!' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/27/2043216 Cheers, Peter

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OSMC Vero V
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Aug '24

28 Aug '24

Just thought I’d mention, I got one of these gadgets <https://osmc.tv/> (the latest “Vero V” model) delivered to my doorstep today. This is to replace a Western Digital “WDTV” media streamer that I got from Dick Smith over a decade ago, that I have been getting more annoyed with. The OSMC software is built on Kodi, with some extra stuff of their own. You should be able to download it and set up your own installation, I just decided to get one of their boxes preassembled and preinstalled. They’re based in the UK. That WDTV box was always fussy about the kinds of files it would play, and what codecs and what bit rates etc it could cope with. When I tried something like .flv files for example, it would play OK if I didn’t try going fast forward/reverse, otherwise it would get stuck. Certain kinds of files could screw it up so badly, the only way to recover was to turn it off and on again. This new box is built on a much more modern Linux base, so I expect its media support will be correspondingly improved. Already it has started playing a .webm file, which the old box wouldn’t even look at. If anybody is curious to know more, just ask. I see there is even an online “store” of addons I can install, for extra capabilities.

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The Linux Kernel Gets 60 CVEs A Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Aug '24

23 Aug '24

The Linux kernel team gets 60 logged reports of security vulnerabilities each week, according to longtime developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. He ought to know; he is the point of first contact for such reports, according to <https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-linux-security-team-issues-60-cves-a-week…>. On the bright side, most of them will likely not affect you. The total kernel source tree is up to 38 million lines of code, and your typical OS installation uses only a small fraction of that. To quote GregKH: “Your phone, the most complex beast out there, uses about 4 million lines of code”. They don’t take their time about dealing with vulnerabilities, either: This crew doesn't take embargoes or use pre-announcements. Why not? Because they believe -- with reason -- all these approaches do is lead to information leaks. Instead, they aim to get fixes out to users as quickly as possible. Typically, this is done within a week of having a patch available. This approach ensures that users are promptly notified of security issues and can update their systems accordingly. Another GregKH quote: “If you're not using the latest stable/long-term kernel system, your system is insecure”. Which means, you need to do a kernel update just about every week. The thing is, Kroah-Hartman said, "We have proof this can be done. Debian runs over 80% of the world's servers and they're using stable kernel updates. Android, billions of devices out there, takes every stable kernel update on a couple months lag, but they're doing it and keeping their devices secure. There's nothing more complex than embedded into the system, and there's nothing more common and easy to use than a Debian server.

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Litespeed Cache bug exposes millions of WordPress sites to takeover attacks
by Peter Reutemann 22 Aug '24

22 Aug '24

'A critical vulnerability in the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin can let attackers take over millions of websites after creating rogue admin accounts. LiteSpeed Cache is open-source and the most popular WordPress site acceleration plugin, with over 5 million active installations and support for WooCommerce, bbPress, ClassicPress, and Yoast SEO. The unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2024-28000) was found in the plugin's user simulation feature and is caused by a weak hash check in LiteSpeed Cache up to and including version 6.3.0.1. Security researcher John Blackbourn submitted the flaw to Patchstack's bug bounty program on August 1. The LiteSpeed team developed a patch and shipped it with LiteSpeed Cache version 6.4, released on August 13. Successful exploitation enables any unauthenticated visitors to gain administrator-level access, which can be used to completely take over websites running vulnerable LiteSpeed Cache versions by installing malicious plugins, changing critical settings, redirecting traffic to malicious websites, distributing malware to visitors, or stealing user data.' -- source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/litespeed-cache-bug-exposes-… Cheers, Peter

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“Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update
by Peter Reutemann 21 Aug '24

21 Aug '24

'Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.” The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday. Tuesday’s update left dual-boot devices—meaning those configured to run both Windows and Linux—no longer able to boot into the latter when Secure Boot was enforced. When users tried to load Linux, they received the message: “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.” Almost immediately support and discussion forums lit up with reports of the failure. “Note that Windows says this update won't apply to systems that dual-boot Windows and Linux,” one frustrated person wrote. “This obviously isn't true, and likely depends on your system configuration and the distribution being run. It appears to have made some linux efi shim bootloaders incompatible with microcrap efi bootloaders (that's why shifting from MS efi to 'other OS' in efi setup works). It appears that Mint has a shim version that MS SBAT doesn't recognize.” The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/08/a-patch-microsoft-spent-2-years-pr… Cheers, Peter

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Check Linux / Unix configuration files for syntax errors
by Peter Reutemann 14 Aug '24

14 Aug '24

Just came across this post, which I thought quite handy: 'In Linux and UNIX system services are configured using various text files located in /etc/ or /usr/local/etc/ directory tree. A typical server system could have dozens of configuration files. You can check your configuration files for syntax errors without starting the server and validate all settings. In some cases, it is possible to check the sanity of specific data/config options and directories. Text files are easier to manage remotely. You can use ssh and a text editor. If there is an error in configuration, the server may not start. It may result in a disaster. This post explains how to quickly find out a syntax error for popular servers and test configuration file for syntax errors.' -- source: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/check-unix-linux-configuration-file-for-synt… Cheers, Peter

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Almost unfixable “Sinkclose” bug affects hundreds of millions of AMD chips
by Peter Reutemann 12 Aug '24

12 Aug '24

'Security flaws in your computer's firmware, the deep-seated code that loads first when you turn the machine on and controls even how its operating system boots up, have long been a target for hackers looking for a stealthy foothold. But only rarely does that kind of vulnerability appear not in the firmware of any particular computer maker, but in the chips found across hundreds of millions of PCs and servers. Now security researchers have found one such flaw that has persisted in AMD processors for decades, and that would allow malware to burrow deep enough into a computer's memory that, in many cases, it may be easier to discard a machine than to disinfect it. At the Defcon hacker conference, Enrique Nissim and Krzysztof Okupski, researchers from the security firm IOActive, plan to present a vulnerability in AMD chips they're calling Sinkclose. The flaw would allow hackers to run their own code in one of the most privileged modes of an AMD processor, known as System Management Mode, designed to be reserved only for a specific, protected portion of its firmware. IOActive's researchers warn that it affects virtually all AMD chips dating back to 2006, or possibly even earlier.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/08/almost-unfixable-sinkclose-bug-aff… Cheers, Peter

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Mozilla Wants You To Love Firefox Again
by Peter Reutemann 12 Aug '24

12 Aug '24

'Mozilla's interim CEO Laura Chambers "says the company is reinvesting in Firefox after letting it languish in recent years," reports Fast Company, "hoping to reestablish the browser as independent alternative to the likes of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari. "But some of those investments, which also include forays into generative AI, may further upset the community that's been sticking with Firefox all these years..." Chambers acknowledges that Mozilla lost sight of Firefox in recent years as it chased opportunities outside the browser, such as VPN service and email masking. When she replaced Mitchell Baker as CEO in February, the company scaled back those other efforts and made Firefox a priority again. "Yes, Mozilla is refocusing on Firefox," she says. "Obviously, it's our core product, so it's an important piece of the business for us, but we think it's also really an important part of the internet." Some of that focus involves adding features that have become table-stakes in other browsers. In June, Mozilla added vertical tab support in Firefox's experimental branch, echoing a feature that Microsoft's Edge browser helped popularize three years ago. It's also working on tab grouping features and an easier way to switch between user profiles. Mozilla is even revisiting the concept of web apps, in which users can install websites as freestanding desktop applications. Mozilla abandoned work on Progressive Web Apps in Firefox a few years ago to the dismay of many power users, but now it's talking with community members about a potential path forward. "We haven't always prioritized those features as highly as we should have," Chambers says. "That's been a real shift that's been very felt in the community, that the things they're asking for . . . are really being prioritized and brought to life." Firefox was criticized for testing a more private alternative to tracking cookies which could make summaries of aggregated data available to advertisers. (Though it was only tested on a few sites, "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" was enabled by default.) But EFF staff technologist Lena Cohen tells Fast Company that approach was "much more privacy-preserving" than Google's proposal for a "Privacy Sandbox." And according to the article, "Mozilla's system only measures the success rate of ads — it doesn't help companies target those ads in the first place — and it's less susceptible to abuse due to limits on how much data is stored and which parties are allowed to access it." In June, Mozilla also announced its acquisition of Anonym, a startup led by former Meta executives that has its own privacy-focused ad measurement system. While Mozilla has no plans to integrate Anonym's tech in Firefox, the move led to even more anxiety about the kind of company Mozilla was becoming. The tension around Firefox stems in part from Mozilla's precarious financial position, which is heavily dependent on royalty payments from Google. In 2022, nearly 86% of Mozilla's revenue came from Google, which paid $510 million to be Firefox's default search engine. Its attempts to diversify, through VPN service and other subscriptions, haven't gained much traction. Chambers says that becoming less dependent on Google is "absolutely a priority," and acknowledges that building an ad-tech business is one way of doing that. Mozilla is hoping that emerging privacy regulations and wider adoption of anti-tracking tools in web browsers will increase demand for services like Anonym and for systems like Firefox's privacy-preserving ad measurements. Other revenue-generating ideas are forthcoming. Chambers says Mozilla plans to launch new products outside of Firefox under a "design sprint" model, aimed at quickly figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's also making forays into generative AI in Firefox, starting with a chatbot sidebar in the browser's experimental branch. Chambers "says to expect a bigger marketing push for Firefox in the United States soon, echoing a 'Challenge the default' ad campaign that was successful in Germany last summer. Mozilla's nonprofit ownership structure, and the idea that it's not beholden to corporate interests, figures heavily into those plans."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/11/1635254 Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu Will Start Shipping With the Latest Upstream Linux Kernel - Even Release Candidates
by Peter Reutemann 12 Aug '24

12 Aug '24

'Here's a question from the blog OMG Ubuntu. "Ever get miffed reading about a major new Ubuntu release only to learn it doesn't come with the newest Linux kernel? "Well, that'll soon be a thing of the past." Canonical's announced a big shift in kernel selection process for future Ubuntu release, an "aggressive kernel version commitment policy" pivot that means it will ship the latest upstream kernel code in development at the time of a new Ubuntu release. Yes, even if that upstream kernel hasn't yet seen a formal stable release (and received the requisite newspaper-graphic-topped rundown on this blog). Which is a huge change. Currently, new Ubuntu releases include the most recent stable Linux kernel release at the time of the kernel freeze milestone in the Ubuntu development cycle. Here's the official announcement by Canonical's Brett Grandbois. "Ubuntu will now ship the absolute latest available version of the upstream Linux kernel at the specified Ubuntu release freeze date, even if upstream is still in Release Candidate status..." It is actually expected that Late Releases will be the exception rather than the norm and in most releases these guidelines will not be necessary as the upstream kernel will release with enough time for the Ubuntu kernel to stabilize. However, adopting a more aggressive kernel version commitment policy does require us to be prepared for a possible Late Release situation and therefore informing the community on what they can expect. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/08/11/075217 Cheers, Peter

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You can kick the alpha tires on System76’s Cosmic, a new Linux desktop
by Peter Reutemann 09 Aug '24

09 Aug '24

'System76 has released an alpha version of its Cosmic desktop environment for Linux and Unix-like systems. The Linux hardware firm isn't targeting only its customers with its GNOME replacement; it also hopes to get distro maintainers and app makers on board with its Rust-built, UX-focused desktop. While the Cosmic desktop will be built into the Linux vendor's Pop!_OS (which is also in the alpha ISO), it's also available to other systems, as you might expect. System76 provides drop-in instructions for Fedora and Arch Linux installs, among others. System76 says it is "excited to see COSMIC integration elevate Linux as a whole," along with what results "from making UX-building more accessible." By building Cosmic natively in the Rust language, System76 also intends to provide a more stable and memory-safe environment for apps. Cosmic shows deep attention to tiling, keyboard shortcuts, and panel and dock customization, as has been present on its Pop!_OS. I'm a bit of a boring side-by-side, single-workspace type; Gardiner Bryant on YouTube went deeper into the Cosmic alpha's tiling, panels, and GTK app acceptance. I found that getting Cosmic into a reasonable shape I could work from, and picking up its keyboard window shortcuts, was easier than with either KDE or GNOME. One thing System76 made clear in its push for Cosmic is its readiness for more deeply integrated themes. System76 offered a few examples in its press materials, and I must admit a fondness for its over-the-top examples. -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/you-can-kick-the-alpha-tires-on-sys… Cheers, Peter

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Chrome’s Manifest V3, and its changes for ad blocking, are coming real soon
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '24

07 Aug '24

'Google Chrome's long, long project to implement a new browser extension platform is seemingly going to happen, for real, after six years of cautious movement. One of the first ways people are seeing this is if they use uBlock Origin, a popular ad-blocking extension, as noted by Bleeping Computer. Recently, Chrome users have seen warnings pop up that "This extension may soon no longer be supported," with links asking the user to "Remove or replace it with similar extensions" from Chrome's Web Store. You might see a similar warning on some extensions if you head to Chrome's Extensions page (chrome://extensions). What's happening is Chrome preparing to make Manifest V3 required for extensions that want to run on its platform. First announced in 2018, the last word on Manifest V3 was that V2 extensions would start being nudged out in early June on the Beta, Dev, and Canary update channels. Users will be able to manually re-enable V2 extensions "for a short time," Google has said, "but over time, this toggle will go away as well." The shift for enterprise Chrome deployments is expected to be put off until June 2025. ' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/chromes-manifest-v3-and-its-changes… Cheers, Peter

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Germany to Fund Open Source Software Maintainers Through New Fellowship Program
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '24

07 Aug '24

'If you’re of the ilk to complain about governments giving money away and what that means for taxpayers, the Germans — or at least their government — are doing this because it will be good for the economy, meaning they think it’ll make folks better able to pay their taxes rather just empty their pockets for the taxman. This is also why they’ve already spending a substantial amount of money to help fund over 40 FOSS projects. “Open source infrastructure is the backbone of our digital world – and the work of the people who maintain it is essential to ensuring the security and availability of this global resource,” Mirko Swillus wrote in a blog that was published on Thursday. “They lead project development, review changes, manage community interactions, and tackle security issues.” Swillus is program manager at Sovereign Tech Fund, and the blog was to announce fund’s new Fellowship for Maintainers program. “With this new fellowship program, we’re directly investing in the people behind the code by paying maintainers of critical open source components for their work,” he wrote.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2024/08/germany-to-fund-open-source-software-maintain… Cheers, Peter

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How to replace Windows with Linux Mint on your PC
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '24

05 Aug '24

'Are you sick of Windows fouling up? Do you want to try something different? Then, it's time to try the best Linux desktop, Linux Mint 22. I've used more operating systems than you can shake a stick at. I cut my teeth on IBM 360/OS in the 1970s. Since then, I've used every Apple and Microsoft operating system you've heard of, and many you've never known, such as A/UX and Microsoft Xenix. I've also used well over 100 different Unix and Linux distributions. So, when I say Linux Mint 22 -- the latest long-term support (LTS) version of Linux Mint -- is not just the best Linux desktop, but the best desktop, it means something. - Materials needed: Windows PC, internet connection, and a DVD-RW or USB stick with 3GB or more storage - Estimated time: 2 hours - Estimated cost: $5' -- source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-replace-windows-with-linux-mint-on-you… With the continuing enshittification [1] of Windows, maybe a good time to get folks moved to a less intrusive operating system... Cheers, Peter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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First Look at Serpent OS: Minimal GNOME Desktop and Rust-Based Package Manager
by Peter Reutemann 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

'The wait is finally over and Ikey Doherty’s long-anticipated Serpent OS distribution has an ISO image that people can download and test on bare metal hardware or virtual machines to see what the fuss is all about. Four years ago I broke news that Ikey Doherty is making a new distro called Serpent Linux (it was later changed to Serpent OS) aiming to provide the Linux community with a truly modern distribution for people who want to just use Linux. The name of the distribution is inspired by the Serpent game created by Ikey Doherty. At that time, Serpent OS was supposed to ship with the KDE Plasma desktop environment by default, but things have changed and GNOME was chosen as the default for the initial release. The first pre-alpha ISO image includes the older GNOME 45.3 release, but I’m sure the final release will use a more recent version. Serpent OS offers a minimal GNOME desktop experience with only a handful of apps pre-installed, such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser, GNOME Console terminal emulator, GNOME Text Editor text editing app, Zed code editor, GNOME’s Loupe image viewer, and GNOME Extensions. However, Serpent OS supports Flatpak apps if you need to install the apps you need, but Flatpak support is not installed by default in this pre-alpha release.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/first-look-at-serpent-os-minimal-gnome-desktop-and-ru… Cheers, Peter

1 0

“In the future, computers may weigh no more than 1.5 tonnes.”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '24

01 Aug '24

Nice collection of vintage computer pics/clips, along with some pithy quotes from the times (1945-1990). Which ones can you identify without looking at the captions? <https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/>

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The Unintended Consequences Linux’s Wayland Adoption Will Have on BSD
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '24

31 Jul '24

'Like most people who use Linux as their daily driver, I’ve been pleased lately to see that Wayland is finally getting some serious traction and is on its way to being the default display server for most mainstream Linux distributions. It’s been a long trip from the days when we first heard that X was on its way out and that Wayland was on its way in — 15 years as a matter of fact — so the better performance, more svelte code base, enhanced security, and all of the other advantages that Wayland brings to the table being just about here for some of us, and already here for others, is indeed good news. But before we pop the cork on the champagne bottles and start the celebrations, perhaps we should consider that this good news for Linux might not be good news for those running BSD or one of the Unixes, which is something that normally would never occur to me to think about since I’ve never tried to use BSD. The only reason I’m thinking about it now is because this weekend I ran across a post by Chris Siebenmann, a Unix systems administrator at the University of Toronto’s CS Labs. Being a Unix guy by day (and I suspect a BSD guy by night), he’s all on what Wayland on Linux means to BSD/Unix stuck on X, and he’s been thinking about what Linux’s move to Wayland is going to mean for desktop BSDs and Unixes. “Once upon a time, the future of Unix desktops looked fairly straightforward,” he wrote. “Everyone ran on X, so the major threat to cross-Unix portability in major desktops was the use of Linux only APIs, which became especially D-Bus and systemd related things. Unix desktops that were less attached to tight integration with the Linux environment would probably stay easily available on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and so on.” The main thing I got from that is that for a long time, the BSDs have benefited somewhat from Linux. In this case, because both operating systems use X, it was relatively easy (“relatively” probably being the key word here) to port most popular “Linux” desktop environments to BSD. The trouble is, according to Siebenmann, those days might be coming to an end.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2024/07/the-unintended-consequences-linuxs-wayland-ad… Cheers, Peter

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LZ4 Compression Algorithm Gets Multi-Threaded Update
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jul '24

29 Jul '24

'Slashdot reader Seven Spirals brings news about the lossless compression algorithm LZ4: The already wonderful performance of the LZ4 compressor just got better with multi-threaded additions to it's codebase. In many cases, LZ4 can compress data faster than it can be written to disk giving this particular compressor some very special applications. The Linux kernel as well as filesystems like ZFS use LZ4 compression extensively. This makes LZ4 more comparable to the Zstd compression algorithm, which has had multi-threaded performance for a while, but cannot match the LZ4 compressor for speed, though it has some direct LZ4. >From Linuxiac.com: - On Windows 11, using an Intel 7840HS CPU, compression time has improved from 13.4 seconds to just 1.8 seconds — a 7.4 times speed increase. - macOS users with the M1 Pro chip will see a reduction from 16.6 seconds to 2.55 seconds, a 6.5 times faster performance. - For Linux users on an i7-9700k, the compression time has been reduced from 16.2 seconds to 3.05 seconds, achieving a 5.4 times speed boost... The release supports lesser-known architectures such as LoongArch, RISC-V, and others, ensuring LZ4's portability across various platforms. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/07/28/0057247 Cheers, Peter

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What Happens If You Connect Windows XP To the Internet In 2024?
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jul '24

29 Jul '24

'Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger writes: Have you ever wondered if it's true you can instantly get malware? In this video, a person connects an XP instance directly to the internet with no firewall to see just how fast it gets compromised by malware, rootkits, malicious services and new user accounts. The answer — fast! Malwarebytes eventually finds eight different viruses/Trojan horses -- and a DNS changer. (One IP address leads back to the Russian federation.) It's fun to watch -- within just a few hours a new Windows user has even added themself. And for good measure, he also opens up Internet Explorer... - Windows XP -- very insecure, they conclude at the end of the video. Very easy for random software from the internet to get more privileges than you, and it is very hard to solve that. - Also, just out of curiosity I tried this on Windows 7. And even with all of the same settings, nothing happened. I let it run for 10 hours. So it seems like this may be a problem in historical Windows.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/07/28/2137216 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Secure Boot is completely broken on 200+ models from 5 big device makers
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '24

26 Jul '24

'On Thursday, researchers from security firm Binarly revealed that Secure Boot is completely compromised on more than 200 device models sold by Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, Intel, and Supermicro. The cause: a cryptographic key underpinning Secure Boot on those models that was compromised in 2022. In a public GitHub repository committed in December of that year, someone working for multiple US-based device manufacturers published what’s known as a platform key, the cryptographic key that forms the root-of-trust anchor between the hardware device and the firmware that runs on it. The repository was located at https://github.com/raywu-aaeon/Ryzen2000_4000.git, and it's not clear when it was taken down. The repository included the private portion of the platform key in encrypted form. The encrypted file, however, was protected by a four-character password, a decision that made it trivial for Binarly, and anyone else with even a passing curiosity, to crack the passcode and retrieve the corresponding plain text. The disclosure of the key went largely unnoticed until January 2023, when Binarly researchers found it while investigating a supply-chain incident. Now that the leak has come to light, security experts say it effectively torpedoes the security assurances offered by Secure Boot. “It’s a big problem,” said Martin Smolár, a malware analyst specializing in rootkits who reviewed the Binarly research and spoke to me about it. “It’s basically an unlimited Secure Boot bypass for these devices that use this platform key. So until device manufacturers or OEMs provide firmware updates, anyone can basically… execute any malware or untrusted code during system boot. Of course, privileged access is required, but that’s not a problem in many cases.”' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/07/secure-boot-is-completely-compromi… Cheers, Peter

2 1

distrobox
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '24

26 Jul '24

Just came across distrobox, which seems a useful extension to container managers like docker/podman/lilipod, allowing you to run other distros in your shell: 'Use any Linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Distrobox uses podman, docker or lilipod to create containers using the Linux distribution of your choice. The created container will be tightly integrated with the host, allowing sharing of the HOME directory of the user, external storage, external USB devices and graphical apps (X11/Wayland), and audio.' -- source: https://distrobox.it/ That should be especially useful for people working in environments where they are forced to use a specific host OS. As long as they have one of the supported container managers available, they can easily switch! Cheers, Peter

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Anyone can Access Deleted and Private Repository Data on GitHub
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '24

26 Jul '24

'You can access data from deleted forks, deleted repositories and even private repositories on GitHub. And it is available forever. This is known by GitHub, and intentionally designed that way. This is such an enormous attack vector for all organizations that use GitHub that we’re introducing a new term: Cross Fork Object Reference (CFOR). A CFOR vulnerability occurs when one repository fork can access sensitive data from another fork (including data from private and deleted forks). Similar to an Insecure Direct Object Reference, in CFOR users supply commit hashes to directly access commit data that otherwise would not be visible to them. ' -- source: https://trufflesecurity.com/blog/anyone-can-access-deleted-and-private-repo… Interesting read! Cheers, Peter

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Run0 vs Sudo: What’s the Difference?
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jul '24

25 Jul '24

'Run0 is a new privilege escalation program for Systemd-based Linux systems. Similar to sudo, it allows you to run commands as a root user and access your machine’s internals. In this article, we compare Run0 vs Sudo to help you determine the right privilege escalation tool for you.' -- source: https://www.maketecheasier.com/run0-vs-sudo-whats-the-difference/ Honestly, I only came across Run0 the other day. I still remember the days of using "su" to get stuff done, long before sudo. Is anyone using Run0? What are your experiences? Cheers, Peter

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It Never Rains But It Pours
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Jul '24

24 Jul '24

Instructive to read this notice <https://rimuhosting.com/maintenance.jsp?server_maint_oid=5241959612&sn_oid=…> about progress in fixing an issue in the Dallas co-lo centre for Rimu hosting. As a customer, I wasn’t affected (though I could have been), and I have no complaints with the way this was handled--it was great that they kept customers like me apprised of developments like this. The interesting part is how a single initial failure can lead to a cascade of other failures. From the description, the original problem was a breakdown of a transformer feeding power from the grid. To allow it to be repaired, the power was switched to a backup generator. The generator then shut down with a belt problem. So power went to UPS batteries. These ran flat before the generator could be brought back to operation. So various parts of the facility were left without power. After power was restored, it was discovered that some (network?) switches had failed to come up. So a bunch of physical boxes holding customers’ VMs had to be physically moved to a different location where they could get connectivity again. From that point, the disruption was (mostly) over as far as customers were concerned, though there was obviously still work to be done to get the infrastructure back to its normal state. I think that a lot of theoretical statistical modelling of the odds of system failures tends to assume that failures of individual components will be independent of each other. Yet time and time again in the real world, we discover that this is not the case.

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Switzerland Now Requires All Government Software To Be Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '24

24 Jul '24

'Switzerland has enacted the "Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Government Tasks" (EMBAG), mandating open-source software (OSS) in the public sector to enhance transparency, security, and efficiency. "This new law requires all public bodies to disclose the source code of software developed by or for them unless third-party rights or security concerns prevent it," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "This 'public money, public code' approach aims to enhance government operations' transparency, security, and efficiency." From the report: Making this move wasn't easy. It began in 2011 when the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published its court application, Open Justitia, under an OSS license. The proprietary legal software company Weblaw wasn't happy about this. There were heated political and legal fights for more than a decade. Finally, the EMBAG was passed in 2023. Now, the law not only allows the release of OSS by the Swiss government or its contractors, but also requires the code to be released under an open-source license "unless the rights of third parties or security-related reasons would exclude or restrict this." Professor Dr. Matthias Sturmer, head of the Institute for Public Sector Transformation at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, led the fight for this law. He hailed it as "a great opportunity for government, the IT industry, and society." Sturmer believes everyone will benefit from this regulation, as it reduces vendor lock-in for the public sector, allows companies to expand their digital business solutions, and potentially leads to reduced IT costs and improved services for taxpayers. In addition to mandating OSS, the EMBAG also requires the release of non-personal and non-security-sensitive government data as Open Government Data (OGD). This dual "open by default" approach marks a significant paradigm shift towards greater openness and practical reuse of software and data. Implementing the EMBAG is expected to serve as a model for other countries considering similar measures. It aims to promote digital sovereignty and encourage innovation and collaboration within the public sector. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (BFS) is leading the law's implementation, but the organizational and financial aspects of the OSS releases still need to be clarified. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/07/23/2025220 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '24

24 Jul '24

'Linux Mint 22 is now available for download as the latest stable release of this popular Ubuntu-based operating system for the masses featuring the Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments. Dubbed “Wilma”, Linux Mint 22 is based on the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series and uses the Linux 6.8 kernel. It will receive security updates until 2029 and new kernel versions as they’re available upstream in the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS repositories. The flagship edition features the latest Cinnamon 6.2 desktop environment while the Xfce and MATE editions ship with the Xfce 4.18 and MATE 1.26 desktop environments. The Wayland session in the Cinnamon edition is still in an experimental state and Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon will default to X11. Linux Mint 22 comes with PipeWire as the default sound server, support for the new Debian DEB822 format, GTK4 support for themes, improved HiDPI support during boot, better language support, artwork improvements, and FAT32 in File System Transposition mode support for the ISO images. Software-wise, Linux Mint 22 features the Mozilla Thunderbird email client as a native DEB package, a new GNOME Online Accounts GTK independent XApp to support the Online Accounts functionality, and a new Web App called Matrix, which is preinstalled by default and connects you to the Matrix chat network. Furthermore, it features JXL (JPEG-XL) image support in the Pix image viewer, a confirmation dialog pop-up when deleting a snapshot in the Timeshift backup tool, the ability to configure the default position of newly created notes in the Sticky note-taking app, and support for the Xed text editor to duplicate selected text. It also disables unverified Flatpak apps by default in the Software Manager app, which received some welcome changes like improved multi-threading, a new preferences page, and a banner slideshow. In addition, Software Manager now loads faster than before and the main window appears instantly. On top of that, Linux Mint 22 comes with a new package called xapp-thumbnailer-gimp that provides a thumbnailer for GIMP (.xcf) files and an updated xfce4-xapp-status-plugin tray applet that lets you configure icon sizes for full-color and symbolic icons.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/linux-mint-22-wilma-is-now-available-for-download-her… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Apache Software Foundation is Retiring its Feather Logo
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '24

23 Jul '24

'The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced plans to evolve its corporate logo and brand system to better represent its "community over code" ethos and promote inclusivity. Why? Because the ASF took seriously concerns raised by Natives in Tech and other members of the open-source community regarding the appropriateness of using Indigenous imagery. So, the ASF will retire its iconic feather logo, which has been a central part of the foundation's identity since 1999. The organization acknowledges that, as a non-Indigenous entity, it is inappropriate to continue using Indigenous themes or language in its branding. The group also realizes that the logo has been very popular for almost 30 years, but they feel this is the right thing to do. This comes after ASF changed the name of its flagship event to Community Over Code from ApacheCon. The ASF's Marketing and publicity team, along with a Branding Steering Committee composed of ASF Members, is collaborating with branding and design vendors to develop a new logo. This new visual identity will embody the Foundation's history of providing software for the public good while reflecting its global contributor base. The decision to update the brand extends beyond the logo. Changes also apply to ASF open-source projects that currently use Indigenous imagery. It will not--I and the ASF repeat--not change the Apache License or any released software. ' -- source: https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/apache-software-foundation-retiring-f… Cheers, Peter

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Imperfect, Linux-powered, DIY smart TV is the embodiment of ad fatigue
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '24

23 Jul '24

'Smart TV owners have been subjected to a growing amount of ads and tracking. Ad fatigue, only worsened by a trend that sees streaming providers trying to force customers into subscriptions with commercials, is understandable. We’re at the point where someone would rather use a broken laptop dangling off a TV than be subjected to the watchful eye of the TV's native operating system. Earlier this month, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware, a blogger named Carl Riis, who says he’s a software engineer, shared his DIY project, a Linux-based “smart TV.” Riis’ project doesn’t stand out because it’s the most unique, clever, or clean. In fact, if you’re the type of person willing to pay a lot for TVs with strong aesthetic appeal, like TVs that can look like artwork or appear transparent, you’ll be put off by the EarlGreyTV. The system uses an old Lenovo laptop that has a broken keyboard and is attached to a TV by a string. As Riis wrote: “This may look a little insane, but it has been a great way to keep things neat while retaining access to the laptop."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/broken-linux-laptop-makes-for-a-fin… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Microsoft: Linux Is the Top Operating System on Azure Today
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '24

23 Jul '24

'Azure used to be a cloud platform dedicated to Windows. Now, it's the most widely used operating system on Microsoft Azure. The New Stack's Joab Jackson writes: These days, Microsoft expends considerable effort that Linux runs as smoothly as possible on Azure, according to a talk given earlier this year at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit given by two Microsoft Azure Linux Platforms Group program managers, Jack Aboutboul, and Krum Kashan. "Linux is the #1 operating system in Azure today," Aboutoul said. And all must be supported in a way that Microsoft users have come to expects. Hence, the need for the Microsoft's Linux Platforms Group, which provides support Linux to both the internal customers and to Azure customers. These days, the duo of engineers explained, Microsoft knows about as much as anyone about how to operate Linux at hyperscale. [...] As of today, there are hundreds of Azure and Azure-based services running on Linux, including the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), OpenAI, HDInsight, and many of the other database services. "A lot of the infrastructure powering everything else is running on Linux," Aboutoul said. "They're different flavors of Linux running all over the place," Aboutoul said. To run these services, Microsoft maintains its own kernel, Azure Linux, and in 2023 the company released its own version of Linux, Azure Linux. But Azure Linux is just a small portion of all the other flavors of Linux running on Azure, all of which Microsoft must work with to support. Overall, there are about 20,000 third-party Software as a Service (SaaS) packages in the Azure marketplace that rely on some Linux distribution. And when things go wrong, it is the Azure service engineers who get the help tickets. The company keeps a set of endorsed Linux distributions, which include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, Flatcar, Suse, Canonical, and Oracle Linux and CentOS (as managed by OpenLogic, not Red Hat). [...] Overall, the company gets about 1,000 images a month from these endorsed partners alone. Many of the distributions have multiple images (Suse has a regular one, and another one for high-performance computing, for instance). ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/07/22/2157209 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Nvidia Will Fully Transition To Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules With R560 Drivers
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '24

19 Jul '24

'Nvidia is ready to fully transition to open-source Linux GPU kernel drivers, starting with the R555 series and planning a complete shift with the R560 series. The open-source kernel modules will only be available for select newer GPUs, while older architectures like Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta must continue using proprietary drivers. TechSpot reports: According to Nvidia, the open-source GPU kernel modules have helped deliver "equivalent or better" application performance compared to its proprietary kernels. The company has also added new features like Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) support, confidential computing, and the coherent memory architectures of the Grace platform to its open-source kernels. [...] For compatible GPUs, the default version of the driver installed by all methods is switching from proprietary to open-source. However, users will have the ability to manually select the closed-source modules if they are still available for their platform. Unfortunately, the open-source kernel modules are not available for GPUs from the older Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures, meaning people still running a GTX 980 or GTX 1080 will have to continue using Nvidia's proprietary drivers. For mixed deployments with older and newer GPUs in the same system, Nvidia recommends continuing to use the proprietary driver for full compatibility. "Nvidia has moved most of its proprietary functions into a proprietary, closed-source firmware blob," adds Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy. "The parts of Nvidia's GPUs that interact with the broader Linux system are open, but the user-space drivers and firmware are none of your or the OSS community's business." ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/07/18/2050235 Reminds me a bit of the Brother Linux drivers that I've used in the past: open-source scripts around binary, closed-source blobs... Cheers, Peter

1 0

SUSE Requests openSUSE to Rebrand
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jul '24

18 Jul '24

'Believe it or not, an unexpected conflict has arisen in the openSUSE community with its long-time supporter and namesake, the SUSE company. At the heart of this tension lies a quiet request that has stirred not-so-quiet ripples across the open source landscape: SUSE has formally asked openSUSE to discontinue using its brand name. Richard Brown, a key figure within the openSUSE project, shared insights into the discussions that have unfolded behind closed doors. Despite SUSE’s request’s calm and respectful tone, the implications of not meeting it could be far-reaching, threatening the symbiotic relationship that has benefited both entities over the years. Let’s face it: SUSE has been more than just a namesake for openSUSE; it has actively provided resources and support far beyond what it would ordinarily need for its business operations. This generosity has fostered a thriving openSUSE project that has excelled under SUSE’s goodwill and informal support, including contributions made by SUSE employees on company time. However, the recent request for a branding separation has overshadowed this partnership. If openSUSE does not handle this request with the sensitivity and cooperation it demands, the project risks not just a reduction in support from SUSE but a potential shift in priorities away from it. The “Factory first” policy, a cornerstone of the engineering synergy between SUSE and openSUSE, could also be scrutinized, emphasizing the gravity of the current situation.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/suse-requests-opensuse-to-rebrand/ Cheers, Peter

2 1

What Is Code?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Jul '24

11 Jul '24

Apologies if you already know about this essay, but I just discovered it today: <https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/>. It’s long. It’s breezy, entertaining, and manages to convey some actual content. Great for recommending to friends or family members who ask what software development is all about.

1 0

Debian Curl Now Supports HTTP3: What You Need To Know
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jul '24

09 Jul '24

'Good news for Debian users! HTTP3 arrives in Debian Curl. Yes, starting with curl 8.0.0-2, Debian users can now utilize HTTP3. This marks a significant upgrade in the capabilities of curl, enhancing its performance and efficiency in handling web communications. This new feature can be easily tested using the --http3-only flag.' -- source: https://ostechnix.com/debian-curl-supports-http3/ Cheers, Peter

2 1

No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jul '24

09 Jul '24

'We are working on a new scheme to replace the GRUB bootloader with a fast, secure, Linux-based, user-space solution: nmbl (for no more boot loader). Most people are familiar with GRUB, a powerful, flexible, fully-featured bootloader that is used on multiple architectures (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le OpenFirmware). Although GRUB is quite versatile and capable, its features create complexity that is difficult to maintain, and that both duplicate and lag behind the Linux kernel while also creating numerous security holes. On the other hand, the Linux kernel, which has a large developer base, benefits from fast feature development, quick responses to vulnerabilities and greater overall scrutiny. We (Red Hat boot loader engineering) will present our solution to this problem, which is to use the Linux kernel as its own bootloader. Loaded by the EFI stub on UEFI, and packed into a unified kernel image (UKI), the kernel, initramfs, and kernel command line, contain everything they need to reach the final boot target. All necessary drivers, filesystem support, and networking are already built in and code duplication is avoided. We will showcase the work done so far, and ask you for your feedback and use cases.' -- source: https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/W3AVCT/ -- video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywrSDLp926M Cheers, Peter

1 0

FreeBSD Contributor Mocks Gloomy Predictions for the Open Source Movement
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jul '24

08 Jul '24

'In Communications of the ACM,/em>, long-time FreeBSD contributor Poul-Henning Kamp mocks the idea that the free and open-source software has "come apart" and "will end in tears and regret." Economists and others focused on money — like my bank — have had a lot of trouble figuring out the free and open source software (FOSS) phenomenon, and eventually they seem to have reached the conclusion that it just makes no sense. So, they go with the flow. Recently, very serious people in the FOSS movement have started to write long and thoughtful opinion pieces about how it has all come apart and will end in tears and regret. Allow me to disagree... What follows is a humorous history of how the Open Source movement bested a series of ill-conceived marketing failures starting after the "utterly bad" 1980s when IBM had an "unimaginably huge monopoly" — and an era of vendor lock-in from companies trying to be the next IBM: Out of that utter market failure came Minix, (Net/Free/Open)BSD, and Linux, at a median year of approximately 1991. I can absolutely guarantee that if we had been able to buy a reasonably priced and solid Unix for our 32-bit PCs — no strings attached — nobody would be running FreeBSD or Linux today, except possibly as an obscure hobby. Bill Gates would also have had a lot less of our money... The essay moves on to when "that dot-com thing happened, fueled by the availability of FOSS operating systems, which did a much better job than any operating system you could buy — not just for the price, but in absolute terms of performance on any given piece of hardware. Thus, out of utter market failure, the FOSS movement was born." And ultimately, the essay ends with our present day, and the phenomenon of companies that "make a business out of FOSS or derivatives thereof..." The "F" in FOSS was never silent. In retrospect, it seems clear that open source was not so much the goal itself as a means to an end, which is freedom: freedom to fix broken things, freedom from people who thought they could clutch the source code tightly and wield our ignorance of it as a weapon to force us all to pay for and run Windows Vista. But the FOSS movement has won what it wanted, and no matter how much oldsters dream about their glorious days as young revolutionaries, it is not coming back; the frustrations and anger of IT in 2024 are entirely different from those of 1991. One very big difference is that more people have realized that source code is a liability rather than an asset. For some, that realization came creeping along the path from young teenage FOSS activists in the late 1990s to CIOs of BigCorp today. For most of us, I expect, it was the increasingly crushing workload of maintaining legacy code bases...' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/07/07/0243241 Cheers, Peter

1 0

“RegreSSHion” vulnerability in OpenSSH gives attackers root on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '24

03 Jul '24

'Researchers have warned of a critical vulnerability affecting the OpenSSH networking utility that can be exploited to give attackers complete control of Linux and Unix servers with no authentication required. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-6387, allows unauthenticated remote code execution with root system rights on Linux systems that are based on glibc, an open source implementation of the C standard library. The vulnerability is the result of a code regression introduced in 2020 that reintroduced CVE-2006-5051, a vulnerability that was fixed in 2006. With thousands, if not millions, of vulnerable servers populating the Internet, this latest vulnerability could pose a significant risk. [...] The vulnerability affects the following: - OpenSSH versions earlier than 4.4p1 are vulnerable to this signal handler race condition unless they are patched for CVE-2006-5051 and CVE-2008-4109. - Versions from 4.4p1 up to, but not including, 8.5p1 are not vulnerable due to a transformative patch for CVE-2006-5051, which made a previously unsafe function secure. - The vulnerability resurfaces in versions from 8.5p1 up to, but not including, 9.8p1 due to the accidental removal of a critical component in a function.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/07/regresshion-vulnerability-in-opens… OpenSSH 9.8 was released July 1st: https://www.openssh.com/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Made Move To Wayland
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Jul '24

01 Jul '24

I’d been running Wayland OK on my laptop for some months now, but I held off putting it on my main machine for one reason: when I logged into a Wayland session, Emacs would not recognize my Compose key (which I have set to Caps Lock). Today I finally figured out I have to install the “emacs-pgtk” package instead of “emacs-gtk”; the former is built with a version of GTK that works with Wayland. And yes, my Compose key works again. Still have to get used to slightly different input behaviour: previously, once I hit Compose, nothing would appear until I finished the whole key sequence. Now it echoes each keystroke immediately as I type it, in place, overwriting the previous echo (starting with an underline for the Compose key itself), then when I have typed the last key, it overwrites the echo area with the final character.

2 6

From Jupyter To JupyterLab
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Jun '24

28 Jun '24

I’ve been using Jupyter <https://jupyter.org/> as a convenient basis for “scratchpad” programming (not just in Python, but also some other languages) for a while now. I had heard about this next-generation “JupyterLab” thing they were working on, but always held off trying it out. Then I did my usual monthly upgrade of Debian Unstable on my main machine a few days ago, and this time my Jupyter installation broke. So I updated my wrapper scripts for building Jupyter from source, to check out more recent versions of all the necessary components. Got the build done, started it up, and ... it seems my Jupyter has turned into JupyterLab. Yup, it has a new interface now. The file-manager display no longer seems to open things with a single click; that now only selects items, and you then have to perform an action (like open a notebook) from a right-click menu. And there is no “open in new tab/window” menu item; creating a new tab always happens when opening a notebook, while opening a subfolder always replaces the current tab contents. I used to be able to middle-click on a folder to open it in a new tab, but that option is now gone. There is an option in the right-click menu to “Copy Shareable Link”. When you do this on a notebook or folder and paste the result into the address bar, it opens the item in what I can only call “lab” mode. The window now has three panes, with the middle one an editor-type display, for viewing/editing notebook contents and other document content. The left-hand pane can show various things, selected by clicking one of the icons in its leftmost margin: it can show folder contents, or the table of contents of the current notebook, or a summary of open notebooks, running processes etc. And in the right-hand pane, there are various kinds of “tools” (for debugging, inspection etc) that only seem to appear when viewing notebook content. Ah, discovered how to control the visibility of this “tool” pane: it has two icons for selecting the two different categories of this it can display. But if you click the icon for the section that is already showing, the whole pane shrinks down to a narrow strip just showing the icons. Click again to expand the pane, of course. Further ah, same thing happens with the left-hand pane: click the icon for the section that’s already showing, and that pane too shrinks down. Hiding both the left- and right-hand panes brings you almost back to the old-style minimal-frills notebook/document display, except it only takes a click to bring one of those extras back. The middle pane has its own tab system, to let you have multiple documents open at once. You can drag its internal tabs around to tile them vertically or horizontally. And you can just drag a document to here from the folder display on the left to open it. Click on the document tab header, and that item opens in a separate browser window/tab. If nothing is open here it defaults to showing a “Launcher” tab, with icons for creating notebooks, opening terminal sessions, and creating other document types. The “lab” mode is activated by having an extra “/lab” part in the URL; if you remove this, it reverts to the old-style view of a single folder or notebook. Another thing that has changed is the way notebooks are saved. Previously, there was a menu option to “save and checkpoint” (with no option to do a manual save without checkpointing). And I found that if you tried to close the view of a modified notebook, it would ask to confirm you wanted to close the tab/window, but regardless of which you selected, the notebook would still be saved back to the file. Now that confirm-close trick no longer does saving; you have to explicitly select Save from the File menu, or hit CTRL/S. Checkpointing might still happen automatically as part of autosaving; I can’t find a menu option for explicitly creating a checkpoint, only for restoring from one. So anyway, a lot of intriguing new stuff in there to discover. If you like experimenting with code (as I do), Jupyter can be a great way to do it.

1 0

Superfile: A Modern Terminal File Manager for Linux and macOS
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jun '24

20 Jun '24

'Superfile is a modern terminal file manager that recently caught my attention; it’s not only easy to use but is very user-friendly compared to its alternatives, such as Ranger, MC, or nnn. It allows you to create files and directories, view (process, metadata, clipboard), provide a navigation pane, create multiple panels to work in two separate directories, support plugins, offer a variety of themes, and much more. The project is new, so there have been active updates every week, allowing you to see new features quickly. I’ve also been using it for a few days, and honestly, one key factor in using DE in Linux for me was its easy-to-use file manager, but with Superfile, there’s no need for that now.' -- source: https://linuxtldr.com/installing-superfile/ I've used mc in the past, being familiar with norton commander, but I might give Superfile a go in the future. Cheers, Peter

1 0

systemd-tmpfiles, deleting /home
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

Saw this on my mastodon feed: 'TIL (thankfully second hand) that running "systemd-tmpfiles --purge" will delete /home in systemd 256 [1]. Apparently if you think linux is mainly for running cloud services, this seems reasonable to you. Or something. [1] tested with systemd-tmpfiles --dry-run --purge on debian. I guess it _could_ be a Debian addition, but I'm guessing not.' -- source: https://mathstodon.xyz/@bremner/112615591101488528 Anyone keen on giving it a go??? :-) Cheers, Peter

2 1

DietPi Released a New Version 9.5
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

Just saw these release notes come across my feed: https://dietpi.com/docs/releases/v9_5/ Since I'd never heard of DiePi before: 'DietPi is a highly optimised & minimal Debian-based Linux distribution. DietPi is extremely lightweight at its core, and also extremely easy to install and use. Setting up a single board computer (SBC) or even a computer, for both regular or server use, takes time and skill. DietPi provides an easy way to install and run favourite software you choose.' -- source: https://dietpi.com/docs/ And it supports a range of boards: https://dietpi.com/docs/hardware/ RPis, Odroid, Pine64, Radxa, Sparky, ASUS Tinker board, NanoPi, Orange Pi Cheers, Peter

1 0

KDE Plasma 6.1 Released
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

'"The KDE community announced the latest release of their popular desktop environment: Plasma 6.1," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. From the announcement: While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct, Plasma 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level. In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too). Among some of the new features in this release you will find improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server, overhauled and streamlined desktop edit mode, restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland, synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color, making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it, edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edges between screens), explicit sync support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland, and triple buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/18/2050203 Cheers, Peter

1 0

High-severity vulnerabilities affect a wide range of Asus router models
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jun '24

18 Jun '24

'Hardware manufacturer Asus has released updates patching multiple critical vulnerabilities that allow hackers to remotely take control of a range of router models with no authentication or interaction required of end users. The most critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-3080 is an authentication bypass flaw that can allow remote attackers to log into a device without authentication. The vulnerability, according to the Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team / Coordination Center (TWCERT/CC), carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. [...] A second vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-3079 affects the same router models. It stems from a buffer overflow flaw and allows remote hackers who have already obtained administrative access to an affected router to execute commands. TWCERT/CC is warning of a third vulnerability affecting various Asus router models. It’s tracked as CVE-2024-3912 and can allow remote hackers to execute commands with no user authentication required.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/06/high-severity-vulnerabilities-affe… The article lists affected routers and links to their respective bios/firmware pages. Cheers, Peter

1 0

The Ladybird browser project
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

Just stumbled across a browser project on my mastodon feed that I hadn't heard of before: Ladybird Browser -- source: https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/111932702661268627 -- project page: https://ladybird.dev/ -- code: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird Anybody ever tried that? Cheers, Peter

1 0

Ransomware attackers quickly weaponize PHP vulnerability with 9.8 severity rating
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

'Ransomware criminals have quickly weaponized an easy-to-exploit vulnerability in the PHP programming language that executes malicious code on web servers, security researchers said. As of Thursday, Internet scans performed by security firm Censys had detected 1,000 servers infected by a ransomware strain known as TellYouThePass, down from 1,800 detected on Monday. The servers, primarily located in China, no longer display their usual content; instead, many list the site’s file directory, which shows all files have been given a .locked extension, indicating they have been encrypted. An accompanying ransom note demands roughly $6,500 in exchange for the decryption key. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4577 and carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, stems from errors in the way PHP converts Unicode characters into ASCII. A feature built into Windows known as Best Fit allows attackers to use a technique known as argument injection to convert user-supplied input into characters that pass malicious commands to the main PHP application. Exploits allow attackers to bypass CVE-2012-1823, a critical code execution vulnerability patched in PHP in 2012. CVE-2024-4577 affects PHP only when it runs in a mode known as CGI, in which a web server parses HTTP requests and passes them to a PHP script for processing. Even when PHP isn’t set to CGI mode, however, the vulnerability may still be exploitable when PHP executables such as php.exe and php-cgi.exe are in directories that are accessible by the web server. This configuration is extremely rare, with the exception of the XAMPP platform, which uses it by default. An additional requirement appears to be that the Windows locale—used to personalize the OS to the local language of the user—must be set to either Chinese or Japanese.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/06/thousands-of-servers-infected-with… Cheers, Peter

2 1

Raspberry Pi is Now a Public Company
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '24

12 Jun '24

'Who would have thought that Raspberry Pi, the maker of the tiny, cheap, single-board computers, would become a public company? Yet, this is exactly what's happening: Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at $3.56 per share, valuing it at $689 million. Shortly after that, the company's shares jumped a nice 32% to $4.70. It means that Raspberry Pi could end up raising more than $200 million during its IPO process. Raspberry Pi has sold 60 million units since its inception. In 2023 alone, Raspberry Pi generated $266 million in revenue and $66 million in gross profit. Raspberry Pi Ltd, the public company, is the commercial subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation says it wants to make it easier for people to learn coding through a low-cost, programmable computer. It also remains the main shareholder of Raspberry Pi Ltd.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/11/144251 Cheers, Peter

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One-Line Patch For Intel Meteor Lake Yields Up To 72% Better Performance
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jun '24

11 Jun '24

'Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Covered last week on Phoronix was a new patch from Intel that with tuning to the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver was showing big wins for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" performance and power efficiency. I was curious with the Intel claims posted for a couple benchmarks and thus over the weekend set out to run many Intel Meteor Lake benchmarks on this one-line kernel patch... The results are great for boosting the Linux performance of Intel Core ultra laptops with as much as 72% better performance. [...] When looking at the CPU power consumption overall, for the wide variety of workloads tested it was just a slight uptick in power use and thus overall leading to slightly better power efficiency too. See all the data here. So this is quite a nice one-line Linux kernel patch for Meteor Lake and will hopefully be mainlined to the Linux kernel for Linux 6.11 if not squeezing it in as a "fix" for the current Linux 6.10 cycle. It's just too bad though that it took six months after launch for this tuned EPP value to be determined. Fresh benchmarks between Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen on the latest Linux software will be coming up soon on Phoronix.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/06/10/2031256 Cheers, Peter

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Nasty Linux Bug, CVE-2024-1086, is on the loose
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '24

05 Jun '24

'A few months back, CVE-2024-1086, a nasty use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's netfilter, was revealed. With a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8, this bug, with the foundation for most Linux network firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) programs, was a nasty little security hole. With it, Netfliter's table component could be exploited to achieve local privilege escalation. Worse still, you didn't need to be terribly clever to use it, so a local attacker could escalate privileges from a regular user to root in no time flat. Adding insult to injury, this vulnerability was present in pretty much all the major Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. In short, pretty much any Linux distribution using any kernel version between 5.14 and 6.6.14 could be hacked. Ouch! But, the fix has been in place since January 2024, when the flaw was patched. So, if we've been good little system administrators, we shouldn't have anything to worry about, right? Right!? Wrong. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has flagged it and added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. It turns out that it's being actively exploited in the wild.' -- source: https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/nasty-linux-bug-cve20241086-loose Cheers, Peter

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The Raspberry Pi 5 Gets an AI Upgrade
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '24

05 Jun '24

'Today, Raspberry Pi introduced a new kit that adds AI functionality to the Raspberry Pi 5. ZDNet reports: The Raspberry Pi AI kit combines an M.2-format Hailo 8L AI accelerator with the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ to create a powerful yet power-efficient solution. The Hailo-8L NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chip, capable of 13 trillion operations per second (TOPS), is built into an M.2 2242 form factor module that attaches to the M.2 HAT+. When connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 board running the latest Raspberry Pi OS, the NPU is automatically available for AI computing tasks. The AI module also has direct access to the Raspberry Pi's camera software stack and works with both first-party and third-party cameras. The NPU allows the Raspberry Pi 5 to perform AI tasks such as object and facial recognition, human pose analysis, and more. Using an NPU frees up the Raspberry Pi 5's CPU, allowing it to focus on other tasks, making your projects more efficient and powerful. The Raspberry Pi AI kit is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler, ensuring optimal performance without overheating. Additionally, you can purchase a clear protective layer to prevent damage to the board, giving you peace of mind while working on your projects. The AI kit is priced at $70. It's available from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers, including PiHut, PiShop.us, and CanaKit. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/06/04/2037238 Cheers, Peter

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CentOS 7’s Final Countdown: 30 Days Left Until Support Ends
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '24

04 Jun '24

'In just 30 days, we’ll witness the end of an era for Linux with the cessation of support for CentOS 7—the last supported version of this once-dominant server operating system still receiving updates. Let’s take a quick look back at its journey. Ten years ago, on July 7, 2014, CentOS 7 was released as a fully compatible fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Since its initial CentOS 2 version in 2004, the distribution has become extremely popular, establishing itself as the go-to server operating system over the last decade. After nine minor version updates, the latest being CentOS 7.9, in November 2020, Red Hat made a significant announcement. It marked the end of CentOS as a server operating system and transitioned it to CentOS Stream—a rolling release distro and upstream public development branch for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). To complicate things further, CentOS 8, expected to receive updates until 2029, was prematurely retired at the end of December 2021. This leaves only CentOS 7 as the only version to complete its entire maintenance period, which ends in just 30 days on June 30, 2024. So, consider this as a final reminder if you’re still using CentOS 7 and haven’t yet migrated your system. Time is running out, and here are some alternative options to switch to a RHEL-compatible and supported replacement.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/centos-7-has-30-days-left-until-support-ends/ Cheers, Peter

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Fun With The du Command
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 May '24

29 May '24

Looking at the space taken up by my copy of the Blender source code: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender 1444272 blender Most of that is in the commit history: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git 1139640 blender/.git So how much isn’t? ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender 1139640 blender/.git 304632 blender Do you see what happened there? If you specify a directory, and then its containing directory on the same command, du will subtract the usage of the former from the latter. This gives you an easy way of determining the space taken up by a directory, not including particular subdirectories. This can be broken down even more: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender/extern blender/intern blender/source blender 1139640 blender/.git 40536 blender/extern 15712 blender/intern 105188 blender/source 143196 blender Here, “extern” is various open-source libraries from other sources, that have been copied into the Blender source tree, while “intern” is code that originated from Blender itself, that has been organized into its own libraries. And as you can see, there is still a whole bunch left in other subdirectories. Does this work recursively? ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender/intern/cycles blender/intern blender 1139640 blender/.git 8880 blender/intern/cycles 6832 blender/intern 288920 blender Yes it does. Here we can see that the Cycles renderer makes up a bit over half the contents of “intern”.

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datamash - basic numeric, textual and statistical operations
by Peter Reutemann 28 May '24

28 May '24

Hi everyone I quite often need to do some quick and dirty statistical calculations on the command-line and I typically use cat and sed to extract the data that I need from text files. In the past, I've then switched to LibreOffice Calc for some basic statistics like mean/stdev. Today, I finally spent a bit more time having a look around what else I can use directly on the command-line and came across the following that fits the bill perfectly: datamash - https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/ With that tool, I can finally apply a single command-line to textual output for generating a quick mean/stdev: ... | datamash mean 1 sstdev 1 --header-out mean(field-1) sstdev(field-1) 577.62815533981 128.99238940453 Cheers, Peter

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Memory Sealing 'mseal' System Call Merged For Linux 6.10
by Peter Reutemann 27 May '24

27 May '24

'"Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix: The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains: "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it, the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen. Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system... Memory sealing can automatically be applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and applications can additionally seal security-critical data at runtime. A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall." The mseal system call is designed to be used by the likes of the GNU C Library "glibc" while loading ELF executables to seal non-writable memory segments or by the Google Chrome web browser and other browsers for protecting security sensitive data structures.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/26/2117251 Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 24.04 Now Runs on the Nintendo Switch (Unofficially)
by Peter Reutemann 27 May '24

27 May '24

'"The fact it's possible at all is a credit to the ingenuity of the open-source community," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu: Switchroot is an open-source project that allows Android and Linux-based distros like Ubuntu to run on the Nintendo Switch — absolutely not something Nintendo approves of much less supports, endorses, or encourages, etc! I covered the loophole that made this possible back in 2018. Back then the NVIDIA Tegra X1-powered Nintendo Switch was still new and Linux support for much of the console's internal hardware in a formative state (a polite way to say 'not everything worked'). But as the popularity of Nintendo's handheld console ballooned (to understate it) so the 'alternative OS' Switch scene grew, and before long Linux support for Switch hardware was in full bloom... A number of Linux for Switchroot (L4S) distributions have since been released, designated as Linux for Tegra (L4T) builds. As these can boot from a microSD card it's even possible to dualboot the Switch OS with Linux, which is neat! Recently, a fresh set of L4T Ubuntu images were released based on the newest Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release. These builds work on all Switch versions, from the OG (exploit-friendly) unit through to newer, patched models (where a modchip is required)... I'm told all of the Nintendo Switch internal hardware now works under Linux, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sleep mode, accelerated graphics, the official dock... Everything, basically. And despite being a 7 year old ARM device the performance is said to remain decent. "Upstream snafus have delayed the release of builds with GNOME Shell..."' -- source: https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/05/26/035202 Cheers, Peter

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Disabling Google Search (Mis)Features
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 May '24

26 May '24

This article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you…> explains how you can add an option to a Google search URL to turn off the new AI functionality. Another option lets you specify that you want a verbatim search on what you typed, rather than a “fuzzy” search. It also describes how you can configure your browser for more convenient invocation of these options.

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Sovereign Tech Fund Backs FFmpeg Project with a €157K Infusion
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'Sovereign Tech Fund, a funding pot supported financially by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has once again shown itself to be one of Open Source’s great friends and supporters. After providing €1 million in financial support to GNOME at the end of last year and investing more than €200K in the GStreamer project earlier this year, the company is continuing its support for multimedia projects by funding FFmpeg. In light of this, last week, FFmpeg announced its first governmental sponsorship, Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, which has stepped forward to support the maintenance and sustainability of FFmpeg, a cornerstone software in the multimedia industry, by investing €157K in the project.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/sovereign-tech-fund-backs-ffmpeg-project/ Cheers, Peter

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RISC-V Now Supports Rust In the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: The latest RISC-V port updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel. Most notable with today's RISC-V merge to Linux 6.10 is now supporting the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel. RISC-V joins the likes of x86_64, LoongArch, and ARM64 already supporting the use of the in-kernel Rust language support. The use of Rust within the mainline Linux kernel is still rather limited with just a few basic drivers so far and a lot of infrastructure work taking place, but there are a number of new drivers and other subsystem support on the horizon. RISC-V now supporting Rust within the Linux kernel will become more important moving forward. The RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 also add byte/half-word compare-and-exchange, support for Zihintpause within hwprobe, a PR_RISCV_SET_ICACHE_FLUSH_CTX prctl(), and support for lockless lockrefs. More details on these RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 via this Git merge. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/22/2337254 Cheers, Peter

1 0

A Root-Server at the Internet's Core Lost Touch With Its Peers. We Still Don't Know Why.
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'A server maintained by Cogent Communications, one of the 13 root servers crucial to the Internet's domain name system, fell out of sync with its peers for over four days due to an unexplained glitch. This issue, which could have caused worldwide stability and security problems, was resolved on Wednesday. The root servers store cryptographic keys necessary for authenticating intermediate servers under the DNSSEC mechanism. Inconsistencies in these keys across the 13 servers could lead to an increased risk of attacks such as DNS cache poisoning. Engineers postponed planned updates to the .gov and .int domain name servers' DNSSEC to use ECDSA cryptographic keys until the situation stabilized. Cogent stated that it became aware of the issue on Tuesday and resolved it within 25 hours. ArsTechnica, which has a great writeup about the incident, adds: Initially, some people speculated that the depeering of Tata Communications, the c-root site outage, and the update errors to the c-root itself were all connected somehow. Given the vagueness of the statement, the relation of those events still isn't entirely clear.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/05/23/1745246 Cheers, Peter

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Mozilla Says It's Concerned About Windows Recall
by Peter Reutemann 23 May '24

23 May '24

'Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview. From a report: The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the snapshots and, when something is selected, the user is given options to interact with the content. Mozilla's Chief Product Officer, Steve Teixeira, told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored. While the data is stored in encrypted format, this stored data represents a new vector of attack for cybercriminals and a new privacy worry for shared computers. "Microsoft is also once again playing gatekeeper and picking which browsers get to win and lose on Windows -- favoring, of course, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Edge allows users to block specific websites and private browsing activity from being seen by Recall. Other Chromium-based browsers can filter out private browsing activity but lose the ability to block sensitive websites (such as financial sites) from Recall. "Right now, there's no documentation on how a non-Chromium based, third-party browser, such as Firefox, can protect user privacy from Recall. Microsoft did not engage our cooperation on Recall, but we would have loved for that to be the case, which would have enabled us to partner on giving users true agency over their privacy, regardless of the browser they choose."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/22/1939244 Cheers, Peter

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Linux 6.10 Honors One Last Request By Hans Reiser
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '24

22 May '24

'Phoronix: ReiserFS lead developer and convicted murderer Hans Reiser a few months back wrote letters to be made public apologizing for his social mistakes and other commentary. In his written communications he also made a last request for ReiserFS in the Linux kernel: "Assuming that the decision is to remove [ReiserFS] V3 from the kernel, I have just one request: that for one last release the README be edited to add Mikhail Gilula, Konstantin Shvachko, and Anatoly Pinchuk to the credits, and to delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited. It is time to let go." Hans credits his improved social and communication skills learned in prison among other details shared in the public letters. Per the indirect request by Hans Reiser, SUSE's Jan Kara has now altered the ReiserFS README file with the changes going in today to the Linux 6.10 kernel. The negative language was removed and instead acknowledging their contributions.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/21/217228 Cheers, Peter

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New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '24

22 May '24

'At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users. "Recall uses Copilot+ PC advanced processing capabilities to take images of your active screen every few seconds," Microsoft says on its website. "The snapshots are encrypted and saved on your PC’s hard drive. You can use Recall to locate the content you have viewed on your PC using search or on a timeline bar that allows you to scroll through your snapshots." By performing a Recall action, users can access a snapshot from a specific time period, providing context for the event or moment they are searching for. It also allows users to search through teleconference meetings they've participated in and videos watched using an AI-powered feature that transcribes and translates speech. At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state. Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says. Users can pause, stop, or delete captured content and can exclude specific apps or websites. Recall won't take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge or DRM-protected content. However, Recall won't actively hide sensitive information like passwords and financial account numbers that appear on-screen.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-… Talking about intrusive OS... I wonder whether there will be an ad-supported, cheap version of Windows in the future where the user can't turn Recall off, giving Microsoft a large pool of free training data... Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'OMG Ubuntu: Ubuntu first switched to using Wayland as its default display server in 2017 before reverting the following year. It tried again in 2021 and has stuck with it since. But while Wayland is what most of us now log into after installing Ubuntu, anyone doing so on a PC or laptop with an NVIDIA graphics card present instead logs into an Xorg/X11 session. This is because NVIDIA's proprietary graphics drivers (which many, especially gamers, opt for to get the best performance, access to full hardware capabilities, etc) have not supported Wayland as well as as they could've. Past tense as, thankfully, things have changed in the past few years. NVIDIA's warmed up to Wayland (partly as it has no choice given that Wayland is now standard and a 'maybe one day' solution, and partly because it wants to: opportunities/benefits/security). With the NVIDIA + Wayland sitch' now in a better state than before — but not perfect — Canonical's engineers say they feel confident enough in the experience to make the Ubuntu Wayland session default for NVIDIA graphics card users in Ubuntu 24.10.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/05/20/013218 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Foundation Announces Launch of 'High Performance Software Foundation'
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'This week the nonprofit Linux Foundation announced the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation, which "aims to build, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high performance computing" (or HPC) by "increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts." It promises initiatives focused on "continuously built, turnkey software stacks," as well as other initiatives including architecture support and performance regression testing. Its first open source technical projects are: - Spack: the HPC package manager. - Kokkos: a performance-portable programming model for writing modern C++ applications in a hardware-agnostic way. - Viskores (formerly VTK-m): a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for accelerator architectures. - HPCToolkit: performance measurement and analysis tools for computers ranging from desktop systems to GPU-accelerated supercomputers. - Apptainer: Formerly known as Singularity, Apptainer is a Linux Foundation project providing a high performance, full featured HPC and computing optimized container subsystem. - E4S: a curated, hardened distribution of scientific software packages. As use of HPC becomes ubiquitous in scientific computing and digital engineering, and AI use cases multiply, more and more data centers deploy GPUs and other compute accelerators. The High Performance Software Foundation will provide a neutral space for pivotal projects in the high performance computing ecosystem, enabling industry, academia, and government entities to collaborate on the scientific software. The High Performance Software Foundation benefits from strong support across the HPC landscape, including Premier Members Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories; General Members AMD, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel, Kitware, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Associate Members University of Maryland, University of Oregon, and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. In a statement, an AMD vice president said that by joining "we are using our collective hardware and software expertise to help develop a portable, open-source software stack for high-performance computing across industry, academia, and government." And an AWS executive said the high-performance computing community "has a long history of innovation being driven by open source projects. AWS is thrilled to join the High Performance Software Foundation to build on this work. In particular, AWS has been deeply involved in contributing upstream to Spack, and we're looking forward to working with the HPSF to sustain and accelerate the growth of key HPC projects so everyone can benefit." The new foundation will "set up a technical advisory committee to manage working groups tackling a variety of HPC topics," according to the announcement, following a governance model based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/19/2234254 Cheers, Peter

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Why a 'Frozen' Distribution Linux Kernel Isn't the Safest Choice for Security
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'Jeremy Allison — Sam (Slashdot reader #8,157) is a Distinguished Engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ. This week he published a blog post responding to promises of Linux distros "carefully selecting only the most polished and pristine open source patches from the raw upstream open source Linux kernel in order to create the secure distribution kernel you depend on in your business." But do carefully curated software patches (applied to a known "frozen" Linux kernel) really bring greater security? "After a lot of hard work and data analysis by my CIQ kernel engineering colleagues Ronnie Sahlberg and Jonathan Maple, we finally have an answer to this question. It's no." The data shows that "frozen" vendor Linux kernels, created by branching off a release point and then using a team of engineers to select specific patches to back-port to that branch, are buggier than the upstream "stable" Linux kernel created by Greg Kroah-Hartman. How can this be? If you want the full details the link to the white paper is here. But the results of the analysis couldn't be clearer. - A "frozen" vendor kernel is an insecure kernel. A vendor kernel released later in the release schedule is doubly so. - The number of known bugs in a "frozen" vendor kernel grows over time. The growth in the number of bugs even accelerates over time. - There are too many open bugs in these kernels for it to be feasible to analyze or even classify them.... [T]hinking that you're making a more secure choice by using a "frozen" vendor kernel isn't a luxury we can still afford to believe. As Greg Kroah-Hartman explicitly said in his talk "Demystifying the Linux Kernel Security Process": "If you are not using the latest stable / longterm kernel, your system is insecure." CIQ describes its report as "a count of all the known bugs from an upstream kernel that were introduced, but never fixed in RHEL 8." For the most recent RHEL 8 kernels, at the time of writing, these counts are: RHEL 8.6 : 5034 RHEL 8.7 : 4767 RHEL 8.8 : 4594 In RHEL 8.8 we have a total of 4594 known bugs with fixes that exist upstream, but for which known fixes have not been back-ported to RHEL 8.8. The situation is worse for RHEL 8.6 and RHEL 8.7 as they cut off back-porting earlier than RHEL 8.8 but of course that did not prevent new bugs from being discovered and fixed upstream.... This whitepaper is not meant as a criticism of the engineers working at any Linux vendors who are dedicated to producing high quality work in their products on behalf of their customers. This problem is extremely difficult to solve. We know this is an open secret amongst many in the industry and would like to put concrete numbers describing the problem to encourage discussion. Our hope is for Linux vendors and the community as a whole to rally behind the kernel.org stable kernels as the best long term supported solution. As engineers, we would prefer this to allow us to spend more time fixing customer specific bugs and submitting feature improvements upstream, rather than the endless grind of backporting upstream changes into vendor kernels, a practice which can introduce more bugs than it fixes. ZDNet calls it "an open secret in the Linux community." It's not enough to use a long-term support release. You must use the most up-to-date release to be as secure as possible. Unfortunately, almost no one does that. Nevertheless, as Google Linux kernel engineer Kees Cook explained, "So what is a vendor to do? The answer is simple: if painful: Continuously update to the latest kernel release, either major or stable." Why? As Kroah-Hartman explained, "Any bug has the potential of being a security issue at the kernel level...." Although [CIQ's] programmers examined RHEL 8.8 specifically, this is a general problem. They would have found the same results if they had examined SUSE, Ubuntu, or Debian Linux. Rolling-release Linux distros such as Arch, Gentoo, and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed constantly release the latest updates, but they're not used in businesses.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/19/0030248 Cheers, Peter

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Google patches its fifth zero-day vulnerability of the year in Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'Google has updated its Chrome browser to patch a high-severity zero-day vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code on end user devices. The fix marks the fifth time this year the company has updated the browser to protect users from an existing malicious exploit. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4671, is a “use after free,” a class of bug that occurs in C-based programming languages. In these languages, developers must allocate memory space needed to run certain applications or operations. They do this by using “pointers” that store the memory addresses where the required data will reside. Because this space is finite, memory locations should be deallocated once the application or operation no longer needs it. Use-after-free bugs occur when the app or process fails to clear the pointer after freeing the memory location. In some cases, the pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to a new memory location storing malicious shellcode planted by an attacker’s exploit, a condition that will result in the execution of this code. On Thursday, Google said an anonymous source notified it of the vulnerability. The vulnerability carries a severity rating of 8.8 out of 10. In response, Google said, it would be releasing versions 124.0.6367.201/.202 for macOS and Windows and 124.0.6367.201 for Linux in subsequent days. “Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4671 exists in the wild,” the company said.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/google-patches-its-fifth-zero-day-… Cheers, Peter

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AMD Core Performance Boost For Linux Getting Per-CPU Core Controls
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'Phoronix: For the past several months AMD Linux engineers have been working on AMD Core Performance Boost support for their P-State CPU frequency scaling driver. The ninth iteration of these patches were posted on Monday and besides the global enabling/disabling support for Core Performance Boost, it's now possible to selectively toggle the feature on a per-CPU core basis... The new interface is under /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/cpufreq/amd_pstate_boost_cpb for each CPU core. Thus users can tune whether particular CPU cores are boosted above the base frequency.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/11/229219 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Kernel 6.9 Officially Released
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'"6.9 is now out," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux kernel mailing list, "and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal)." Phoronix writes that Linux 6.9 "has a number of exciting features and improvements for those habitually updating to the newest version." And Slashdot reader prisoninmate shared this report from 9to5Linux: Highlights of Linux kernel 6.9 include Rust support on AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, support for the Intel FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) mechanism for improved low-level event delivery, support for AMD SNP (Secure Nested Paging) guests, and a new dm-vdo (virtual data optimizer) target in device mapper for inline deduplication, compression, zero-block elimination, and thin provisioning. Linux kernel 6.9 also supports the Named Address Spaces feature in GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) that allows the compiler to better optimize per-CPU data access, adds initial support for FUSE passthrough to allow the kernel to serve files from a user-space FUSE server directly, adds support for the Energy Model to be updated dynamically at run time, and introduces a new LPA2 mode for ARM 64-bit processors... Linux kernel 6.9 will be a short-lived branch supported for only a couple of months. It will be succeeded by Linux kernel 6.10, whose merge window has now been officially opened by Linus Torvalds. Linux kernel 6.10 is expected to be released in mid or late September 2024. "Rust language has been updated to version 1.76.0 in Linux 6.9," according to the article. And Linus Torvalds shared one more details on the Linux kernel mailing list. "I now have a more powerful arm64 machine (thanks to Ampere), so the last week I've been doing almost as many arm64 builds as I have x86-64, and that should obviously continue during the upcoming merge window too."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/12/2212235 Cheers, Peter

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Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is another big step forward for Linux on Apple Silicon Mac
by Peter Reutemann 10 May '24

10 May '24

'Asahi Linux, the project that aims to bring desktop Linux to Apple hardware with Apple silicon—the M series of chips—is out with Fedora Asahi Remix 40. More hardware features of Apple devices are supported, the Fedora Linux 40-based distro ships with KDE's new Plasma 6 desktop, and untold numbers of bugs are squashed, to be replaced with reams more. Fedora Asahi Remix is a "fully integrated distro," according to the Asahi team, and you can "expect a solid and high-quality experience without any unwanted surprises." It supports all the M1 and M2 devices in the MacBook, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and iMac lines. It's OpenGL 4.6 and OpenGL ES 3.2 certified, and comes with "the best Linux laptop audio you've ever heard." So, should you install it on your Mac? Keep scrolling down Asahi's release page and check the "Device support" section. Still missing from most M-series Apple devices are support for Thunderbolt and USB4, built-in microphones, and Touch ID, as well as USB-C display support. Speakers are not supported on the iMac. And HDMI audio is in rough shape, being able to "break audio on the system completely." Still, for someone using an Apple laptop primarily as a portable device, or simply connecting to a monitor with less modern all-in-one cables, there is a desktop awaiting. Installing it is a single cURL command.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/fedora-asahi-remix-40-is-another-bi… Cheers, Peter

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Raspberry Pis get a built-in remote access tool: Raspberry Pi Connect
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '24

08 May '24

'One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tackle if you're new to single-board computers or just eager to get started. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect, a new built-in way to access a Rasbperry Pi from nearly anywhere you can open a browser, whether to control yourself or provide remote assistance. On a Raspberry Pi 4, 5, or Pi 400 kit, you install Pi connect with a single terminal line, reboot the Pi, and then click a new tray icon to connect the Pi to a Raspberry Pi ID (and then enable two-factor authentication, of course). >From then on, visiting connect.raspberrypi.com gives you an encrypted connection to your desktop. It's a direct connection if possible, and if not, it runs through relay servers in London, encrypting it with DTLS and keeping only the metadata needed for the service to work. The Pi will show a notification in its tray that somebody has connected, and you can manage screen sharing from there. The Pi's docs site has a lot more on the particulars. Connect works only on 64-bit systems running the Bookworm version of Pi OS with a Wayland window server. Connect was created partly due to Pi's transition to Wayland from X, which offered its own remote desktop option. According to the Pi firm, the service runs on a peer-to-peer WebRTC connection, similar to that of Zoom, Slack, Teams, and other video-sharing services. The whole service is in beta at the moment, and the company says it's not quite sure how much traffic to expect through its relay servers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/raspberry-pis-get-a-built-in-remote… Cheers, Peter

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Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '24

07 May '24

'Researchers have devised an attack against nearly all virtual private network applications that forces them to send and receive some or all traffic outside of the encrypted tunnel designed to protect it from snooping or tampering. TunnelVision, as the researchers have named their attack, largely negates the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user’s IP address. The researchers believe it affects all VPN applications when they’re connected to a hostile network and that there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user's VPN runs on Linux or Android. They also said their attack technique may have been possible since 2002 and may already have been discovered and used in the wild since then. The effect of TunnelVision is “the victim's traffic is now decloaked and being routed through the attacker directly,” a video demonstration explained. “The attacker can read, drop or modify the leaked traffic and the victim maintains their connection to both the VPN and the Internet.” The attack works by manipulating the DHCP server that allocates IP addresses to devices trying to connect to the local network. A setting known as option 121 allows the DHCP server to override default routing rules that send VPN traffic through a local IP address that initiates the encrypted tunnel. By using option 121 to route VPN traffic through the DHCP server, the attack diverts the data to the DHCP server itself.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/novel-attack-against-virtually-all… Cheers, Peter

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Kernel Modules Are Now Compressed
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 May '24

06 May '24

Not sure if this is mentioned in any release notes anywhere, but the .ko files (loadable kernel modules) that would live in /lib/modules/«kernel version»/ are now .ko.xz files. Looks like this happened starting with the 6.6 kernel. I discovered this a few minutes ago, while trying to count how many .ko files came with my 6.7.9 Debian kernel, with find /lib/modules/$(uname -r) -name \*.ko | wc -l and was surprised to see that the answer was 0. A suitably adjusted command find /lib/modules/$(uname -r) -name \*.ko\* | wc -l returns 4165

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Yet Another New systemd Feature
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 May '24

06 May '24

Lennart Poettering wants to get rid of sudo now, and replace it with a new systemd feature called “run0” <https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/poettering-announces-tool-i…>. It is hard to write code that runs setuid, and sudo has had quite a few security vulnerabilities over the years. So Poettering’s idea is to replace the setuid executable with another use of the existing PolicyKit system. Interesting that Poettering thinks we should get rid of the whole idea of setuid altogether. AT&T actually got a patent on the concept, back in the early days of Unix. Other OSes had the concept of privileged code, but what made setuid different is that any user can set this mode on any executable they create, and when other users run this executable (if they are allowed to), they temporarily get the permissions of the owning user. On Linux, this concept was always constrained a bit: I think it only works on compiled machine-code executables, not on interpreted scripts.

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Maximum-Severity GitLab Flaw Allowing Account Hijacking Under Active Exploitation
by Peter Reutemann 03 May '24

03 May '24

'Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January. A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn't have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account. While exploits required no user interaction, hijackings worked only against accounts that weren't configured to use multi-factor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10. The vulnerability, classified as an improper access control flaw, could pose a grave threat. GitLab software typically has access to multiple development environments belonging to users. With the ability to access them and surreptitiously introduce changes, attackers could sabotage projects or plant backdoors that could infect anyone using software built in the compromised environment. An example of a similar supply chain attack is the one that hit SolarWinds in 2021, infecting more than 18,000 of its customers. Other recent examples of supply chain attacks are here, here, and here. These sorts of attacks are powerful. By hacking a single, carefully selected target, attackers gain the means to infect thousands of downstream users, often without requiring them to take any action at all. According to Internet scans performed by security organization Shadowserver, more than 2,100 IP addresses showed they were hosting one or more vulnerable GitLab instances. In order to protect your system, you should enable MFA and install the latest patch. "GitLab users should also remember that patching does nothing to secure systems that have already been breached through exploits," notes Goodin.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/05/02/1934220 Cheers, Peter -- My Open Source Blog - http://open.fracpete.org

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Bat is a Modern Drop-in Replacement for Cat Command on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 01 May '24

01 May '24

'The bat is a modern command-line program written in the Rust programming language, and I can confidently say it’s a great drop-in replacement for our beloved cat command. If you’re wondering why I’m hyping this so much and what it has to offer you that makes it worth replacing the cat with, then do check out its features below. Bat really has some cool features to offer, which are mentioned below. - Supports syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages. - Detect and display Git changes. - Pipe output to its own pager (e.g., “less“) if the output is too large for one screen. - Display non-printable characters such as spaces, tabs, line breaks, etc. - Offer multiple themes that can be easily configured using flags or environments. - A user-friendly command-line interface that, of course, inherits all the functionality of the “cat” command.' -- source: https://linuxtldr.com/installing-bat/ Cheers, Peter

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I Have No Luck With Keyboards ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 May '24

01 May '24

Yesterday I decided that my heavily-used clicky mechanical keyboard (a Das Keyboard 4) had accumulated far too much grime, and it was time to take the risk of cleaning it. In the past, every time I’ve tried cleaning a keyboard, it has never worked right afterwards. I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I found the keys quite easy to pry off. A light amount of leverage with a small screwdriver was helpful when space was tight, but once I’d cleared sufficient room around a key, I could pull it off just with my fingers. Even the wider keys were not hard. I found some warnings online against removing these, because of the trickiness of their extra stabilization mechanisms. But these were actually quite simple: a steel spring with its ends poked through two tiny brackets (removable, but best left in place) at each end of the key. It took a bit of pressure with the screwdriver to bend one end of the spring far enough to take it out of the hole, but it snapped immediately back to its original shape after I had taken the key out, so I saw no problem putting things back afterwards. The space bar was even simpler: just two additional support posts at the ends, in addition to the usual post (common to all the keys) that held the actual switch in the middle. After I had got all the keys off, the grime on the keyboard itself was a wonder to behold (I’ll spare you the details). I tried to use a bunched-up corner of a wet cloth, and even a vacuum cleaner with the smallest nozzle (again heeding warnings online against compressed air), and I was able to remove maybe half the accumulation of deposits, not much more. I figured that was good enough. Of course, in the process, I likely got some water into two slots that were exposed after I removed the keys. There was a recommendation online to leave things to dry for at least 6 hours. Call me impatient; I left it for just 5. Afterwards, I plugged it in, without the key caps, and tried a few keys, and was gratified to find they still worked. After that, I put back all the keys, now nice and clean and dry. Even the ones with those extra springs went back with only a slight amount of fiddling to re-engage with those brackets on the keys. And afterwards, the keyboard still worked. I left it plugged in, and went to do something else. Half an hour later, I came back to my computer ... and the keyboard was dead. Not a single response from any key. Put it back in the heater cupboard and left it overnight. No change this morning: still dead. So I feel very sad. I thought I had broken my keyboard jinx. But it’s currently zero for three. I have some other keyboards, of course, including a colourful oddity I bought from Dick Smith (whose layout leaves out the right-hand super/windows key), and a Kensington “washable” (dare I risk it?), with the pipe/backslash key in a different position. But I had grown accustomed to the volume control knob and other niceties of the Das Keyboard. Looking back through my records, I was surprised to discover I had bought it about ten years ago, from Mighty Ape. So I suppose it’s had a good run. But it seems nobody in NZ sells the things any more. So currently I mourn, and I also look for alternatives ...

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T2 Linux 24.5 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

'A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46. T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU architectures: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), and SuperH x86(64). T2 is an increasingly popular choice for embedded systems and virtualization. It also still supports the Sony PS3, Sgi, Sun and HP workstations, as well as the latest ARM64 and RISCV64 architectures. The release contains a total of 5,140 changesets, including approximately 5,314 package updates, 564 issues fixed, 317 packages or features added and 163 removed, and around 53 improvements. Usually most packages are up-to-date, including Linux 6.8, GCC 13, LLVM/Clang 18, as well as the latest version of X.org, Mesa, Firefox, Rust, KDE 6 and GNOME 46! More information, source and binary distribution are open source and free at T2 SDE.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/29/2325210/ To be honest, haven't heard of that distro before, but sounds interesting. Cheers, Peter

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Hackers try to exploit WordPress plugin vulnerability that’s as severe as it gets
by Peter Reutemann 29 Apr '24

29 Apr '24

'Hackers are assailing websites using a prominent WordPress plugin with millions of attempts to exploit a high-severity vulnerability that allows complete takeover, researchers said. The vulnerability resides in WordPress Automatic, a plugin with more than 38,000 paying customers. Websites running the WordPress content management system use it to incorporate content from other sites. Researchers from security firm Patchstack disclosed last month that WP Automatic versions 3.92.0 and below had a vulnerability with a severity rating of 9.9 out of a possible 10. The plugin developer, ValvePress, silently published a patch, which is available in versions 3.92.1 and beyond. Researchers have classified the flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-27956, as a SQL injection, a class of vulnerability that stems from a failure by a web application to query backend databases properly. SQL syntax uses apostrophes to indicate the beginning and end of a data string. By entering strings with specially positioned apostrophes into vulnerable website fields, attackers can execute code that performs various sensitive actions, including returning confidential data, giving administrative system privileges, or subverting how the web app works.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/hackers-make-millions-of-attempts-… Cheers, Peter

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Alternative To Microsoft Access
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Apr '24

27 Apr '24

If anybody asks about an alternative to Microsoft Access, I think SQLite used in combination with LibreOffice will give you a lot of functionality, including comprehensive SQL support and scalability to much larger databases. Of course you can use other backends, like MariaDB/MySQL, as well. SQLite just makes it easy to have an actual database file that you can copy/move about the place, without having to do database dumps/restores. If you don’t need multiuser support, it is very convenient. I notice that libreoffice-base is now a separate package under Debian (and I suppose its derivatives as well), no longer included in the “base” (heh) LibreOffice package. Make sure to install this, along with libsqliteodbc. Now, say you have an existing SQLite3 database that you want to access from LibreOffice. Suppose it is in the file /home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db. In order for databases to be accessible via ODBC, they need to have entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file. This is just a text file, in the good old .ini tradition. The format for entries is very simple, e.g.: [test-db] Description=Test database for LibreOffice Base Driver=SQLite3 Database=/home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db Now, when you launch the LibreOffice Base database wizard, you have options to “create a new database”, “open an existing database file”, or “connect to an existing database”. Choose that last one “connect to an existing database”. The popup menu shows the available back-end drivers: choose “ODBC”. Now, when you click “Next”, there should be a text field with a “Browse...” button; clicking this should show the names of entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file, e.g. “test-db” if you used the name in my example above. Select this, and click “Finish”. Next you will be prompted for a name to save the “database file”. This is just the LibreOffice Base document that contains the settings for connecting to the actual database: LibreOffice doesn’t know or care where the database back-end keeps the actual data. After having named the LibreOffice database file, you should see the main LibreOffice Base window. In the lower half, under “Tables”, you should see a list of the tables from the database file. You can double-click a table name to see a quick list of all its records. That’s as far as I’ve got. I see a “Design View”, “Form Wizards”, and “Report Wizards”, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Should be great for building simple database applications, with a minimum of programming.

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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 'Noble Numbat' Officially Released
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

'9to5Linux: Canonical released today Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) as the latest version of its popular Linux-based operating system featuring some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. Powered by Linux kernel 6.8, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS features the latest GNOME 46 desktop environment, an all-new graphical firmware update tool called Firmware Updater, Netplan 1.0 for state-of-the-art network management, updated Ubuntu font, support for the deb822 format for software sources, increased vm.max_map_count for better gaming, and Mozilla Thunderbird as a Snap by default. It also comes with an updated Flutter-based graphical desktop installer that's now capable of updating itself and features a bunch of changes like support for accessibility features, guided (unencrypted) ZFS installations, a new option to import auto-install configurations for templated custom provisioning, as well as new default installation options, such as Default selection (previously Minimal) and Extended selection (previously Normal)."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/25/2036234 Cheers, Peter

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