- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Critical Git Security Vulnerability Announced
by Peter Reutemann 19 Dec '14

19 Dec '14

'Github has announced a security vulnerability and has encourage users to update their Git clients as soon as possible. The blog post reads in part: "A critical Git security vulnerability has been announced today, affecting all versions of the official Git client and all related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac. Because this is a client-side only vulnerability, github.com and GitHub Enterprise are not directly affected. The vulnerability concerns Git and Git-compatible clients that access Git repositories in a case-insensitive or case-normalizing filesystem. An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine. Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive filesystem....Updated versions of GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are available for immediate download, and both contain the security fix on the Desktop application itself and on the bundled version of the Git command-line client."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2346238 Cheers, Petere -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '14

18 Dec '14

"In a blog post Tuesday, security service provider Alert Logic warned of a Linux vulnerability, named grinch after the well-known Dr. Seuss character, that could provide attackers with unfettered root access. The fundamental flaw resides in the Linux authorization system, which can inadvertently allow privilege escalation, granting a user full administrative access. Alert Logic warned that Grinch could be as severe as the Shellshock flaw that roiled the Internet in September." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2022245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Manufacturer's Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '14

17 Dec '14

"A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users' consent. The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor's control system. Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user's permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/17/1815250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Python Moving To Git
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

About 5½ years ago, the decision was made <http://lwn.net/Articles/326201/> to use Mercurial as the preferred version-control system (VCS) for Python development. It was already clear at the time that there was a strong preference among developers for Git instead of Mercurial. And since that time, the dominance of Git has only grown. It appears that Mercurial is still the official VCS for at least the CPython core, but the Python project already has a GitHub area <https://github.com/python> which includes a “Semi-official read-only mirror of the CPython Mercurial repository”. I would suspect that a lot of their contributors are already doing their work in Git, and communicating with the upstream Mercurial repo using an addon like git-remote-hg, which makes it look just like a native Git repo. Now there is a plan to migrate at least some supporting repositories <http://lwn.net/Articles/624101/> <http://lwn.net/Articles/623905/> officially to Git, and also use GitHub to host these instead of at python.org. These stats from the PEP are quite interesting: The Open Hub (Previously Ohloh) statistics ... show that currently 37% of the repositories Open Hub is indexing is using git which is second only to SVN (which has 48%) while Mercurial has just 2% of the indexed repositories (beating only bazaar which has 1%). In addit[i]on to the Open Hub statistics a look at the top 100 projects on PyPI (ordered by total download counts) shows us that within the Python space itself there is a majority of projects using git: === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Git Mercurial Subversion Bazaar CVS None === ========= ========== ====== === ==== 62 22 7 4 1 1 === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Interesting that Subversion (aka SVN, an older, centralized, much less flexible version-control system) manages to handily beat Mercurial in non-Python-specific projects...

1 0

Raspberry Pi In Space
by Peter Reutemann 14 Dec '14

14 Dec '14

"When British astronaut Tim Peake heads off to the International Space Station in November 2015 he will be accompanied on his 6-month mission by two augmented Rapsberry Pis, aka Astro Pis. The Astro Pi board is a Raspberry Pi HAT and provides gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer and sensors for temperature, barometric pressure and humidity. It also has a real time clock, LED display and some push buttons — it sounds like the sort of addon that we could do with down here on earth as well! It will also be equipped with both camera module and an infra-red camera. UK school pupils are being challenged to write Rapberry Pi apps or experiments to run in space. During his mission Tim Peake will deploy the Astro Pis, upload the winning code whilst in orbit, set them running, collect the data generated and then download it to be distributed to the winning teams." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/12/14/1827252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"This marks the first time Linux Mint has not used the newest version of Ubuntu for a release. But if you paid attention to the curious approach of Linux Mint 17.0, you'll know that was the plan all along. These days, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next LTS release—Ubuntu 16.04—arrives in 2016. And at first glance, it might seem like a bad thing. After all, Mint is missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in this case it's not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of changes)." -- source: http://goo.gl/zaWPTV Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

$35 Quad-core Hacker SBC Offers Raspberry Pi-like Size and I/O
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"Hardkernel has again set its sites on the Raspberry Pi with a new $35 Odroid-C1 hacker board that matches the RPI's board size and offers a mostly similar 40-pin expansion connector. Unlike the previous $30 Odroid-W that used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi and was soon cancelled due to lack of BCM2835 SoC availability, the Odroid-C1 is based on a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 based Amlogic S805 SoC, which integrates the Mali-400 GPU found on Allwinner's popular SoCs. Touted advantages over the similarly priced Raspberry Pi Model B+ include a substantially more powerful processor, double the RAM, an extra USB2.0 port that adds Device/OTG, and GbE rather than 10/100 Ethernet." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/10/1334251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Gets Container-Friendly "Snappy" Core
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

'Canonical just announced Ubuntu Core, which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linux distros. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2225210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Unity 8 Will Bring 'Pure' Linux Experience To Mobile Devices
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'If you have tried the live images of Ubuntu Next you may worry that Canonical is trying to do a Windows 8 with Ubuntu. That's not true. There is no need to worry though: A great deal of work is happening at a deeper level that may not have yet surfaced. It will surface eventually, however. Will Cooke of Canonical clarifies: "We are trying to make it clear that Unity 8 desktop will look like the traditional desktop and will behave like a normal desktop. We are very aware that our users expect a normal desktop there." Unity 8 will offer the traditional desktop interface when it detects a desktop. The same OS will switch to a touch-based interface on touch-based devices such as tablets and smartphones.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1516240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Just-Announced X.Org Security Flaws Affect Code Dating Back To 1987
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'Some of the worst X.Org security issues were just publicized in an X.Org security advisory. The vulnerabilities deal with protocol handling issues and led to 12 CVEs published and code dating back to 1987 is affected within X11. Fixes for the X Server are temporarily available via this Git repository.' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1747212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fedora 21 Released
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 21. "As part of the Fedora.next initiative, Fedora 21 comes in three flavors: Cloud, Server, and Workstation. Cloud is now a top-level deliverable for Fedora 21, and includes images for use in private cloud environments like OpenStack, as well as AMIs for use on Amazon, and a new "Atomic" image streamlined for running Docker containers. The Fedora Server flavor is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted system than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop." Here are screenshots for Fedora 21: GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2059252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"After two years of development, Google today released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) aimed solely at Android developers. You can download the tool right now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the Android Developer site. Google first announced Android Studio, built on the popular IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, at its I/O Developer conference in May 2013. The company's pitch was very simple: this is the official Android IDE." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2129255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

POODLE Flaw Returns, This Time Hitting TLS Protocol
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"If you patched your sites against a serious SSL flaw discovered in October you will have to check them again. Researchers have discovered that the POODLE vulnerability also affects implementations of the newer TLS protocol. The POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) vulnerability allows attackers who manage to intercept traffic between a user's browser and an HTTPS website to decrypt sensitive information, like the user's authentication cookies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/0423210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Blockly Versus Scratch
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

You may have heard of MIT Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu/>, a visual programming language oriented to teaching children programming. Initially I was put off by the non-Free licence (you couldn’t redistribute modified code), but that seems to have gone now, and the source is available <https://github.com/LLK/Scratch_1.4> under completely Free licences, the core being GPLv2, plugins under an MIT licence, and support materials/samples under CC-BY-SA. Google has its own alternative along the same lines, but Web-based, called Blockly <https://code.google.com/p/blockly/>. And Barack Obama has successfully used it to become the first US president to write a computer program <http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/08/barack-obama-just-became-the-first-us-pr…>.

1 0

Linux 3.18 Released, Lockup Bug Still Present
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"As anticipated, Linus Torvalds officially released Linux 3.18. The new version is now out there, though that nasty lockup issue has still yet to be resolved. Dave Jones is nearing the end of dissecting the issue, but since it also affects Linux 3.17 and not too many people seem to get hit by the lockups, Linus Torvalds decided to go ahead and do the 3.18 release on schedule. Linus was also concerned that dragging out the 3.18 release would then complicate the Linux 3.19 merge window due to the holidays later this month. Now the Linux 3.19 kernel merge window is open for two weeks of exciting changes." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2020251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world." -- source: http://goo.gl/JG2Jh3 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA 2015 Keynote Session - Q&A with Linus Torvalds
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

Excuse the cross posting, but here is an amazing incentive to get to LCA 2015 in Auckland this year. - Way, way back in 2003, at LCA in Perth, there was a Q&A session with Linus Torvalds, Bdale Garbee and Andrew Tridgell. It’s time for a follow-up so at LCA 2015 in Auckland it’s going to happen! The Q&A session is scheduled for 09:00 am Friday, 16 January 2015 and will be moderated by Bdale Garbee with the assistance of Andrew Tridgell. Helsinki-born Linus, who simply calls himself a Software Engineer, was the principle force behind developing the Linux kernel. It all started from an initial usenet posting in August of 1991 and made what has proved to be a historic debut with the release of version 1.0 on March 14 1994. In June 2003 Linus started working for Open Source Development Labs. After merging with the Free Standards Group it became the Linux Foundation where Linus continues to work as the project’s coordinator and is Chief Architect of the Linux kernel. In 2005, after criticism for for his use and alleged advocacy of BitKeeper, proprietary software for version-control in the Linux kernel, Linus wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called GIT which is now the most widely-adopted version-control system for software development. Linus is an accomplished diver and in 2011, frustrated with the lack of decent divelog software on Linux, he developed Subsurface (http://subsurface-divelog.org/) an Open Source divelog program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. We know that there are a number of beautiful diving spots not too far from Auckland... The LCA 2015 Auckland team would like to thank the Linux Foundation for their assistance in making this possible. -------------------------------------------- Steven Ellis - Technical Director OpenMedia Limited - The Home of myPVR email - steven(a)openmedia.co.nz _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

moving the mailing list - recap
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '14

02 Dec '14

Hi everyone >From what I can gather, the main reason for moving the mailing list (aggressive spam filtering), no longer seems to be an issue. Therefore, I think that we can end the discussion and leave things just as they are. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

mailing list difficulties
by Ian Young 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Greets, On the last occasion I tried to send a message to the list, it was impounded as there was a suspect word or somesuch in the subject line. Robo was wrong, utterly nonsensical. I think there was some reference in the rejection blurb to (possibly non-existent?) moderation. The message never appeared afaik. Never got around to following it up, but it was a nuisance. Subsequently I stopped bothering to post. And as I press Send now, I find myself wondering whether this message will ever appear. ~ IsY

3 2

Computer History
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Anybody interested in talks by and about computer pioneers should look at this YouTube channel <http://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory>, run by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. All kinds of fun stuff, from the experience of building a working version of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No 2 (designed in the 1830s), to the 30th anniversary of the Cray-1 supercomputer, to an interview with Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki. And if you want to see how far computer graphics has come, try this one: <http://www.youtube.com/user/VintageCG/>. Some old classics there. But boy, have we come a long way since characters made out of spheres and cylinders...

1 0

Shall We Talk About Moving This List To Another Server?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

As I recall, the suggestion made last night was to put this list on Google Groups.

11 15

Bitcoin uses the Bitcoin Core open source software
by Ian Stewart 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

Hi wlug folks, FYI: The latest release of Bitcoin is currently version 0.9.3 which was released 27 September 2014. You can download a suitable binary version of the Bitcoin Core from: https://www.bitcoin.org/en/download It is open source code and you can obtain it from: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin cheers, Ian. PS: This e-mail is a test to see if the spam filtering software blocks it being distributed to the wlug email list. From my experience about a year ago, I found that mails that contained the word "bitcoin" would be blocked.

1 1

DragonFly BSD 4.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 26 Nov '14

26 Nov '14

"From the release page: Version 4 of DragonFly brings Haswell graphics support, 3D acceleration, and improved performance in extremely high-traffic networks. DragonFly now supports up to 256 CPUs, Haswell graphics (i915), concurrent pf operation, and a variety of other devices." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/11/26/184238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 24 Nov '14

24 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place tomorrow on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Crowdfunding project promises a “laptop that respects essential freedoms”
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'What price can you put on freedom? If you’re talking about software freedom, a new San Francisco-based computer company prices it at $1,949 and up. Purism has turned to the crowdfunding site Crowd Supply to fund and launch its first-ever product—a laptop that's as open source friendly as it is technically feasible. Advertised as a "Free and Open Source laptop that respects your essential freedoms," Purism’s Librem 15 laptop, now in prototype and ready for manufacture, is designed to run entirely with open source software, requiring no proprietary drivers. The only proprietary code on the laptop resides in its Intel firmware. ... It will ship with Purism’s own distribution of GNU/Linux based on Trisquel—an Ubuntu derivative that only includes free software. Purism will ship the Librem with Tor installed and turned on by default.' -- source: http://goo.gl/8COuog Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Using a password manager on Android? It may be wide open to sniffing attacks
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'In early 2013, researchers exposed some unsettling risks stemming from Android-based password managers. In a paper titled "Hey, You, Get Off of My Clipboard," they documented how passwords managed by 21 of the most popular such apps could be accessed by any other app on an Android device, even those with extremely low-level privileges. They suggested several measures to help fix the problem. Almost two years later, the threat remains viable in at least some, if not all, of the apps originally analyzed. An app recently made available on Google Play, for instance, has no trouble divining the passwords managed by LastPass, one of the leading managers on the market, as well as the lesser-known KeePassDroid. With additional work, it's likely that the proof-of-concept ClipCaster app would work seamlessly against many other managers, too, said Xiao Bao Clark, the Australia-based programmer who developed it. While ClipCaster does nothing more than display the plaintext of passwords that LastPass and KeePassDroid funnel through Android handsets, a malicious app with only network privileges could send the credentials to an attacker without the user having any idea what was happening.' -- source: http://goo.gl/CsjkC8 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM next week
by Peter Reutemann 21 Nov '14

21 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place next week on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

A Brilliant Mind: SUSE's Kernel Guru Speaks
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The man who in every sense sits at the nerve centre of SUSE Linux has no airs about him. At 38, Vojtch Pavlík is disarmingly frank and often seems a bit embarrassed to talk about his achievements, which are many and varied. He is every bit a nerd, but can be candid, though precise. As director of SUSE Labs, it would be no exaggeration to call him the company's kernel guru. Both recent innovations that have come from SUSE — patching a live kernel, technology called kGraft, and creating a means for booting openSUSE on machines locked down with secure boot, have been his babies." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/20/203259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

LFCS: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux – Part 1
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The Linux Foundation announced the LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Sysadmin) certification, a new program that aims at helping individuals all over the world to get certified in basic to intermediate system administration tasks for Linux systems. This includes supporting running systems and services, along with first-hand troubleshooting and analysis, and smart decision-making to escalate issues to engineering teams. Part 1: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux" -- source: http://www.tecmint.com/sed-command-to-create-edit-and-manipulate-files-in-l… Parts 2-9 are listed in that article as well. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Jolla Crowdfunds Its First Tablet
by Peter Reutemann 19 Nov '14

19 Nov '14

'Jolla is another rising star in the tech world, having recently expanded its smartphone sales into more countries across the globe. Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on the Linux kernel, and considered by many to be a direct successor to Nokia and Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone. Its software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo. Now, the company is ready to start production of its first tablet. They're crowdfunding it, and they blew past their $380,000 goal in about two hours. The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/19/1343250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Launching 2015: a New Certificate Authority To Encrypt the Entire Web
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Today EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai announced a forthcoming project called Let's Encrypt. Let's Encrypt will be a certificate authority that issues free certificates to any website, using automated protocols (demo video here). Launching in summer 2015, we believe this will be the missing piece that deprecates the woefully insecure HTTP protocol in favor of HTTPS." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1830229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases First Issue CC-BY-SA
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Linux Voice, the crowdfunded GNU/Linux magazine that Slashdot has covered previously, had two goals at its launch: to give 50% of its profits back to the community after one year, and release each issue's contents under the Creative Commons after nine months. Well, it's been nine months since issue 1, so the whole thing is now online and free to share. Readers and supporters have also made audio versions of articles, for listening to on the commute to work." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1636234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Turning a Rasberry Pi into a Tor Gateway with Sphirewall
by Michael Lawson 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Earlier this month Sphirewall released support for Tor as a transparent gateway, we thought it would be neat to get it running on the Pi and show it of a little bit. Half shameless plug, half interesting use case for Sphirewall and a Pi. http://sphirewall.net/blog.html?post_id=2 (Also 100% kiwi ;)) -- Michael Lawson

1 0

Docker - (was: Re: WLUG meeting next Monday)
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Ian pointed out that my reply to a meeting announcement might confuse people... So, just to clarify, there is no meeting next week, but on the 24th (AGM). Cheers, Peter On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote: >> We have a meeting coming up next Monday: >> >> "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of >> different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible >> approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource >> isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for >> the guest system. >> Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, >> how to use and what it can be used for." >> >> http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ > > Just have come across this here: > > "Google Container Engine (Alpha) > > Run Docker containers on Google Cloud Platform, powered by Kubernetes. > Container Engine takes care of provisioning and maintaining the > underlying virtual machine cluster, scaling your application, and > operational logistics like logging, monitoring, and health > management." > > -- source: https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/ > > Cheers, Peter > -- > Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ > http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174 -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

Fedora Looks To Make /usr World-Readable
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

"Fedora developers are looking at requiring all files that be placed in /usr world-readable. Developers are seeking a mandate that all Fedora packages must not install any non-world-readable files within /usr. Right now some Fedora packages do not honor this and restrict permissions to certain files/directories. Stakeholders are after making the user directory world-readable since containerized copies of Fedora can have the directory bind-mounted into the container, support for virtualization use-cases, and for better systemd handling. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzOTE Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Longtime Debian Developer Tollef Fog Heen Resigns From Systemd Maintainer Team
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

'Debian developer Tollef Fog Heen submitted his resignation to the Debian Systemd package maintainers team mailing list today (Sun. Nov. 16th, 2014). In his brief post, he praises the team, but claims that he cannot continue to contribute due to the "load of continued attacks...becoming just too much." Presumably, he is referring to the heated and, at times, even vitriolic criticism of Debian's adoption of Systemd as the default init system for its upcoming Jessie release from commenters inside and outside of the Debian community. Currently, it is not known if Tollef will cease contributing to Debian altogether. A message from his twitter feed indicates that he may blog about his departure in the near future.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '14

15 Nov '14

"A former researcher at Columbia University's Network Security Lab has conducted research since 2008 indicating that traffic flow software included in network routers, notably Cisco's 'Netflow' package, can be exploited to deanonymize 81.4% of Tor clients. Professor Sambuddho Chakravarty, currently researching Network Anonymity and Privacy at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, uses a technique which injects a repeating traffic pattern into the TCP connection associated with an exit node, and then compares subsequent aberrations in network timing with the traffic flow records generated by Netflow (or equivalent packages from other router manufacturers) to individuate the 'victim' client. In laboratory conditions the success rate of this traffic analysis attack is 100%, with network noise and variations reducing efficiency to 81% in a live Tor environment. Chakravarty says: 'it is not even essential to be a global adversary to launch such traffic analysis attacks. A powerful, yet non- global adversary could use traffic analysis methods [] to determine the various relays participating in a Tor circuit and directly monitor the traffic entering the entry node of the victim connection.'" -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/11/14/1851245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

FreeBSD 10.1 Released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '14

15 Nov '14

"Version 10.1 of the venerable FreeBSD operating system has been released. The new version of FreeBSD offers support for booting from UEFI, automated generation of OpenSSH keys, ZFS performance improvements, updated (and more secure) versions of OpenSSH and OpenSSL and hypervisor enhancements. FreeBSD 10.1 is an extended support release and will be supported through until January 1, 2017." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/11/14/2159223 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Linux Will Work To Slowly Demphasize 32-bit
by Peter Reutemann 13 Nov '14

13 Nov '14

"Canonical isn't yet prepared to drop 32-bit Ubuntu ISOs outright, but over time -- and particularly at or just after Ubuntu 16.04 -- they will work to demphasize the existence of the 32-bit releases and work to push more users to 64-bit Ubuntu as a main focus. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzODE Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Security Distros Compared: Tails vs. Kali vs. Qubes
by Peter Reutemann 13 Nov '14

13 Nov '14

"If you're interested in security, you've probably already heard of security-focused Linux distros like Tails, Kali, and Qubes. They're really useful for browsing anonymously, penetration testing, and tightening down your system so it's secure from would-be hackers. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of all three. - Tails Provides Security Through Anonymity - Kali Is All About Offensive Security - Qubes Offers Security Through Isolation" -- source: http://goo.gl/vomgra Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Groupon backs down from GNOME over trademark, will change product name
by Peter Reutemann 11 Nov '14

11 Nov '14

'UPDATE: Groupon has decided to use a name other than "Gnome" for its tablet platform for merchants. "After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for 'Gnome,'" the company said. "We will choose a new name for our product going forward."' -- source: http://goo.gl/p5IXl7 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Pitivi Video Editor Surpasses 50% Crowdfunding Goal, Releases Version 0.94
by Peter Reutemann 10 Nov '14

10 Nov '14

'With the latest developments, Pitivi is proving to truly be a promising libre video editor for GNU distributions as well as a serious contender for bringing libre video production up to par with its proprietary counterparts. Since launching a beautifully well-organized crowdfunding campaign (as covered here previously), the team has raised over half of their 35,000 € goal to pay for full-time development and has entered "beta" status for version 1.0. They've released two versions, 0.94 (release notes) being the most recent, which have brought full MPEG-TS/AVCHD support, porting to Python 3, lots of UX improvements, and—of course—lots and lots of bug fixes. The next release (0.95) will run on top of Non Linear Engine, a refined and incredibly more robust backend Pitivi developers have produced to replace GNonLin and bring Pitivi closer to the rock-solid stability needed for the final 1.0 release.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/10/2045244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Joey Hess Resigns From Debian
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '14

08 Nov '14

'Long-time Debian developer Joey Hess has posted a resignation letter to the Debian mailing list. Hess was a big part of the development of the Debian installer, debhelper, Alien, and other systems. He says, "It's become abundantly clear that this is no longer the project I originally joined in 1996. We've made some good things, and I wish everyone well, but I'm out. ... If I have one regret from my 18 years in Debian, it's that when the Debian constitution was originally proposed, despite seeing it as dubious, I neglected to speak out against it. It's clear to me now that it's a toxic document, that has slowly but surely led Debian in very unhealthy directions."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/08/1448234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Canonical officially unveils its OpenStack distro
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '14

08 Nov '14

'Any doubts you might have had about Canonical, best known for its Ubuntu Linux distribution, refocusing it energy on cloud-based Linux rather than desktop or mobile Linux were put to rest at the OpenStack Summit. [...] With Canonical Distribution for Ubuntu OpenStack, which is now in public beta, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said: "This is a complete autopilot for your private cloud."' -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/canonical-officially-unveils-its-openstack-distro-7000… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Major Performance Improvement Discovered For Intel's GPU Linux Driver
by Peter Reutemann 07 Nov '14

07 Nov '14

"LunarG, on contract with Valve Software, discovered a critical shortcoming with the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver that was handicapping the performance. A special bit wasn't being set by the Linux driver but was by the Windows driver, which when enabled is increasing the Linux performance in many games by now ~20%+, which should allow for a much more competitive showing between Intel OpenGL performance on Windows vs. Linux. However, the patch setting this bit isn't public yet as apparently it's breaking video acceleration in certain cases." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/11/07/1237236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OpenSUSE 13.2 Released
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '14

06 Nov '14

"The latest version of the openSUSE distribution, 13.2, has been officially released. Key features include integrated support for filesystem snapshots, enabled by a switch to btrfs as the default file system, a new network manager (Wicked), as well as the usual version updates. This release includes seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome) and even preview packages of Plasma 5.1, all presented with a unified openSUSE theme. Download LiveUSB and DVD images now from software.opensuse.org/132." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/06/1837227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '14

06 Nov '14

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for the guest system. Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, how to use and what it can be used for." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

Fedora 21 Beta Released
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

"The Fedora Project has been critical to the development Red Hat Enterprise Linux — RHEL version 7 was largely based off Fedora version 19. Fedora is continuing to evolve with the announcement of Fedora 21 Beta, now available from the Fedora Project website. To make the release ready for Beta testing required addressing 50 beta blocker bugs. If the Fedora Project developers are able to keep up with the final release blocker bugs, then Fedora 21 is expected to be released on December 9th. As a result, support for Fedora 19 is expected to end around the beginning of 2015. Released back in July 2013, Fedora 19 will have been supported for over 540 days by 2015. Previously, the longest a Fedora release was supported was Fedora Core 5 at 469 days. Users of Fedora 19 will be encouraged to upgrade to Fedora 20 or 21 to continue to get critical updates." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/201215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Trisquel 7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

"Trisquel 7.0 Belenos has been released. Trisquel is a "free as in freedom" GNU/Linux distribution endorsed by the FSF. This latest release includes Linux-libre 3.13, GNOME 3.12, Abrowser 33 (based on Firefox), the Electrum Bitcoin client and many more new features and upgrades. Trisquel 7.0 will be supported until 2019. " -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/0517220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Breaching Air-Gap Security With Radio
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

Not quite Linux, but interesting (scary?) nonetheless... "Security researcher Mordechai Guri with the guidance of Prof. Yuval Elovici from the cyber security labs at Ben-Gurion University in Israel presented at MALCON 2014 a breakthrough method ("AirHopper") for leaking data from an isolated computer to a mobile phone without the presence of a network. In highly secure facilities the assumption today is that data can not leak outside of an isolated internal network. It is called air-gap security. AirHopper demonstrates how the computer display can be used for sending data from the air-gapped computer to a near by smartphone. The published paper and a demonstration video are at the link." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/31/141207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Vulnerabilities Found (and Sought) In More Command-Line Tools
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

"The critical Shellshock vulnerabilities found last month in the Bash Unix shell have motivated security researchers to search for similar flaws in old, but widely used, command-line utilities. Two remote command execution vulnerabilities were patched this week in the popular wget download agent and tnftp client for Unix-like systems [also mentioned here]. This comes after a remote code execution vulnerability was found last week in a library used by strings, objdump, readelf and other command-line tools." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/30/2130248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux computer program brings a smile where it's least expected
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

"Reglue is an organization that has been placing Linux computers in the homes of financially disadvantaged kids since 2005. The program started in central Texas and we'd love to see it grow [...]. Using Linux as the operating system has not been a matter of religion or partisanship. Not even a matter of personal choice. It's a matter of pragmatic necessity. To give you a better picture of why, here's the story of Ricky. In short: We installed a computer for a financially-disadvantaged kid. We taught that kid how to use the computer. That kid was supremely happy with his new Linux computer. We left. The end." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/10/reglue-program-linux-computers-kids Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Dangerous Vulnerability Fixed In Wget
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '14

29 Oct '14

'A critical flaw has been found and patched in the open source Wget file retrieval utility that is widely used on UNIX systems. The vulnerability is publicly identified as CVE-2014-4877. "It was found that wget was susceptible to a symlink attack which could create arbitrary files, directories or symbolic links and set their permissions when retrieving a directory recursively through FTP," developer Vasyl Kaigorodov writes in Red Hat Bugzilla. A malicious FTP server can stomp over your entire filesystem, tweets HD Moore, chief research officer at Rapid 7, who is the original reporter of the bug.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/29/1333216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] Your Drupal website has a backdoor
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '14

29 Oct '14

Apologies if you received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bevan Rudge Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 8:37 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] Your Drupal website has a backdoor If you administer a Drupal website or know anyone who does, please make sure they see this: Drupal Core - Highly Critical - Public Service announcement - PSA-2014-003 https://www.drupal.org/PSA-2014-003 The short version is; if a Drupal website was not patched within 7 hours of the announcement of Dupal-core-SA-2014-005 (aka Drupageddon) on 16 October (NZ time), it probably has backdoors, and data should be assumed to be compromised. The only safe and certain recovery is to get a new server and restore from backups from before that date. In many ways this is worse than Heartbleed because it is so easy much easier to exploit, and the attacker can get any data they ask for (with Heartbleed, I believe an attacker didn't know what data they were looking at) and control all of Drupal. Most attacks seem to be installing backdoors for sending spam or future amplification of other attacks. But there are many different types of exploits, so assume anything and everything. Cheers, Bevan/ http://Drupal.geek.nz http://Twitter.com/BevanR Sent from Auckland, New Zealand _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OpenBSD Drops Support For Loadable Kernel Modules
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '14

28 Oct '14

"The OpenBSD developers have decided to remove support for loadable kernel modules from the BSD distribution's next release. Several commits earlier this month stripped out the loadable kernel modules support. Phoronix's Michael Larabel has not yet found an official reason for the decision to drop support. He wagers that it is due to security or code quality/openness ideals." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/10/28/1852214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Firefox OS Coming To Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '14

28 Oct '14

"Mozilla plans to build a version of its Firefox OS for use in the Raspberry Pi. Plans are afoot to build a version capable of (1) being run on the Pi hardware and (2) eventually achieving parity with Raspbian and (3) enable easy development for robotics." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/27/2348204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

New Oculus SDK Adds Experimental Linux Support and Unity Free For Rift Headset
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

"Oculus, creator of the Rift VR headset, has released a new version of their SDK which brings with it long sought-after support for Linux, which the company says is "experimental." Linux support was previously unavailable since the launch of the company's second development kit, the DK2. The latest SDK update also adds support for Unity Free, the non-commercial version of the popular game authoring engine. Previously, Unity developers needed the Pro version—costing $1,500 or $75/month—to create experiences for the Oculus Rift." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/25/1725224 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Italian Supreme Court Bans the 'Microsoft Tax'
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

'In a post at the Free Software Foundation, lawyer Marco Ciurcina reports that the Italian Supreme Court has ruled the practice of forcing users to pay for a Windows license when they buy a new PC is illegal. Manufacturers in Italy are now legally obligated to refund that money if a buyer wants to put GNU/Linux or another free OS on the computer. Ciurcina says, "The focus of the Court's reasoning is that the sale of a PC with software preinstalled is not like the sale of a car with its components (the 4 wheels, the engine, etc.) that therefore are sold jointly. Buying a computer with preinstalled software, the user is required to conclude two different contracts: the first, when he buys the computer; the second, when he turns on the computer for the first time and he is required to accept or not the license terms of the preinstalled software. Therefore, if the user does not accept the software license, he has the right to keep the computer and install free software without having to pay the 'Microsoft tax.'"' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/25/1443210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

5 Deadly Linux Commands You Should Never Run
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

"As a Linux user, you probably have searched online for articles and tutorials that show you how to use the terminal to run some commands. While most of these commands are harmless and could help you become more productive, there are some commands that are deadly and could wipe out your whole machine." -- source: http://goo.gl/fmIOxY I love the obscurity of the fork bomb! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Super Cheap, Packet-Sniffing Power Strip
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

"If you have a Raspberry Pi and one of those surge protectors that also protects your network cables from voltage fluctuations, you have most of the tools you need to build a cheap network observation device, as long as you're not afraid to use a soldering iron. When you're finished, you'll have the perfect addition to your pen-testing toolkit. " -- source: http://lifehacker.com/5952327 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How Red Hat is Transforming from a Server-Client to Cloud-Mobile Leader
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

'Red Hat has become a role model for other companies by writing a success story based on open source software and Linux, without a single proprietary component in the soup. The company continues to evolve and transform itself with the changing times to remain a leader, and not simply relevant, unlike many other software giants that are struggling in the market. Everyone is moving towards cloud and mobile; the consumer space has totally switched gears to cloud and mobile, and enterprises aren't far behind. Thomas E. Hogan, CEO of Kony Inc., said a few weeks ago, “With the number of mobile applications downloaded from app stores expected to increase by a 31.7 percent CAGR by 2017, enterprises are realizing that a mobile strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must have."' -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/792591 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu 14.10 Released With Ambitious Name, But Small Changes
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

'Ubuntu 14.10, dubbed Utopic Unicorn, has been released today (here are screenshots). PC World says that at first glance "isn't the most exciting update," with not so much as a new default wallpaper — but happily so: it's a stable update in a stable series, and most users will have no pressing need to update to the newest version. In the Ubuntu Next unstable series, though, there are big changes afoot: Along with Mir comes the next version of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, Unity 8. Mir and the latest version of Unity are already used on Ubuntu Phone, so this is key for Ubuntu's goal of convergent computing — Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu desktop will use the same display server and desktop shell. Ubuntu Phone is now stable and Ubuntu phones are arriving this year, so a lot of work has gone into this stuff recently. The road ahead looks bumpy however. Ubuntu needs to get graphics drivers supporting Mir properly. The task becomes more complicated when you consider that other Linux distributions — like Fedora — are switching to the Wayland display server instead of Mir. When Ubuntu Desktop Next becomes the standard desktop environment, the changes will be massive indeed. But for today, Utopic Unicorn is all about subtle improvements and slow, steady iteration.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/23/1946243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

wlug meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Hi there We've got a WLUG meeting tomorrow - due to Labor Day a week earlier that usual. 'Greg B.: A talk with an overview of the so-called "Crypto2.0" open source projects that are attempting to be overlays for the bitcoin network. Why does bitcoin need overlays and possible future directions in cryptofinance in general? A brief round-up of the emerging Crypto2.0 projects out there, Counterparty, Mastercoin, Bitshares, Ripple, Stellar, Next and CoinSpark. Then a more in-depth discussion of Open-Transactions (openTXS). Peter R.: Running OwnCloud on a Raspberry Pi.' http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/212122742/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/2012258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Raspberry Pi Founder Demos Touchscreen Display For DIY Kits
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

'Over 4 million Raspberry Pis have been sold so far, and now founder Eben Upton has shown off a touchscreen display panel that's designed to work with it. It's a 7" panel, roughly tablet sized, but slightly thicker. "With the incoming touchscreen panel The Pi Foundation is clearly hoping to keep stoking the creative fires that have helped drive sales of the Pi by slotting another piece of DIY hardware into the mix." Upton also discussed the Model A+ Raspberry Pi board — an updated version they'll be announcing soon.' -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/1532200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Take Control With Open Source Hardware
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Free and open source software are no good without open hardware. If we can't install our software on a piece of hardware, it's not good for anything. Truly open hardware is fully-programmable and replicable: OSHWA, Raspberry Pi, OLinuXino, Arduino, BeagleBoard, RepRap 3D Printer, Open Prosthetics, OpenROV Submarine, Open Source Cell Phones" -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/peripherals/792185 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Delivering Malicious Android Apps Hidden In Image Files
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Researchers have found a way to deliver a malicious app to Android users by hiding it into what seems to be an encrypted image file, which is then delivered via a legitimate, seemingly innocuous wrapper app. Fortinet malware researcher Axelle Apvrille and reverse engineer Ange Albertini created a custom tool they dubbed AngeCryption, which allows them to encrypt the payload Android application package (APK) and make it look like an image (PNG, JPG) file . They also had to create another APK that carries the "booby-trapped" image file and which can decrypt it to unveil the malicious APK file and install it. A malicious app thusly encrypted is nearly invisible to reverse engineers, and possibly even to AV solutions and Google's Android Bouncer." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/10/21/1325236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

Ubuntu 16.04 Might Be The Distribution's Last 32-Bit Release
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"Ubuntu contributor Bryan Quigley is considering a proposal to make Ubuntu 16.04 LTS the last release of Ubuntu with 32-bit installation images. Come April 2016, Intel 32-bit users might be on their last, overdue leg for upgrading their distribution. Quigley is considering a proposal to kill off the 32-bit install (ISO) images after that point while support for 32-bit applications on 64-bit Ubuntu would still be supported. The proposal would only involve Intel/AMD x86 with 32-bit ARM being unaffected given that 32-bit ARM is still very common to devices. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxOTQ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Yubikey, Lastpass and Brewpi.
by chris 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

Hi all, I've posted my notes from last Monday's meeting here. It's the slide show plus a few links. https://github.com/WLUG/meetings Cheers, Chris

3 2

Features GNOME Developers Want In The Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

'Made into a concise list is a number of features that GNOME developers want to see landed within the Linux kernel, in hopes of kernel developers eventually tackling these wish list features that could help not only GNOME but other desktops too. Bastien Nocera wrote to the kernel mailing list explaining, "GNOME has had discussions with kernel developers in the past, and, fortunately, in some cases we were able to make headway. There are however a number of items that we still don't have solutions for, items that kernel developers might not realise we'd like to rely on, or don't know that we'd make use of if merged." Among the features sought after in the kernel include a hibernation mode not using SWAP space, native hybrid suspend support in the kernel, a connected stand-by suspend mode, screen backlight guidelines, time changes for files/folders within a sub-directory, LinuxApps containers support (OverlayFS and KDBUS), memory compression being enabled by default for capable hardware, and various other changes. ' -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxOTI Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Microsoft “Loves Linux” as it Makes Azure Bigger, Better
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"In San Francisco on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a "cancer" by Nadella's predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced with open arms (if not extended), at least when it comes to Redmond's Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud-computing/792539 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Rejuvenate your Fedora desktop with Moka
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"GNOME is cool and beautiful, and the default Adwaita theme has matured greatly since it was introduced in GNOME 3.0. In fact, the Adwaita theme in Fedora 21 is now looking better than ever. However, I have used it for a long time, and I kinda feel like using a different theme — After all, who doesn’t like to have a change once in a while? So, I decided to put new life into my desktop, and my search ended with the great moka project." -- source: http://fedoramagazine.org/rejuvenate-your-fedora-desktop-with-moka/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

wlug meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

Hi there We've got a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday - due to Labor Day a week earlier that usual. 'Greg B.: A talk with an overview of the so-called "Crypto2.0" open source projects that are attempting to be overlays for the bitcoin network. Why does bitcoin need overlays and possible future directions in cryptofinance in general? A brief round-up of the emerging Crypto2.0 projects out there, Counterparty, Mastercoin, Bitshares, Ripple, Stellar, Next and CoinSpark. Then a more in-depth discussion of Open-Transactions (openTXS). Peter R.: Running OwnCloud on a Raspberry Pi.' http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/212122742/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

'It appears that systemd is still a hot topic in the Debian community. As seen earlier today, there is a new movement shaping up against the adoption of systemd for the upcoming stable release [of Debian], Jessie. They claim that "systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy"; it makes things more complex, thus breaking the "do one thing and do it well" principle.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/20/1944226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Turns 10
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"Scott James Remnant, now Technical Lead on ChromeOS, was a Debian developer before that. That's how he became involved from the beginning (becoming Developer Manager, and then serving on the Technical Board) on the little derivative distribution that Mark Shuttleworth decided to make of Debian Unstable, and for which the name Ubuntu was eventually chosen. On this date in 2004, Ubuntu 4.10 -- aka Warty Warthog, or just Warty -- was released, and Remnant has shared a detailed, nostalgic look back at the early days of the project that has (whatever else you think of it ) become one of the most influential in the world of open source and Free software. I was excited that Canonical sent out disks that I could pass around to friends and family that looked acceptably polished to them in a way that Sharpie-marked Knoppix CD-ROMs didn't, and that the polish extended to the installer, the desktop, and the included constellation of software, too." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/20/1356248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GNOME Developer Comes Up With New Animated Image Format
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"Jasper St. Pierre who we're usually talking about on Phoronix due to his GNOME contributions related to Wayland support, shared today he's come up with a new animated image format to compete with GIF. While GIF is technologically out-of-date with its compression support and other features, alternative animated image file formats like APNG and MNG haven't taken off. However, Jasper ended up devising a new image format called XNG. XNG doesn't impose any restrictions, can support more complex functionality, and will work existing HTML5 browsers of today. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxNjc Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

New open hardware: Raspberry Pi B+
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"The main differences between the B+ and the Raspberry Pi model B are the new model has: - four USB ports (versus two in the model B) - a microSD card (versus a full size SD card in model B) - a video jack integrated with the audio jack (versus two separate jacks in the model B) - GPIO pins extended to 40 pins (versus 26 pins in the model B) - lower power consumption - four mounting holes What has not changed: - The price, it is $35 USD - The amount of RAM, it has 512 Mb" -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/10/reviewing-new-raspberry-pi-b-board All in all, sounds like very reasonable changes - especially the 4 USB ports. Though would have preferred 1GB of RAM. :-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"The Anonabox router project, currently being funded through a Kickstarter campaign, has surpassed its original $7,000 crowdfunding goal by more than 10 times in just one day. The open source router device connects via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable making it harder for your IP address to be seen. While there have been other Tor-enabled routers in the past, they aren't small enough to fit in a shirt pocket like the Anonabox and they haven't offered data encryption on top of the routing network. The device, which is being pitched as a way for consumers to securely surf the web and share content (or allow businesses to do the same), is also being directed at journalists who may want to share stories in places where they might otherwise be censored." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/10/14/0035226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

After Negative User Response, ChromeOS To Re-Introduce Support For Ext{2, 3, 4}
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

'Only three days after the public learned that the ChromeOS project was going to disable ext2fs support for external drives (causing Linux users to voice many protests on websites like Slashdot and the issue tracker), the ChromeOS team now plans to support it again. To quote Ben Goodger's comment: "Thanks for all of your feedback on this bug. We've heard you loud and clear. We plan to re-enable ext2/3/4 support in Files.app immediately. It will come back, just like it was before, and we're working to get it into the next stable channel release."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/16/1228232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Test the new Firefox Hello WebRTC feature in Firefox Beta
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

"Firefox Hello provides more value to Firefox users by making it easier to communicate with your friends and family who might not have the same video chat service, software or hardware as you. It’s free to make voice and video calls and there’s no need to download software, plugins or even create an account." -- source: http://goo.gl/HoR1aS Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How To Install Chromium And Enable Pepper Flash Plugin
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

Lately, I've been a bit annoyed by my Chromium browser no longer working with flash, seemed to disable the flash plugin automatically (running Linux Mint 17). Usual workaround was to paste the URL in Firefox. But, alas, there is a fix for that: Pepper Flash Player. Check out the link below for instructions (applies to Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Pinguy OS 14.04 And Elementary OS 0.3): http://goo.gl/CNJ8Bt Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Tor Browser 4.0 and Tails 1.2 Update Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '14

18 Oct '14

"Tor - Privacy oriented encrypted anonymizing service, has announced the launch of its next version of Tor Browser Bundle, Tor version 4.0, which disables SSL3 to prevent POODLE attack and uses new transports that are intended to defeat the Great Firewall of China and other extremely restrictive firewalls." -- source: http://thehackernews.com/2014/10/privacy-tools-tor-browser-40-and-tails.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Drupal Fixes Highly Critical SQL Injection Flaw
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

'Drupal has patched a critical SQL injection vulnerability in version 7.x of the content management system that can allow arbitrary code execution. The flaw lies in an API that is specifically designed to help prevent against SQL injection attacks. "Drupal 7 includes a database abstraction API to ensure that queries executed against the database are sanitized to prevent SQL injection attacks," the Drupal advisory says. "A vulnerability in this API allows an attacker to send specially crafted requests resulting in arbitrary SQL execution. Depending on the content of the requests this can lead to privilege escalation, arbitrary PHP execution, or other attacks."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/2048218 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Microsoft Partners With Docker
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

"Docker is teaming up with Microsoft to bring its open container technology to the next release of Windows Server. Docker Engine will work with the next release of Windows Server and images will be available in Docker Hub, which will also integrate directly into Microsoft Azure. The partnership moves Docker beyond Linux for the first time with new multi-container application capabilities for cloud and enterprise developers." -- source: http://slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/1656244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Google Finds Vulnerability In SSL 3.0 Web Encryption
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

"SSL 3.0 is nearly 15 years old, but support for it remains widespread. Most importantly, nearly all browsers support it and, in order to work around bugs in HTTPS servers, browsers will retry failed connections with older protocol versions, including SSL 3.0. Because a network attacker can cause connection failures, they can trigger the use of SSL 3.0 and then exploit this issue. Disabling SSL 3.0 support, or CBC-mode ciphers with SSL 3.0, is sufficient to mitigate this issue, but presents significant compatibility problems, even today. Therefore our recommended response (PDF) is to support TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV. This is a mechanism that solves the problems caused by retrying failed connections and thus prevents attackers from inducing browsers to use SSL 3.0. It also prevents downgrades from TLS 1.2 to 1.1 or 1.0 and so may help prevent future attacks." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/000239 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Analysis of Linux Backdoor Used In Freenode Hack
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '14

14 Oct '14

For those that use IRC... "A detailed analysis has been done of the Linux backdoor used in the freenode hack. It employed port knocking and encryption to provide security against others using it. This seems a little more sophisticated than your average black-hat hacker." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/14/2142214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

VeraCrypt Is the New TrueCrypt -- and It's Better
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

'If you're looking for an alternative to TrueCrypt, you could do worse than VeraCrypt, which adds iterations and corrects weaknesses in TrueCrypt's API, drivers and parameter checking. According to the article, "In technical terms, when a system partition is encrypted, TrueCrypt uses PBKDF2-RIPEMD160 with 1,000 iterations. For standard containers and other (i.e. non system) partitions, TrueCrypt uses at most 2,000 iterations. What Idrassi did was beef up the transformation process. VeraCrypt uses 327,661 iterations of the PBKDF2-RIPEMD160 algorithm for system partitions, and for standard containers and other partitions it uses 655,331 iterations of RIPEMD160 and 500,000 iterations of SHA-2 and Whirlpool, he said. While this makes VeraCrypt slightly slower at opening encrypted partitions, it makes the software a minimum of 10 and a maximum of about 300 times harder to brute force."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/13/2234251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Lunar Linux 1.7.0
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

'Stefan Wold has announced the release of Lunar Linux 1.7.0, a source-based distribution with a complete application management system: "You better believe it, the day you all have been waiting for has finally arrived. The Lunar team proudly announces the final release of Lunar Linux 1.7.0, code name 'Sinus Successus'. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes Lunar Linux is back with a vengeance; a lot of overhauling has been done all over the core tools, packages, installer and the ISO builder. Even though our journey to reach this milestone has been a long one we hope that the changes and quality improvements we've made was worth the wait. So what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy of Lunar Linux while it is hot! New features in 1.7.0: out with sysvinit and in with systemd; Linux kernel 3.16.3, GCC 4.9.1 and glibc 2.19; added support for the Btrfs file system; GRUB 2 or LILO, pick your poison; improved installer; now with initrd support; a bunch of updated modules."' -- source: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08641 If you like compiling stuff, this should be an interesting distro. I wonder, how it compares to Gentoo? Anybody feel like giving it a spin and maybe share some insights at the next meeting? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM: Monday 24th November 2014
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

Hi everyone The year is coming to an end and it is once again time for an AGM. This year's AGM will take place on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - Possible nomination of additional secretary by committee - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Dronecode Project
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

"The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the founding of the Dronecode Project. The Project will bring together existing open source drone projects and assets under a nonprofit structure governed by The Linux Foundation. The result will be a common, shared open source platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Founding members include 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, Intel, jDrones, Laser Navigation, Qualcomm, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec. Dronecode includes the APM UAV software platform and associated code, which until now has been hosted by 3D Robotics, a world leader in advanced UAV autopilot and autonomous vehicle control. The company was co-founded by Chris Anderson, formerly editor-in-chief of Wired" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/10/13/1152208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Netflix Now Works On Ubuntu, No Hacks Required
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

"The company has, quietly, and without fanfare, flipped the switch required to allow Google Chrome users on Ubuntu (and other modern Linux distributions) to watch movies and TV shows in the browser. If you’ve been following this long, protracted saga — which has been about as enjoyable as a binge-watch of the US Inbetweeners remake — then this news won’t be too out of the blue. Last month Netflix engineer Paul Adolph pledged to remove the user-agent filter, the final hurdle in preventing Ubuntu users from streaming content, once a newer version of the security library (nss3) was rolled out to users. That roll out took place in late September. " -- source: http://goo.gl/ekPj73 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Spotify is Powered by Linux and Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

'Spotify can aptly be called the "Netflix for music." The company started off in 2008 and by 2014 it boasts more than 40 million users with 10 million paid subscribers. The Swedish company is yet another example of how Linux and open source enable businesses to serve millions of customers using state-of-the-art, shared technologies.' -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/790458 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

ChromeOS Will No Longer Support Ext2/3/4 On External Drives/SD Cards
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

"Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel and designed by Google to work with web applications and installed applications. Chromebook is one of the best selling laptops on Amazon. However, devs decided to drop support for ext2/3/4 on external drivers and SD card. It seems that ChromiumOS developers can't implement a script or feature to relabel EXT volumes in the left nav that is insertable and has RW privileges using Files.app. Given that this is the main filesystem in Linux, and is thereby automatically well supported by anything that leverages Linux, this choice makes absolutely no sense. Google may want to drop support for external storage and push the cloud storage on everyone. Overall Linux users and community members are not happy at all." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/12/1321207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] [Crosspost] LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open!
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

FYI ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Foster Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 9:57 PM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] [Crosspost] LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open! (With apologies for the crosspost - but this is big news! :-)) PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open! The moment that you have been waiting for has finally arrived! It is with many hugs of sincere gratitude to the team that we can announce that Earlybird Registration for LCA2015 is now open. Now is the time to chose - are you a Professional, a Hobbyist or a Student attending LCA2015? Will you be one of our fantastic army of volunteers? Go to lca2015.linux.org.au <http://lca2015.org.au> to register and buy your Earlybird ticket. You can also register as a volunteer right now, and begin to get involved with our wonderful conference. All of the information that you need is there - what you receive for your ticket price, accommodation options, THE Penguin Dinner, as well as Partners Program and creche options for those of you who are bringing your family with you. There have been months of anticipation, and several sleepless nights, but we are now at a truly exciting stage of the conference organising process - registration! We look forward to seeing you all in January 2015 in Auckland. The LCA2015 team END -- Mark Foster For the LCA2015 Org Team _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

next meeting
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

Hi everyone So far, we haven't got anything lined up for our next meeting in October. Anyone feeling like presenting something? For instance Ubuntu 14.10 has its release 23/10 - just before our meeting. Maybe giving the release candidate a spin and share your experience? Or cool Raspberry Pi projects? Thanks! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 6

Google Deliberately Weakens Open Source Android As It Hopes To Dominate With Android One
by Peter Reutemann 05 Oct '14

05 Oct '14

"When you are the underdog in the smartphone world, you look for every advantage possible to get market share. That was the case when Google was looking to establish Android as an alternative to Symbian OS and Windows Mobile. It’s free, here’s the code, knock yourself out, was the implication from Mountain View. Now that market share is clearly with Google (IDC estimates it at 85% for Q2 2014) the question is no longer how to get the OS established as the mass market mobile platform of choice, but about maximizing the revenue generating possibilities for Google. So how does Google deal with the legacy of the first ‘free as in speech’ strategy, namely the Android Open Source Project? Its answer is Android One, and it hopes that the new for 2014 off-the-shelf package will stem the flow of handset manufacturers in China and India rolling their own flavors of Android from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP)." -- source: http://onforb.es/1nOiR0k Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Assorted Fun Linux Command Line Hacks
by Peter Reutemann 05 Oct '14

05 Oct '14

"Today's fun command line festivities are inspired by Command Line Magic (https://twitter.com/climagic) who hangs out on Twitter sharing excellent Linux command line incantations for all occasions. Today's assortment includes shell rainbows, Is the Internet on Fire?, Star Wars Traceroute, and creating annoying sounds from the console." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/790121 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Other Projects Participating In This Winter's Women Outreach Program
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"The other projects participating in this December to March cycle are Debian, Evergreen, FFmpeg, Foreman, GNOME, the Linux kernel, Mesos / Aurora / Pants, the Open-Source Robotics Foundation, OpenStack, OpenStreetMap, oVirt, Perl, Wikimedia, and the Xen Project. The contributions don't need to be necessarily code related but could be those wishing to help with marketing, documentation, or other tasks needed to keep a healthy open-source project. Participating women are paid $5,500 USD for their three months of work. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgwMjg Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Shellshock Vulnerability Spreads to NAS Devices
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"Shellshock, the vulnerability in the Bourne Again Shell (Bash), is taking a new twist and is now being actively exploited in network-attached storage (NAS) devices, according to a new report from FireEye." - source: http://bit.ly/1pJCII3 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Hacking USB Firmware
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

'Now the NSA isn't the only one who can hack your USB firmware: "In a talk at the Derbycon hacker conference in Louisville, Kentucky last week, researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson showed that they've reverse engineered the same USB firmware as Nohl's SR Labs, reproducing some of Nohl's BadUSB tricks. And unlike Nohl, the hacker pair has also published the code for those attacks on Github, raising the stakes for USB makers to either fix the problem or leave hundreds of millions of users vulnerable." Personally, I always thought it was insane that USB drives don't come with physical write-protect switches to keep them from being infected by malware.' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/02/2154204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Arducorder, Next Open Source Science Tricorder-like Device, Nears Completion
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"The Arducorder Mini, an Arduino-compatible pocket-sized handheld sensing tool and the next in line of open source science tricorder-like devices designed by Dr. Peter Jansen, is nearing completion. Where the previous models have included about a dozen sensors spanning atmospheric, electromagnetic, and spatial readings, an exciting video of the new prototype shows this model includes sensors for spectroscopy, low-resolution thermal imaging, and radiation sensing. The development is open with the project build logs and most recent source schematics, board layouts, and firmware available on github. This project is an entry in the Hack a Day Prize for a trip to space." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/2227221 Packs an amazing amount of sensors in such a small form factor! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Security bug in Xen may have exposed Amazon, other cloud services
by Peter Reutemann 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

"The Xen Project has published a security advisory that could affect millions of virtualized servers running in Amazon’s cloud and other public hosting services. A flaw in the Xen hypervisor could allow a malicious fully virtualized server to read data about other virtualized systems running on the same physical hardware or the hypervisor hosting the virtual machine. The malicious system could also potentially crash the server hosting the virtual machines. A patch, which was privately disclosed last week under embargo, has been issued to correct the issue." -- source: http://bit.ly/1sNg89a Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Secure Your Linux Desktop and SSH Login Using Two Factor Google Authenticator
by Peter Reutemann 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

"Two factor authentication is increasingly becoming a strongly recommended way of protecting user accounts in web applications from attackers by requiring a second method of authentication in addition to the standard username and password pair. Although two factor authentication can encompass a wide range of techniques like biometrics or smart cards, the most commonly deployed technique in web applications is the one time password. If you have used applications like Gmail, you are probably familiar with the one time password generated by the Google Authenticator app that's available on iOS or Android devices. The algorithm used for the one time password in the Google Authenticator app is known as the Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) algorithm. The TOTP algorithm is a standard algorithm approved by the IETF in (RFC 6238) totp-rfc. It is a little known fact that you can use the TOTP algorithm to secure your user accounts in Linux systems. This article will walk you through the steps necessary. While the exact commands will be for Fedora 20, the TOTP algorithm can be deployed to any Linux distro with a little modification." -- source: http://bit.ly/10lMmvM Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Foundation Announces Major Network Functions Virtualization Project
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV). Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/1820245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Adobe Photoshop Is Coming To Linux, Through Chromebooks
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"Adobe is bringing the king of all photo editing software, Photoshop, to Linux-based Chrome OS. Chrome OS-powered devices, such as Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, already have a decent line-up of 'applications' that can work offline and eliminate the need of a traditional desktop computer. So far it sounds like great news. The bad news is that the offering is in its beta stage and is available only to the customers of the Creative Cloud Education program residing in the U.S. I have a full subscription of Creative Cloud for Photographers, and LightRoom, but even I can't join the program at the moment." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/1430240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

LibreSSL: More Than 30 Days Later
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"Ted Unangst has posted an update on LibreSSL development. "Joel and I have been working on a replacement API for OpenSSL, appropriately entitled ressl. Reimagined SSL is how I think of it. Our goals are consistency and simplicity. In particular, we answer the question 'What would the user like to do?' and not 'What does the TLS protocol allow the user to do?'. You can make a secure connection to a server. You can host a secure server. You can read and write some data over that connection." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/789692 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Improved Patch Tackles New Shellshock Bash Bug Attack Vectors
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"System administrators who spent last week making sure their computers are patched against Shellshock, a critical vulnerability in the Bash Unix command-line interpreter, will have to install a new patch that addresses additional attack vectors." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/systems-management/789720 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Phones to Arrive By Year's End
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

"Ubuntu Touch for phones is now at manufacturing status, a major milestone for many people who wondered if Ubuntu phones would ever become market realities. Several months ago, rumors swirled that the first Ubuntu phones were delayed and wouldn’t appear until 2015, if at all, but this week news broke that we're likely to see phones by year's end." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/ubuntu-phones-to-arrive-by-years-end Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Hijacking Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

'Somewhere along the line, we’ve lost the spirit of what open source is supposed to be. Cloud computing, the rise of social networks, and data mining personal information on a massive scale has led to an explosion of interest in server side open source, but personal open source still languishes in comparison. Linux.com is running a story entitled Back to the Source: Why FOSS is More Important Than Ever questioning if freedom is still at the heart of open source, and wondering if this is what winning actually looks like. “Open Source” is more popular than ever, but it’s not because we live in an enlightened age of freedom, it’s because the term has been hijacked. ' -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/hijacking-open-source Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271)
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '14

26 Sep '14

Typo... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Volker Kuhlmann <hidden(a)paradise.net.nz> Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 10:23 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271) To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> On Thu 25 Sep 2014 08:33:37 NZST +1200, Clark Mills wrote: > [ from /. thread ] > > This is the test to see if you are vulnerable: > > env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" Thanks for that. http://beta.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5750159&cid=47985625 However, your code here seems to have a serious copy/paste/etc error in it: > bash > env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" bash: x: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `{:' bash: x: line 0: `x () {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash: error importing function definition for `x' this is a test > env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" vulnerable this is a test GNU bash, version 4.2.42(1)-release (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu) Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header. http://volker.top.geek.nz/ Please do not CC list postings to me. _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 5

First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '14

26 Sep '14

'The Bash "Shellshock" bug is being used to spread malware to create a botnet, that's active and attacking Akamai and Department of Defense networks. "The 'wopbot' botnet is active and scanning the internet for vulnerable systems, including at the United States Department of Defence, chief executive of Italian security consultancy Tiger Security, Emanuele Gentili, told iTnews. 'We have found a botnet that runs on Linux servers, named “wopbot", that uses the Bash Shellshock bug to auto-infect other servers,' Gentili said."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/25/236256 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GNOME 3.14 Released
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '14

25 Sep '14

"GNOME 3.14 was released today and it includes some interesting changes such as re-worked default theme, multi-touch gestures for both the system and applications, and new animations. Information including details on all the new features, can be found here." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/24/2155241 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Kali NetHunter turns Android device into hacker Swiss Army knife
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '14

25 Sep '14

"One of the tools we've leaned on heavily in some of our lab testing of software privacy and security is Kali Linux. The Debian-based operating system comes packaged with a collection of penetration testing and network monitoring tools curated and developed by the security training company Offensive Security. Today, the Kali developer team and Offensive Security released a new Kali project that runs on a Google Nexus device. Called NetHunter, the distribution provides much of the power of Kali with the addition of a browser-driven set of tools that can be used to launch attacks on wireless networks or on unattended computers via a USB connection." -- source: http://bit.ly/1veUgAz Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271)
by Peter Reutemann 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

FYI ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Clark Mills <c.mills(a)auckland.ac.nz> Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271) To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> [ from /. thread ] This is the test to see if you are vulnerable: env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" On 25/09/14 08:16, Jaco wrote: > > bash is borked. > > http://www.csoonline.com/article/2687265/application-security/remote-exploi… > > This bad. > This is very, VERY bad. > > Please go patch! _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 4

Linux Saturday Workshop
by Bruce Kingsbury 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

I'll be running another Saturday Linux Workshop this weekend; Saturday September 27th, 2014 10:00 am – 2:00 pm *Te Whare O Te Ata* 60a Sare Cres Hamilton, 3214 07 2820577 This is a GNU/Linux-focused workshop where people can bring their PCs, Laptops, Pi's, Android devices etc for trouble-shooting and to learn or try out new skills. All visitors welcome - light lunch provided - gold coin donation appreciated

2 1

Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop
by Peter Reutemann 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

"Debian will switch back to using GNOME as the default desktop environment for the upcoming Debian 8.0 Jessie release, due out in 2015. The decision is based on accessibility and systemd integration, along with a host of other reasons. Debian switched away from GNOME back in 2012." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/23/2312251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

DuckDuckGo Now Blocked In China
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '14

23 Sep '14

"Privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo is now blocked in China. On Sunday DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg confirmed to Tech in Asia that the team has noticed the blockage in China on Twitter. DuckDuckGo had been working fine in mainland China since its inception, aside from the occasional 'connection reset' experienced when accessing many overseas websites from within the country. But now the search engine is totally blocked in China. ... [T]he GreatFire index of blocked sites suggest that DuckDuckGo got whacked on September 4. DuckDuckGo joins Google in being censored and blocked in the nation. Google, after years of being throttled by China's Great Firewall since the web giant turned off its mainland China servers in 2010, was finallyblocked totally in June this year." -- source: http://search.slashdot.org/story/14/09/23/0052206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Outlining Thin Linux
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '14

23 Sep '14

'Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up his call for splitting Linux distros in two by arguing that the new shape of the Linux server is thin, light, and fine-tuned to a single purpose. "Those of us who build and maintain large-scale Linux infrastructures would be happy to see a highly specific, highly stable mainstream distro that had no desktop package or dependency support whatsoever, so was not beholden to architectural changes made due to desktop package requirements. When you're rolling out a few hundred Linux VMs locally, in the cloud, or both, you won't manually log into them, much less need any type of graphical support. Frankly, you could lose the framebuffer too; it wouldn't matter unless you were running certain tests," Venezia writes. "It's only a matter of time before a Linux distribution that caters solely to these considerations becomes mainstream and is offered alongside more traditional distributions."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/22/2245217 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fork of Systemd Leads To Lightweight Uselessd
by Peter Reutemann 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

"A boycott of systemd and other backlash around systemd's feature-creep has led to the creation of Uselessd, a new init daemon. Uselessd is a fork of systemd 208 that strips away functionality considered irrelevant to an init system like the systemd journal and udev. Uselessd also adds in functionality not accepted in upstream systemd like support for alternative C libraries (namely uClibc and musl) and it's even being ported to BSD." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/21/1427240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

KDE's UI To Bend Toward Simplicity
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

"KDE Software is often criticized for being too complicated for an average user to use. Try setting up Kmail and you would know what I mean. The KDE developers are aware of it and now they are working on making KDE UI simpler. KDE usability team lead Thomas Pfeiffer Thomas prefers a layered feature exposure so that users can enjoy certain advanced features at a later stage after they get accustomed to the basic functionality of the application. He quotes the earlier (pre-Plasma era) vision of KDE 4 – "Anything that makes Linux interesting for technical users (shells, compilation, drivers, minute user settings) will be available; not as the default way of doing things, but at the user's discretion." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/20/0725232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Android Apps Now Unofficially Able To Run On Any Major Desktop OS
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

'A developer who goes by the handle Vladikoff has tweaked Google's App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) to allow any Android app to run on any major desktop operating system, not just the handful announced last week which were also limited to Chrome OS. His tweaked version of ARC is re-packaged as ARChon. The install isn't very straightforward, and you have to be in developer mode on Chrome. But there's a support forum on reddit. The extension will work on any OS running the desktop version of Chrome 37 and up as long as the user also installs chromeos-apk, which converts raw Android app packages (APKs) to a Chrome extension. Ars Technica reports that apps run this way are buggy, fast, and crash often but expresses optimism for when Google officially "opens the floodgates on the Play Store, putting 1.3 million Android apps onto nearly every platform."' -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/09/20/0250209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Native Netflix Support Is Coming To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

'Native support for Netflix is coming to Linux, thanks to their move from Silverlight to HTML5, Mozilla and Google Chrome. Paul Adolph from Netflix proposed a solution to Ubuntu developers: "Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed. If this version is generally installed across 14.02, Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play." The newer version of NSS is set to go out with the next security update.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1350202 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

TrueCrypt Gets a New Life, New Name
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

"Amid ongoing security concerns, the popular open source encryption program TrueCrypt may have found new life under a new name. Under the terms of the TrueCrypt license — which was a homemade open source license written by the authors themselves rather than a standard one — a forking of the code is allowed if references to TrueCrypt are removed from the code and the resulting application is not called TrueCrypt. Thus, CipherShed will be released under a standard open source license, with long-term ambitions to become a completely new product." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1620240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Digia Spins Off Qt As Subsidiary
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

"Following through on an announcement from August, Digia has spun off a subsidiary called The Qt Company to unify Qt's commercial and open source efforts, and debuted a low-cost plan for mobile developers. The Linux-oriented Qt cross-platform development framework has had a tumultuous career, having been passed around Scandinavia over the years from Trolltech to Nokia and then from Nokia to Digia. Yet, Qt keeps rolling along in both commercial and open source community versions, continually adding support for new platforms and technologies, and gaining extensive support from mobile developers. Now Qt is its own company, or at least a wholly owned subsidiary under Digia. Finland-based Digia has largely been involved with the commercial versions of Qt since it acquired the platform from Nokia in 2012, but it has also sponsored the community Qt Project as a relatively separate project. Now, both efforts are being unified under one roof at The Qt Company and the new QT.io website, says Digia. Meanwhile, Digia will focus on its larger enterprise software business." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/2146243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Industry-Based ToDo Alliance Wants To Guide FOSS Development
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

'The New York Times broke a story [Monday] (paywalled if you look at more than 10 stories a month) about ToDo, "an open group of companies who run open source programs" who are seeking to "committed to working together in order to overcome" the challenges of using FOSS, "including ensuring high-quality and frequent releases, engaging with developer communities, and using and contributing back to other projects effectively." The more militant among us will read that as "It's not enough getting a free ride off of developers building great software, we want to shove our roadmap down their throats and get them to work harder for us — without having to pay for it, of course." That might be a bit harsh, but none of the companies on the page are exactly well known for cooperating with the projects they use, with Google being one of the worst offenders by forking both Linux and WebKit.' -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/1244207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

New Release of MINIX 3 For x86 and ARM Is NetBSD Compatible
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

"MINIX 3 is a small POSIX-compliant operating system aimed at high reliability (embedded) applications. A major new version of MINIX 3 (3.3.0) is now available for download at www.minix3.org. In addition to the x86, the ARM Cortex A8 is now supported, with ports to the BeagleBoard and BeagleBones available. Finally, the entire userland has been redone in 3.3.0 to make it NetBSD compatible, with thousands of NetBSD packages available out of the box. MINIX 3 is based on a tiny (13 KLoC) microkernel with the operating system running as a set of protected user-mode processes. Each device driver is also a separate process. If a driver fails, it is automatically and transparently restarted without rebooting and without applications even noticing, making the system self-healing." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/1348208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

SparkFun Works to Build the Edison Ecosystem
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

'Edison is an Intel creation aimed squarely at the maker and prototype markets. It's smaller than an Arduino, has built-in wi-fi, and is designed to be used in embedded applications. SparkFun is "an online retail store that sells the bits and pieces to make your electronics projects possible." They're partnering with Intel to sell the Edison and all kinds of add-ons for it. Open source? Sure. Right down to the schematics. David Stillman, star of today's video, works for SparkFun. He talks about "a gajillion" things you can do with an Edison, up to and including the creation of an image-recognition system for your next homemade drone.' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/09/15/209206 Running Linux on Edison: http://hackaday.com/2014/09/10/hands-on-with-the-intel-edison/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fate of Bodhi Linux in Balance as Founder Quits
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

"Jeff Hoogland, founder and lead developer of Bodhi Linux, today blogged that he will no longer be continuing with the project. Bodhi began four years ago and reach impressive heights of popularity being recommended by some of the biggest names in Linux. However, version 3.0 is way overdue and Hoogland says he just doesn't have the bandwidth to finish it or continue the project. The code is GitHub and Hoogland is hoping someone will volunteer to take over for him. For those currently using Bodhi, repositories will remain available until April 2015." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/fate-of-bodhi-linux-in-balance-as-founder-quits Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Turning the tables on “Windows Support” scammers by compromising their PCs
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '14

15 Sep '14

"Matt Weeks is one of the developers who contributes code to the open source Metasploit Project, a sprawling and continually updated security framework that functions as a repository for software vulnerabilities and is frequently used as a Swiss Army Knife for penetration testing. Weeks has published a long report on his site detailing how he was able to reverse-engineer the encrypted communications protocol used by Ammyy Admin, one of the most popular remote control apps used by tech support scammers, and then use that knowledge to ferret out a vulnerability in the Ammyy Admin application. Because Ammyy Admin uses the same binary on both the remote computer being controlled and the source computer doing the controlling, an exploit with the application has the potential to affect not just the target but also the source. Weeks figured that if he could sniff out a vulnerability in the application’s communications stack, he could use that vulnerability to execute code on the remote computer—in other words, to gain the same level of access on the scammer’s PC that the scammer tries to gain on the victim’s." -- source: http://bit.ly/X4faGL Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

KDevelop 4.7.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '14

14 Sep '14

"KDevelop team is proud to announce the final release of KDevelop 4.7.0. This release is special, as it marks the end of the KDE4 era for us. As such, KDevelop 4.7.0 comes with a long-term stability guarantee. The CMake support was improved and extended to ensure that all idioms needed for KF5 development are available. The unit test support UI was polished and several bugs fixed. In the same direction, some noteworthy issues with the QtHelp integration were addressed. KDevelop's PHP language support now handles namespaces better and can understand traits aliases. Furthermore, some first fruits of the Google summer of code projects are included in this release. These changes pave the path toward better support for cross compile toolchains. Feature-wise, KDevelop now officially supports the Bazaar (bzr) version control system. On the performance front, it was possible to greatly reduce the memory footprint when loading large projects with several thousand files in KDevelop. Additionally, the startup should now be much faster." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/14/1347203 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OCRmyPDF
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '14

13 Sep '14

Just came across this (haven't tried, but seemed worth sharing). OCRmyPDF combines several Linux tools to generate PDF/A files (PDF format intended for long term archiving) from PDF files that contain just bitmaps with text, e.g., of scanned document pages. The generated PDF/A files are then searchable. Original article in German describing the tool: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Toolbox-Texterkennung-mit-OCRmyPDF-2356670… Google translation: http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2F… Project homepage on github: https://github.com/fritz-hh/OCRmyPDF Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Chrome OS Can Now Run Android Apps With No Porting Required
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '14

12 Sep '14

'On Thursday, Google launched "App Runtime for Chrome (Beta)" which allows Android apps to run on Chrome OS without the need for porting. At the moment, only Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine are available on the platform with the rest of the Play Store's offerings to come later. Google "built an entire Android stack into Chrome OS using Native Client" in order to achieve this.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/12/0050206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The State of ZFS On Linux
by Peter Reutemann 11 Sep '14

11 Sep '14

'Richard Yao, one of the most prolific contributors to the ZFSOnLinux project, has put up a post explaining why he thinks the filesystem is definitely production-ready. He says, "ZFS provides strong guarantees for the integrity of [data] from the moment that fsync() returns on a file, an operation on a synchronous file handle is returned or dirty writeback occurs (by default every 5 seconds). These guarantees are enabled by ZFS' disk format, which places all data into a Merkle tree that stores 256-bit checksums and is changed atomically via a two-stage transaction commit.. ... Sharing a common code base with other Open ZFS platforms has given ZFS on Linux the opportunity to rapidly implement features available on other Open ZFS platforms. At present, Illumos is the reference platform in the Open ZFS community and despite its ZFS driver having hundreds of features, ZoL is only behind on about 18 of them."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/11/1421201 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Learning About Enea's Real Time Linux Embedded OS (Video)
by Peter Reutemann 10 Sep '14

10 Sep '14

'Jon Aldama is the Product Marketing Manager for Enea A.B., but he prides himself on being a developer first and a marketer second -- a point he stresses early in today's video. Enea is behind Operating System Embedded, whose Wikipedia page, some say, "appears to be written like an advertisement," which an unkind person could also say about the Enea A.B. Wikipedia page. In any case, Enea works with the Linux Foundation's Yocto Project workgroup, whose main webpage says, "It's not an embedded Linux distribution – it creates a custom one for you." This is all open source, which Jon says is a big corporate principle at Enea -- and he should know, since his previous job was as an Open Source Compliance Officer and Software Analyst at Ericsson.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/10/1638243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Running Your Business on Linux (No, You Don't Need Windows)
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '14

08 Sep '14

"Believe it or not, my dear Linux friends, a lot of IT pros still believe they need Windows servers. They have this goofy idea that Active Directory, SharePoint, Exchange, Windows Server, SQL Server, and all the other members of the lardy malware vector family are the only proper business backends. They have this funny notion that Microsoft servers are easier to run. I must refute this odd notion with reality: they are not. They are expensive, troublesome, less-capable, and pointy-clicky does not equal easier to use, nor does it negate having to possess actual skills and knowledge." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/786721 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fedora To Get a New Partition Manager
by Peter Reutemann 07 Sep '14

07 Sep '14

"Developer Vratislav Podzimek has announced the next-gen partition manager for Fedora, blivet-gui. It is eventually going to replace GParted, the most popular GUI based partition manager, found in all major distros. The new tool is named blivet-gui after the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool). The need of a new partition manager stems from the fact that none of the existing GUI partitioning tools supports all modern storage technologies. Fedora's Anaconda base supports all, though, and is hence chosen as the back-end for this new tool. The application is only a few months old but is already looking nice and useful. Features like RAID and BTRFS support are being worked on. Vojtech Trefny is the other developer working with Vratislav on blivet-gui." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/09/07/2218229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Mozilla 1024-Bit Cert Deprecation Leaves 107, 000 Sites Untrusted
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '14

05 Sep '14

"Mozilla has deprecated 1024-bit RSA certificate authority certificates in Firefox 32 and Thunderbird. While there are pluses to the move such as a requirement for longer, stronger keys, at least 107,000 websites will no longer be trusted by Mozilla. Data from HD Moore's Project Sonar, which indexes more than 20 million websites, found 107,535 sites using a cert signed by what will soon be an untrusted CA certificate. Grouping those 107,000-plus sites by certificate expiration date, the results show that 76,185 certificates had expired as of Aug. 25; of the 65 million certificates in the total scan, 845,599 had expired but were still in use as of Aug. 25, Moore said." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/05/2120246 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Why Munich Will Stick With Linux
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '14

05 Sep '14

"There are many solved problems in open source. Groupware is not one of them," Georg Greve, co-founder and CEO of Kolab System starts off his post highlighting recent features of the latest release of the Kolab groupware project. He calls out a few newly elected politicians that don't like the current set-up, but says that thousands of users don't have the same experience. "Until today, the city of Munich is using the same stand-alone calendaring and email systems it had used when it was still fully operating on Windows. Updating these systems had a lower priority than the migration to LiMux then. But an upgrade is underway now. And, the solution they chose is agnostic to the desktop platform and will service LiMux and Windows alike. The primary difference made by another migration would likely be due to the perils that come with any migration, such as additional costs and delays. In other words: The very problem used to criticize the LiMux desktop is already being solved." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/05/1711243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How to limit CPU usage with CPULimit on Ubuntu Linux
by Peter Reutemann 03 Sep '14

03 Sep '14

"This document describes how to limit CPU usage in Ubuntu 14.04. I will use CPU-limit utilty for this purpose. Cpulimit is a tool which limits the CPU usage of a process (expressed in percentage, not in CPU time). It is useful to control batch jobs, when you don't want them to eat too many CPU cycles. The goal of cpulimit is to prevent a process from running for more than a specified time ratio. It does not change the nice value or other scheduling priority settings, but the real CPU usage." -- source: http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-limit-cpu-usage-with-cpulimit-on-ubuntu-li… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Akamai Warns: Linux Systems Infiltrated and Controlled In a DDoS Botnet
by Peter Reutemann 03 Sep '14

03 Sep '14

"Akamai Technologies is alerting enterprises to a high-risk threat of IptabLes and IptabLex infections on Linux systems. Malicious actors may use infected Linux systems to launch DDoS attacks against the entertainment industry and other verticals. The mass infestation of IptabLes and IptabLex seems to have been driven by a large number of Linux-based web servers being compromised, mainly by exploits of Apache Struts, Tomcat and Elasticsearch vulnerabilities. Attackers have used the Linux vulnerabilities on unmaintained servers to gain access, escalate privileges to allow remote control of the machine, and then drop malicious code into the system and run it. As a result, a system could then be controlled remotely as part of a DDoS botnet." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/03/164225 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

You Got Your Windows In My Linux
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '14

02 Sep '14

'Ultimately, the schism over systemd could lead to a separation of desktop and server distros, or Linux server admins moving to FreeBSD, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. "Although there are those who think the systemd debate has been decided in favor of systemd, the exceedingly loud protests on message boards, forums, and the posts I wrote over the past two weeks would indicate otherwise. I've seen many declarations of victory for systemd, now that Red Hat has forced it into the enterprise with the release of RHEL 7. I don't think it's that easy. ... Go ahead, kids, spackle over all of that unsightly runlevel stuff. Paint over init and cron, pam and login. Put all of that into PID1 along with dbus. Make it all pretty and whisper sweet nothings about how it's all taken care of and you won't have to read a manual or learn any silly command-line stuff. Tune your distribution for desktop workloads. Go reinvent Windows."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/02/2037251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Tox, a Skype Replacement Built On 'Privacy First'
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '14

02 Sep '14

'Rumors of back door access to Skype have plagued the communication software for the better part of a decade. Even if it's not true, Skype is owned by Microsoft, which is beholden to data requests from law enforcement. Because of these issues, a group of developers started work on Tox, which aims to rebuild the functionality of Skype with an emphasis on privacy. "The main thing the Tox team is trying to do, besides provide encryption, is create a tool that requires no central servers whatsoever—not even ones that you would host yourself. It relies on the same technology that BitTorrent uses to provide direct connections between users, so there's no central hub to snoop on or take down."' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/01/2210246 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 2

Raspberry Pi Gets a Brand New Browser
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '14

02 Sep '14

'The Raspberry Pi team has announced a new browser for Raspberry Pi. They had worked with Collabora to create an HTML5-capable, modern browser for Pi users. While announcing the new browser, Eben Upton said, "Eight months and a lot of hard work later, we're finally ready. Epiphany on Pi is now a plausible alternative to a desktop browser for all but the most JavaScript-heavy sites."' -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/09/01/1918211 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Docker news
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '14

01 Sep '14

Containers vs Hypervisors: The Battle Has Just Begun -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud-computing/785769 SUSE's Flavio Castelli on Docker's Rise Among Linux Distros -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud-computing/785551 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Raspberry Pi-Compatible Development Board Cancelled
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '14

01 Sep '14

"Anyone who might have been interested in the miniature Raspberry Pi compatible board mentioned here a month ago should know the board has been cancelled due to problems sourcing the Broadcom SoC. Given the less than welcoming response from the rpi community to the board's release, there is speculation as to why Hardkernel is having trouble buying the chip." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/08/31/147211 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux 3.17-rc2 Release Marks 23 Years of the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '14

26 Aug '14

"Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.17-rc2 today in commemoration of the 23rd anniversary of the original kernel announcement. It was on 25 August 1991 that he announced his new OS project to the Minix users list." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/25/2325239 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

'The battle over systemd exposes a fundamental gap between the old Unix guard and a new guard of Linux developers and admins, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. "Last week I posted about the schism brewing over systemd and the curiously fast adoption of this massive change to many Linux distributions. If there's one thing that systemd does extremely well, it is to spark heated discussions that devolve into wild, teeth-gnashing rants from both sides. Clearly, systemd is a polarizing subject. If nothing else, that very fact should give one pause. Fundamental changes in the structure of most Linux distributions should not be met with such fervent opposition. It indicates that no matter how reasonable a change may seem, if enough established and learned folks disagree with the change, then perhaps it bears further inspection before going to production. Clearly, that hasn't happened with systemd."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/25/1730245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Munich Council Say Talk of LiMux Demise Is Greatly Exaggerated
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

"The rumors of Munich's city government going back to Microsoft seem to have been greatly exaggerated. There was a review of the city's IT systems that was called for by the mayor, but it wasn't solely just to decide on whether to move back to Microsoft. And while there have been complaints about LiMux, they mostly seem to concern compatibility with OpenOffice.org, which may well be resolved by switching to LibreOffice." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/24/194208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Meeting tonight - apology
by Michael Ryan 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

I'm not able to get to tonight's meeting; the Green Party have decided to make an appearance in TeA tonight and I want to go to it. -- Regards Michael Ryan Partner Ryan Law Solicitors ph (07) 889 8041 fax (07) 889 8709 DX GA24027 P.O. Box 104 Morrinsville, New Zealand ph (07) 884 0002 fax (07) 884 0039 DX GA24502 P.O. Box 77 Te Aroha, New Zealand This communication is confidential and may contain privileged or copyright material. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not use, disclose, copy or retain it. If you have received it in error, we apologise and would appreciate your advising us by return email and your deleting the email and any printed form you may have made of it. We do not guarantee the integrity of this communication, or that it is free from errors, viruses, or interference arising from its method of transmission.

1 0

It's Elementary, with Sparks, and Unity
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

"In today's Linux news Jack Wallen review Elementary OS and says it's not just the poor man's Apple. Jack Germain reviewed SparkyLinux GameOver yesterday and said it's a win-win. Linux Tycoon Bryan Lunduke testdrives Ubuntu's Unity today in the latest entry in his desktop-a-week series. And finally tonight, just what the heck is this Docker thing everybody keeps talking about?" -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/its-elementary-with-sparks-and-unity Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

WLUG meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 24 Aug '14

24 Aug '14

Hi there There is a WLUG meeting tomorrow: "3D animations (or CGI) are everywhere nowadays. You don't need deep pockets for purchasing good software, the FLOSS world has its own package for creating first-class animations:Blender. Lawrence D'Oliveiro will give a hands-on demonstration on how to use Blender, introduce you to the basics and show how to create simple animations. He will also present some of the animations that he created over the years." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197651342 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Qt Upgrades From LGPLv2.1 to LGPLv3
by Peter Reutemann 20 Aug '14

20 Aug '14

"Digia has announced that existing Qt modules will now be covered under the LGPLv3 in addition to the LGPLv2.1, GPLv3, and the enterprise (proprietary) license. New modules will be dropping LGPLv2.1 and GPLv3+ and be released under the LGPLv3 and GPLv2+ instead. This should be a good move: new Qt modules will be Apache license compatible, LGPLv3 code can trivially be converted to GPLv3, and Digia is even releasing a few modules it intended to make proprietary as Free Software. The KDE Free Qt Foundation is on board. The move was made because of device vendors exploiting a loophole in the GPLv2/LGPLv2.1 that denied users the right to modify Qt or write their own applications. Digia has some self-interest as well, since those vendors were exploiting the tivoization loophole to avoid buying enterprise licenses." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/1446240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '14

19 Aug '14

Hi there There is a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "3D animations (or CGI) are everywhere nowadays. You don't need deep pockets for purchasing good software, the FLOSS world has its own package for creating first-class animations:Blender. Lawrence D'Oliveiro will give a hands-on demonstration on how to use Blender, introduce you to the basics and show how to create simple animations. He will also present some of the animations that he created over the years." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197651342 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '14

18 Aug '14

"The world is still waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop, but in 2003 it looked as if that goal was within reach. Back then, the city of Munich announced plans to switch from Microsoft technology to Linux on 14,000 PCs belonging to the city's municipal government. While the scheme suffered delays, it was completed in December 2013. There's only been one small problem: users aren't happy with the software, and the government isn't happy with the price." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Kernel Git Repositories Add 2-Factor Authentication
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '14

18 Aug '14

yubikeys in the news: "For a few years now Linux kernel developers have followed a fairly strict authentication policy for those who commit directly to the git repositories housing the Linux kernel. Each is issued their own ssh private key, which then becomes the sole way for them to push code changes to the git repositories hosted at kernel.org. While using ssh keys is much more secure than just passwords, there are still a number of ways for ssh private keys to fall into malicious hands. So they've further tightened access requirements with two-factor authentication using yubikeys." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/18/191251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Turin To Be The First Italian Open Source City
by Peter Reutemann 12 Aug '14

12 Aug '14

"Turin’s local authorities have decided to switch to open source and entirely ditch all the Microsoft products, saving alot of money to the local government. The mission of this move is to get rid of proprietary software, make Turin one of the first Italian open source city and save six million euros. [...] According to republica.it 8300 computers of the local administration will soon be powered by Ubuntu, shipped with Mozilla Firefox web browser and Open Office. No more Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer." -- source: http://www.unixmen.com/turin-first-italian-open-source-city/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Free Intro to Linux Online Course Starts Today (ie 1st August 2014)
by Peter Reutemann 03 Aug '14

03 Aug '14

"The Linux Foundation's free online course, Introduction to Linux, started today on the edX website. Students have already begun to take the course, which covers the basic tools and techniques commonly used by Linux programmers, system administrators and end users. It's not too late to sign up! You can complete the lessons, interact with students and instructors on the message board, and take the tests at your own pace. The first thing you'll do is install Linux – instructions are available in a PDF sent to all students enrolled in the course. Topics covered during the course include:" -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/782685 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The Art of Failure 2014
by chris 31 Jul '14

31 Jul '14

http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/semiconductors/materials/the-art-of-failu re-2014/ The Art of Failure 2014 <http://www.mmsend10.com/link.cfm?r=788576329&sid=47555527&m=5637048&u=IEEEN Y&j=20644385&s=http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/semiconductors/materials/t he-art-of-failure-2014/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=0 73114> When chipmakers examine failed semiconductors for clues regarding why they went kaput, they sometimes discover beauty amid the ashes. We've collated some of the more spectacular happy accidents from factories and labs around the world for this year's showcase.

1 0

LibreOffice 4.3 upgrades spreadsheets, brings 3D models to presentations
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '14

31 Jul '14

"LibreOffice's latest release provides easier ways of working with spreadsheets and the ability to insert 3D models into presentations, along with dozens of other changes." -- source: http://bit.ly/1tvDM9e Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Old Apache Code At Root of Android FakeID Mess
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jul '14

30 Jul '14

'A four-year-old vulnerability in an open source component that is a critical part of Android leaves hundreds of millions of mobile devices susceptible to silent malware infections. The vulnerability affects devices running Android versions 2.1 to 4.4 ("KitKat"), according to a statement released by Bluebox. The vulnerability was found in a package installer in affected versions of Android. The installer doesn't attempt to determine the authenticity of certificate chains that are used to vouch for new digital identity certificates. In short, Bluebox writes, "an identity can claim to be issued by another identity, and the Android cryptographic code will not verify the claim." The security implications of this are vast. Malicious actors could create a malicious mobile application with a digital identity certificate that claims to be issued by Adobe Systems. Once installed, vulnerable versions of Android will treat the application as if it was actually signed by Adobe and give it access to local resources, like the special webview plugin privilege, that can be used to sidestep security controls and virtual 'sandbox' environments that keep malicious programs from accessing sensitive data and other applications running on the Android device. The flaw appears to have been introduced to Android through an open source component, Apache Harmony. Google turned to Harmony as an alternative means of supporting Java in the absence of a deal with Oracle to license Java directly. Work on Harmony was discontinued in November, 2011. However, Google has continued using native Android libraries that are based on Harmony code. The vulnerability concerning certificate validation in the package installer module persisted even as the two codebases diverged.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/07/29/2230242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The great Ars experiment—free and open source software on a smartphone?!
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jul '14

29 Jul '14

"Android is a Google product—it's designed and built from the ground up to integrate with Google services and be a cloud-powered OS. A lot of Android is open source, though, and there's nothing that says you have to use it the way that Google would prefer. With some work, it’s possible to turn a modern Android smartphone into a Google-less, completely open device—so we wanted to try just that. After dusting off the Nexus 4 and grabbing a copy of the open source parts of Android, we jumped off the grid and dumped all the proprietary Google and cloud-based services you'd normally use on Android. Instead, this experiment runs entirely on open source alternatives. FOSS or bust!" -- source: http://bit.ly/1ppiC8V First time that I came across F-Droid, the FLOSS app catalogue: https://f-droid.org/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

15 alternatives to your default image viewer on Fedora
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jul '14

29 Jul '14

"Is the default image viewer in your desktop environment just not working the way you want? need more features (or maybe something simpler) from an image viewer? Well, you are in luck, as there is no shortage of choices when looking at alternative image viewers in Fedora. This article covers 17 image viewers in Fedora." -- source: http://fedoramagazine.org/15-alternatives-to-your-default-image-viewer-on-f… And most likely not limited to Fedora. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

seL4 Verified Microkernel Now Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jul '14

29 Jul '14

'Back in 2009, OKLabs/NICTA announced the first formally verified microkernel, seL4 (a member of the L4 family). Alas, it was proprietary software. Today, that's no longer the case: seL4 has been released under the GPLv2 (only, no "or later versions clause" unfortunately). An anonymous reader writes OSnews is reporting that the formally verified sel4 microkernel is now open source: "General Dynamics C4 Systems and NICTA are pleased to announce the open sourcing of seL4, the world's first operating-system kernel with an end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security enforcement. It is still the world's most highly assured OS." Source is over at Github. It supports ARM and x86 (including the popular Beaglebone ARM board). If you have an x86 with the VT-x and Extended Page Table extensions you can even run Linux atop seL4 (and the seL4 website is served by Linux on seL4).' -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/07/29/1913259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Valencia Linux School Distro Saves 36 Million Euro
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '14

27 Jul '14

"The government of the autonomous region of Valencia (Spain) earlier this month made available the next version of Lliurex, a customisation of the Edubuntu Linux distribution. The distro is used on over 110,000 PCs in schools in the Valencia region, saving some 36 million euro over the past nine years, the government says." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/07/27/223220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken"
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '14

27 Jul '14

'A pointed critique from Linus Torvalds of GCC 4.9.0. after a random panic was discovered in a load balance function in Linux 3.16-rc6. in an email to the Linux kernel mailing list outlining two separate but possibly related bugs, Linus describes the compiler as "terminally broken," and worse ("pure and utter sh*t," only with no asterisk). A slice: "Lookie here, your compiler does some absolutely insane things with the spilling, including spilling a *constant*. For chrissake, that compiler shouldn't have been allowed to graduate from kindergarten. We're talking "sloth that was dropped on the head as a baby" level retardation levels here .... Anyway, this is not a kernel bug. This is your compiler creating completely broken code. We may need to add a warning to make sure nobody compiles with gcc-4.9.0, and the Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/07/27/1838219 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GOG.com Announces Linux Support
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '14

24 Jul '14

"We've put much time and effort into this project and now we've found ourselves with over 50 titles, classic and new, prepared for distribution, site infrastructure ready, support team trained and standing by ... We're still aiming to have at least 100 Linux games in the coming months, but we've decided not to delay the launch just for the sake of having a nice-looking number to show off to the press. ... Note that we've got many classic titles coming officially to Linux for the very first time, thanks to the custom builds prepared by our dedicated team of penguin tamers. ... For both native Linux versions, as well as special builds prepared by our team, GOG.com will provide distro-independent tar.gz archives and support convenient DEB installers for the two most popular Linux distributions: Ubuntu and Mint, in their current and future LTS editions." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/07/24/1438211 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Raspberry Pi Gameboy
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '14

23 Jul '14

'An enterprising hacker took on a project to rebuild a broken Gameboy using emulation software, a Raspberry Pi, and a few other easily-obtainable parts. The result: success! The hacker has posted a detailed walkthrough explaining all of the challenges and how they were solved. "Using a Dremel, I cut out a most of the battery compartment as well as some posts that on the case for the LCD that would no longer be needed. Doing so, the Pi sits flush with the back of the DMG case. ... The screen was the first challenge. The screen runs off 12V out of the box which wouldn't work with the USB battery pack. The USB battery pack is rated at 5V, 1000mAH so the goal was go modify the screen to allow it to run at 5V. ... I finally got it to work by removing the power converter chip as well as soldering a jumper between the + power in and the resister on the top right."' -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/07/23/2138217 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Now Supports BD-J Java
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '14

23 Jul '14

"Updates to the open-source libbluray, libaacs, and libbdplus libraries have improved the open-source Blu-ray disc support to now enable the Blu-ray Java interactivity layer (BD-J). The Blu-ray Java code is in turn executed by OpenJDK or the Oracle JDK and is working well enough to play a Blu-ray disc on the Raspberry Pi when paired with the VLC media player." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/07/23/0016245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Exodus Intelligence Details Zero-Day Vulnerabilities In Tails OS
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '14

22 Jul '14

"Tails OS, the Tor-reliant privacy-focused operating system made famous by Edward Snowden, contains a number of zero-day vulnerabilities that could be used to take control of the OS and execute code remotely. At least that's according to zero-day exploit seller Exodus Intelligence, which counts DARPA amongst its customer base. The company plans to tell the Tails team about the issues "in due time", said Aaron Portnoy, co-founder and vice president of Exodus, but it isn't giving any information on a disclosure timeline. This means users of Tails are in danger of being de-anonymised. Even version 1.1, which hit public release today (22 July 2014), is affected. Snowden famously used Tails to manage the NSA files. The OS can be held on a USB stick and leaves no trace once removed from the drive. It uses the Tor network to avoid identification of the user, but such protections may be undone by the zero-day exploits Exodus holds." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/07/22/165231 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Linux Saturday Workshop
by Bruce Kingsbury 22 Jul '14

22 Jul '14

I'll be running another Saturday Linux Workshop this weekend; Saturday July 26th, 2014 10:00 am – 2:00 pm *Te Whare O Te Ata* 60a Sare Cres Hamilton, 3214 07 8557804 This is a GNU/Linux-focused workshop where people can bring their PCs, Laptops, Pi's, Android devices etc for trouble-shooting and to learn or try out new skills. All visitors welcome - light lunch provided - gold coin donation appreciated

2 1

The "Rickmote Controller" Can Hijack Any Google Chromecast
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '14

21 Jul '14

'Dan Petro, a security analyst for the Bishop Fox IT consulting firm, built a proof of concept device that's able to hack into any Google Chromecasts nearby to project Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," or any other video a prankster might choose. The "Rickmote," which is built on top of the $35 Raspberry Pi single board computer, finds a local Chromecast device, boots it off the network, and then takes over the screen with multimedia of one's choosing. But it gets worse for the victims: If the hacker leaves the range of the device, there's no way to regain control of the Chromecast. Unfortunately for Google, this is a rather serious issue with the Chromecast device that's not too easy to fix, as the configuration process is an essential part of the Chromecast experience.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/07/21/1956258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '14

21 Jul '14

Hi there We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "The Yubikey is one time password generator that conveniently connects a USB keyboard to your PC. It is port powered and small enough to kept on your keyring. The Yubikey uses Yubico's authentication server and can be used conveniently with Lastpass.com to provide two factor authentication to your online password vault. Third parties have written yubikey authentication mechanisms to secure restricted access to Apache webservers. There are many other applications and there are alternative hardware yubikeys capable of connection to smart phones. The authentication server technology is open source allowing users to create their own authentication servers. Yubico provides their service for free. At roughly $US25 a key, the technology is very competitively priced (cf RSA tokens) and well within the price range of most enthusiasts. Unfortunately, Google doesn't (yet) provide it as an option for their two factor authentication. The presenter will talk about lastpass.com and apache authentication." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/185499622/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Slackware Turns 21 Years Old
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '14

21 Jul '14

"It was on this day in 1993 that Patrick Volkerding announced the Slackware 1.00 release that was inspired by the Softlanding Linux System. Slackware remains kicking after 21 years of guidance by its leader Patrick Volkerding. The most recent release of Slackware is version 14.1 that took place late last year with the Linux 3.10 kernel -- a long way from the initial Slackware 1.00 release that used the pre-1.0 Linux kernel (0.99.11). " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc0Mzc Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

MicroxWin Creates Linux Distribution That Runs Debian/Ubuntu & Android Apps
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '14

21 Jul '14

"VolksPC who developed MicroXwin as a lightweight X Window Server has come up with their own Linux distribution. Setting apart VolksPC's distribution from others is that it's based on both Debian and Android and has the capability to run Debian/Ubuntu/Android apps together in a native ARM experience. The implementation doesn't depend on VNC or other similar solutions of the past that have tried to join desktop apps with mobile Android apps. This distribution is also reportedly compatible with all Android applications. The distribution is expected to begin shipping on an ARM mini-PC stick." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/07/20/1218256 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Needs Resource Management For Complex Workloads
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '14

21 Jul '14

'Resource management and allocation for complex workloads has been a need for some time in open systems, but no one has ever followed through on making open systems look and behave like an IBM mainframe, writes Henry Newman at Enterprise Storage Forum. Throwing more hardware at the problem is a costly solution that won't work forever, he notes. Newman writes: "With next-generation technology like non-volatile memories and PCIe SSDs, there are going to be more resources in addition to the CPU that need to be scheduled to make sure everything fits in memory and does not overflow. I think the time has come for Linux – and likely other operating systems – to develop a more robust framework that can address the needs of future hardware and meet the requirements for scheduling resources. This framework is not going to be easy to develop, but it is needed by everything from databases and MapReduce to simple web queries."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/07/20/0317216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

FreeBSD 9.3 Released
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '14

16 Jul '14

"The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: ZFS bookmarks, OpenSSL 0.9.8za, OpenSSH 6.6p1, SNI, BIND 9.9.5. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/07/16/2227253 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

LibreSSL PRNG Vulnerability Patched
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '14

16 Jul '14

'The OpenBSD project late last night rushed out a patch for a vulnerability in the LibreSSL pseudo random number generator (PRNG). The flaw was disclosed two days ago by the founder of secure backup company Opsmate, Andrew Ayer, who said the vulnerability was a "catastrophic failure of the PRNG." OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt and developer Bob Beck, however, countered saying that the issue is "overblown" because Ayer's test program is unrealistic. Ayer's test program, when linked to LibreSSL and made two different calls to the PRNG, returned the exact same data both times. "It is actually only a problem with the author's contrived test program," Beck said. "While it's a real issue, it's actually a fairly minor one, because real applications don't work the way the author describes, both because the PID (process identification number) issue would be very difficult to have become a real issue in real software, and nobody writes real software with OpenSSL the way the author has set this test up in the article."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/07/16/1950235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Only a few days old, OpenSSL fork LibreSSL is declared “unsafe for Linux”
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '14

16 Jul '14

'The first "preview" release of OpenSSL alternative LibreSSL is out, and already a researcher says he has found a "catastrophic failure" in the version for Linux. Update: A few hours after this article was published, OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt emailed Ars and wrote: "It is way overblown. This will never happen in real code." The vulnerability, cataloged as CVE-2014-2970, already has been patched, with modified code located here.' -- source: http://bit.ly/WgjO57 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

New Raspberry Pi “B+” uses less power, has more USB ports
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jul '14

15 Jul '14

"The updated "B+" model has the same Broadcom BCM2835 processor as the original and still has 512MB RAM, but it uses less power, has more connectivity options, and features other upgrades over the previous Raspberry Pi Model B." -- source: http://bit.ly/1mcQvoS Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

WebODF: JavaScript Open Document Format Editor Deemed Stable
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

"WebODF (an Open Document Format editor written entirely using Javascript and natively rendering the XML document using CSS) 0.5.0 has been released, and the developers are declaring this release stable enough for every day use." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/07/02/1349208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Automotive Grade Linux Released For Open Source Cars
by Peter Reutemann 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

'The Linux Foundation and its partners have released the first version of Automotive Grade Linux, the open source platform for use inside connected cars. "AGL is building the industry’s only fully open automotive platform, allowing automakers to leverage a growing software stack based on Linux while retaining the ability to create their own branded user experience. Standardizing on a single platform means the industry can rapidly innovate where it counts to create a safe and reliable connected car experience. Open collaboration within the AGL community means support for multi-architectures and features to bolster the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) experience." Further details and source code are available from the official website.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/07/01/1929217 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

Fwd: [NZLUG] Computer whiz whips Windows - Technology - NZ Herald News
by Peter Reutemann 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

Apologies for cross-posting. The correct project URL is http://www.nos.net.nz/. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: DL Neil <...> Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 6:49 PM Subject: [NZLUG] Computer whiz whips Windows - Technology - NZ Herald News To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> Computer whiz whips Windows By Vaimoana Tapaleao 5:00 AM Tuesday Jul 1, 2014 A love of computer gadgets and being overly curious about how things work have proven to be a winning recipe for one Auckland teenager. Isaac Mercer, 14, has been shortlisted in the Google Science Fair 2014 competition. ... http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11284… I think it is less a "computer operating system" and more a Windows-alike distro, but haven't seen it in-the-wild. If http://www.nos.co.nz/ is the correct web site, there's only an index page. However there is a project in SourceForge: nOS | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net The Fast and Easy to Use Operating System That Can Run on Any Computer Brought to you by: nosadmin http://sourceforge.net/projects/nos/ Hope he does well! -- Regards, =dn _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

Tools for diagramming in Fedora
by Peter Reutemann 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

"If you're a big-time open source fanatic like me, you probably get questions about open source alternatives to proprietary tools rather frequently. From the 'Alternatives to Microsoft® Visio®' department, here are three tips that should help designers who use Visio in an open source environment. If you need an open source option for opening Visio files, a revived open source application for creating diagrams, or a lesser-known open source tool for converting Visio® stencils, these tips are for you." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/6/tools-diagramming-fedora Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How to access popular search engines from the command line on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

"Why would anyone want to search things on the Internet via a terminal? I don't know. There are probably a lot of reasons. But since an answer that no one asked for is always less frustrating than a question that no one can answer, here is a list of popular search engines with the command-line tools that allow you to access them from a Linux terminal." -- source: http://bit.ly/1qcan0V Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Meet Carla Shroder's New Favorite GUI-Textmode Hybrid Shell, Xiki
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jun '14

28 Jun '14

'Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word "revolutionary" lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you're looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/06/27/2220248 The screencast is quite funky. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Wayland-based Compositor With An Oculus Rift
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jun '14

27 Jun '14

"Developed as part of a university master thesis is this "truly 3D" windowing system environment. The 3D desktop was developed as a Qt Wayland compositor and output to an Oculus Rift display and then controlled using a high-precision Razer mouse. Overall, it's interesting research for bringing 2D windows into a 3D workspace using Wayland and the Oculus Rift. The code is hosted as the Motorcar Compositor. A video demonstration is on YouTube." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/06/19/139211 Bit wobbly, in my opinion... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Re: [wlug] A Linux distribution for science geeks - Warning!
by David McNab 25 Jun '14

25 Jun '14

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 10:04 PM, Ian Stewart <ianstewart56(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > I suspect that the updating of Latex is a major contributor to the > 2.5GB's involved. > or a minor update to Emacs /ducks David

1 0

A Linux distribution for science geeks
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jun '14

25 Jun '14

"Fedora Scientific is a Linux distribution specifically designed for enabling open science. It is a Fedora spin targeted at users whose work involves scientific and numerical computing. Perhaps like other Fedora spins, it was conceived out of a simple need: the need to avoid constantly installing the same software on a fresh Linux installation." >From a researcher's point of view, it's a good range of pre-installed tools (see packages list below). sources: http://opensource.com/life/14/6/linux-distribution-science-geeks https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scientific_Packages_List Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 6

Saturday Linux Workshop
by Bruce Kingsbury 25 Jun '14

25 Jun '14

I'll be running another Saturday Linux Workshop this weekend; Saturday June 28th, 2014 10:00 am – 2:00 pm *Te Whare O Te Ata* 60a Sare Cres Hamilton, 3214 07 8557804 This is a GNU/Linux-focused workshop where people can bring their PCs, Laptops, Pi's, Android devices etc for trouble-shooting and to learn or try out new skills. All visitors welcome - light lunch provided - gold coin donation appreciated

2 1

Linux Mint 17 KDE Released
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jun '14

25 Jun '14

'The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 17 KDE codenamed Qiana. It's based on KDE Software Compilation 4.13.0. There are notable improvements in Mint Display Manager (MDM). The multi-monitor display has improved and it allows a user to “configure which of the monitors should be used as the primary monitory by MDM.” Users can also define a background color or a background picture no matter what greeter they are using.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/06/23/1451254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 6

Linux.conf.au 2015 in Auckland - Call for Proposals
by Simon Lyall 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

=== linux.conf.au Call For Proposals === The call for proposals for linux.conf.au 2015 is now open! The conference is a meeting place for the free and open source software communities. It will be held in Auckland at the University of Auckland Business School from Monday 12 to Friday 16 January, 2015, and provides a unique opportunity for open source developers, students, users and hackers to come together, share new ideas and collaborate. === Important Dates === * Call for Proposals opens 9 June 2014 * Call for Proposals closes 13 July 2014 * Email acceptances start September 2014 * Early bird registrations open 23 September 2014 * Conference dates: Monday 12 January to Friday 16 January, 2015 === Information on Proposals === The linux.conf.au 2015 papers committee is looking for a broad range of proposals, and will consider submissions on anything from programming and software, to desktop, mobile, gaming, userspace, community, government, space, and education. There is only one rule: *Your proposal must be related to open source* This year, the papers committee is going to be focused on open source in education as well as our usual focus on deep technical content. The conference is to a large extent what the speakers make it: if we receive heaps of excellent submissions on a topic, then itâ€™s sure to be represented at the conference. Hereâ€™s a few ideas to get you started: * Clouds, data centers and scalability. * Community challenges; legal threats; education and outreach. * Documentation for open source projects. * HTML5; multimedia codecs. * Kernel developments; new architectures. * Open hardware; embedded systems; wearable computing. * Security; privacy; anonymity. * Networking; Software defined networking; bufferbloat; network function virtualization. * Software development; programming languages. * Sysadmin and automation. linux.conf.au is known for presentations and tutorials that are strongly technical in nature, but proposals for presentations on other aspects of free software and open culture, such as educational and cultural applications of open source, are welcome. === Code of Conduct === linux.conf.au welcomes first-time and seasoned speakers from all free and open communities: people of all ages, genders, nationalities, ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, abilities, and walks of life. We respect and encourage diversity at our conference. By agreeing to present at or attend the conference, you are agreeing to abide by the terms and conditions (http://lca2015.linux.org.au/cor/terms_and_conditions) We also expect all speakers and delegates to have read and understood our Code of Conduct (http://lca2015.linux.org.au/cor/code_of_conduct) === Format === There are three different ways that you can present your content: * Presentations * Tutorials * Mini conferences _Presentations_ Presentations are 45 minute slots that are generally presented in lecture format. These form the bulk of the available conference slots. _Tutorials_ Tutorials are 100 minutes long, and are generally presented in a classroom format. They should be interactive or hands-on in nature. Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for attendees. _Mini conferences_ Miniconfs are one or two day long sessions on a specific topic. A separate CFP form will be used to propose and select miniconfs, and is available at http://lca2015.linux.org.au/miniconf-cfp === Speaker Information === In recognition of the value that speakers bring to our conference, once a proposal is accepted a speaker is entitled to: * Free registration, which holds all of the benefits of a Professional Delegate Ticket * Exclusive tickets to the Speakers' Dinner for the speaker and their immediate family * One free family ticket to the Partners' Programme If your proposal includes more than one speaker, these additional speakers are not entitled to free registration or to any extra benefits. linux.conf.au does not and will not pay speakers to present at the conference. linux.conf.au is able to provide limited financial assistance for some speakers, for instance, where the cost of flights or accommodation might prohibit a speaker from attending. Please note, however, that there is a limited budget for travel assistance and that asking for assistance could affect your chances of acceptance. === Recording and Licensing === To increase the number of people that can view your presentation,linux.conf.au might record your talk and make it publicly available after the event. When submitting your proposal you will be asked to release materials relating to your presentation under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License. Additionally, if you are discussing software in your presentation, you must ensure the software has an appropriate open licence. All presentation material should be suitable for people aged 12 and above. All presentations are subject to Linux Australiaâ€™s code of conduct, including that they must not contain: sexual or violent imagery exclusionary language language which is not appropriate for an all-ages audience For more information, see: http://lca2015.linux.org.au/cfp === About Linux Australia === Linux Australia is the peak body for open source communities around Australia, and as such represents approximately 3500 Free and Open Source users and developers. Linux Australia supports the organisation of this international Free Software conference in a different Australasian city each year. For more information about Linux Australia see: http://www.linux.org.au/ === Papers Enquiries === For enquiries related to this CFP, or to presentations at linux.conf.au generally, contact the linux.conf.au 2015 Papers Committee by email: papers-chair at linux.org.au

1 0

Opera Releases a New Version For Linux
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

"Opera released Opera 24 for Linux. Currently it is in testing (developer) mode, and only for 64-bit Ubuntu, but hey it's a start since everyone thought Linux support was abandoned. In my test it is pretty rough around the edges, only has ambiance theme as it has been hard coded, and all the window controls are on the right and not on the left like what Unity has. But it is a start." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/06/24/0130216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How to sync Microsoft OneDrive on Linux
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

'OneDrive (previously known as SkyDrive) is a popular cloud storage offering from Microsoft. Currently OneDrive offers 7GB free storage for every new signup. As you can imagine, OneDrive is well integrated with other Microsoft software products. Microsoft also offers a standalone OneDrive client which automatically backs up pictures and videos taken by a camera to OneDrive storage. But guess what. This client is available for all major PC/mobile platforms except Linux. "OneDrive on any device, any time"? Well, it is not there, yet. Don't get disappointed. The open-source community already has already come up with a solution for you. onedrive-d written by a Boilermaker in Lafayette can get the job done. Running as a monitoring daemon, onedrive-d can automatic sync a local folder with OneDrive cloud storage.' -- source: http://xmodulo.com/2014/06/sync-microsoft-onedrive-linux.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Deepin Brings Mac-Like Sensibility to the Linux Desktop
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

"When we consider the Linux desktop, most often GNOME 3, Ubuntu Unity, KDE, Cinnamon, and XFCE come to mind. Those desktops range from the old-school functional to the new-school modern. Each has its strengths and weaknesses along with a vocal following to give it a push into the eyes of the public. For the most part, we use one of those desktops with little thought to making a switch. That’s been my modus operandi for the longest time. Ubuntu Unity has been my desktop. I enjoy its combination of efficiency, powerhouse search, and modern flare. But then along comes Linux Deepin, a distribution from China that looks to upturn the Linux desktop with an almost Apple-like sensibility. Linux Deepin offers a keen UI design that outshines most every desktop you’ve experienced. Along with that total redesign of the UI, comes a few bonus apps that might easily steal the show from most default apps." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/777661 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

WLUG meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '14

24 Jun '14

Hi there We have a meeting coming up tomorrow: "William McKee is demoing the Godot Game Engine, released under the MIT license. Similar to Unity3D in features, it provides tools to quickly create games under Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Ian Young will give a quick run-down of the Manjaro distribution." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/165977142/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Why I Built OwnCloud and Made It Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jun '14

23 Jun '14

"There I was, 4 years ago (this past January) at CampKDE in San Diego, giving a talk on data privacy, warning the audience about the risks to their privacy from cloud vendors – in particular, Dropbox. So, build it yourself they said. Sure, I’ve built things in the past, so sure, I’ll do it. And there is where I started my odyssey, first, to protect myself, my friends and my colleagues from the snooping of governments, and other bad guys, and later – as I saw the worldwide interest grow – to build a real and successful project." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud-computing/777158 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Re: [wlug] A Linux distribution for science geeks
by Simon Green 23 Jun '14

23 Jun '14

Ubuntu tends to follow Debian (testing for LTS, unstable for other releases) for software they don't package themselves.

2 1

Converting H.264 MPEG4 to TS with ffmpeg
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jun '14

22 Jun '14

Converting (re-muxing) a MPEG4 container H.264 + AAC file to a MPEG2 transport stream: http://www.shortword.net/blog/2009/12/18/converting-h-264-mpeg4-to-ts-with-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Google unveils independent “fork” of OpenSSL called “BoringSSL”
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jun '14

21 Jun '14

"Google is releasing its own independently developed "fork" of OpenSSL, the widely used cryptography library that came to international attention following the Heartbleed vulnerability that threatened hundreds of thousands of websites with catastrophic attacks." -- source: http://bit.ly/1qzzkVz Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

The Ars NAS distribution shootout: FreeNAS vs NAS4Free
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '14

19 Jun '14

"If you've been following along with our earlier articles on next-gen filesystems like btrfs and zfs, but wanted an easy way to get started without having to learn anything on the command line (or need an easy way to take advantage even though you're a Windows-only user), you're in luck. Today, we're going to look at two ready-to-rock ZFS-enabled network attached storage distributions: FreeNAS and NAS4Free." -- source: http://bit.ly/1kPrkbc Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0