- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

GParted Live Now Supports Microsoft's New Filesystem, ReFS
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"GParted Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution that has a lot of features and that can be used in operations like creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions on a variety of filesystems. A new stable update has been made available and the operating system is now at version 0.21.0." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/GParted-Live-Now-Supports-MIcrosoft-s-New-Fi… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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FSF-Endorsed Libreboot X200 Laptop Comes With Intel's AMT Removed
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

'"The Free Software Foundation has announced its endorsement of the Libreboot X200, a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X200 sold by Gluglug. The laptop ships with 100% free software and firmware, including the FSF's endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux and Libreboot. One of the biggest challenges overcome in achieving FSF's Respects Your Freedom certification was the complete removal of Intel's ME and AMT firmware. The AMT is a controversial proprietary backdoor technology that allows remote access to a machine even when it is powered off. Quoting from the press release: "The ME and its extension, AMT, are serious security issues on modern Intel hardware and one of the main obstacles preventing most Intel based systems from being liberated by users. On most systems, it is extremely difficult to remove, and nearly impossible to replace. Libreboot X200 is the first system where it has actually been removed, permanently," said Gluglug Founder and CEO, Francis Rowe."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/2241214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"Hacked has a piece about Georgia Institute of Technology researchers keylogging from a distance using the electromagnetic radiation of CPUs. They can reportedly do this from up to 6 meters away. In this video, using two Ubuntu laptops, they demonstrate that keystrokes are easily interpreted with the software they have developed. In their white paper they talk about the need for more research in this area so that hardware and software manufacturers will be able to develop more secure devices. For now, Farraday cages don't seem as crazy as they used to, or do they?" -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/141243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Mozilla Dusts Off Old Servers, Lights Up Tor Relays
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"According to The Register, "Mozilla has given the Tor network a capacity kick with the launch of 14 relays that will help distribute user traffic. Engineers working under the Foundation's Polaris Project inked in November pulled Mozilla's spare and decommissioned hardware out of the cupboard for dedicated use in the Tor network. It included a pair of Juniper EX4200 switches and three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2*Xeon L5640, 2*1Gbps NIC) servers, along with a dedicated existing IP transit provider (2 X 10Gbps). French Mozilla engineer Arzhel Younsi (@xionoxfr) said its network was designed to fall no lower than half of its network capacity in the event of maintenance or failure. The Polaris initiative was a effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Centre for Democracy and Technology to help build more privacy controls into technology." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/192215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu 15.04 Is The Easy Path To Better Performance For Ubuntu Users On Intel Broadwell
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"Unless you manually upgrade your kernel and other system packages from your Ubuntu 14.10 installation, Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet is an important release for users of new Intel Broadwellsystems for ensuring your hardware reaches its maximum performance potential." -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu-1504-5600u&num=1 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Serious Network Function Vulnerability Found In Glibc
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '15

28 Jan '15

"A very serious security problem has been found and patched in the GNU C Library (Glibc). A heap-based buffer overflow was found in __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function, which is used by the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() function calls. A remote attacker able to make an application call to either of these functions could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the program. The vulnerability is easy to trigger as gethostbyname() can be called remotely for applications that do any kind of DNS resolving within the code. Qualys, who discovered the vulnerability (nicknamed "Ghost") during a code audit, wrote a mailing list entry with more details, including in-depth analysis and exploit vectors." -- sources: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/1925208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Opera Founder Is Back, WIth a Feature-Heavy, Chromium-Based Browser
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

"Almost two years ago, the Norwegian browser firm Opera ripped out the guts of its product and adopted the more standard WebKit and Chromium technologies, essentially making it more like rivals Chrome and Safari. But it wasn't just Opera's innards that changed; the browser also became more streamlined and perhaps less geeky. Many Opera fans were deeply displeased at the loss of what they saw as key differentiating functionality. So now Jon von Tetzchner, the man who founded Opera and who would probably never have allowed those drastic feature changes, is back to serve this hard core with a new browser called Vivaldi." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/1733259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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EFF Unveils Plan For Ending Mass Surveillance
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

'The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a detailed, global strategy for ridding ourselves of mass surveillance. They stress that this must be an international effort — while citizens of many countries can vote against politicians who support surveillance, there are also many countries where the citizens have to resort to other methods. The central part of the EFF's plan is: encryption, encryption, encryption. They say we need to build new secure communications tools, pressure existing tech companies to make their products secure against everyone, and get ordinary internet-goers to recognize that encryption is a fundamental part of communication in the surveillance age. They also advocate fighting for transparency and against overreach on a national level. "[T]he more people worldwide understand the threat and the more they understand how to protect themselves—and just as importantly, what they should expect in the way of support from companies and governments—the more we can agitate for the changes we need online to fend off the dragnet collection of data." The EFF references a document created to apply the principles of human rights to communications surveillance, which they say are "our way of making sure that the global norm for human rights in the context of communication surveillance isn't the warped viewpoint of NSA and its four closest allies, but that of 50 years of human rights standards showing mass surveillance to be unnecessary and disproportionate."' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/042212 Cheers, Pete -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linus Fixes Kernel Regression Breaking Witcher 2
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jan '15

24 Jan '15

'There has been quite a debate around the Linux version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the fact that it wasn't really a port. A special kind of wrapper was used to make the Windows version of the game run on Linux systems, similar to Wine. The performance on Linux systems took a hit and users felt betrayed because they thought that they would get a native port. However, after the gamestopped launching properly at some point, the reason was actually found to be a Linux regression.Linus quickly took care of the issue on an unofficial Witcher 2 issue tracker on GitHub: "It looks like LDT_empty is buggy on 64-bit kernels. I suspect that the behavior was inconsistent before the tightening change and that it's now broken as a result. I'll write a patch. Serves me right for not digging all the way down the mess of macros." This one goes to the bin "don't break userspace". Linus also reminds of QA: "And maybe this is an excuse for somebody in the x86 maintainer team to try a few games on steam. They *are* likely good tests of odd behavior.."' -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/15/01/24/1528232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Accidentally Deleting Directories
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

I suppose every seasoned Linux user has been there (I know I have): done “rm -rf” (or equivalent) to wipe out a directory, only to realize--too late--that it was the wrong one. There’s a discussion currently raging <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_week_steam_cleans…> over a bug just like this in the Steam client for Linux. There is a script that contains the line rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* However, as a result of certain (unusual) user actions, the value of the STEAMROOT variable could end up empty, in which case the script proceeds to wipe out every file on the system that your userid has privilege over. What’s the best way to handle this? On the one hand, when setting up a new installation/preferences directory, you want to ensure there is no leftover rubbish in it. But on the other, you want to ensure that any existing directory you delete/replace is in fact an old installation/preferences directory. I’m leaning towards the solution--discussed in the GitHub issue entry--of checking for some distinctive file in the existing directory. If that doesn’t exist, then the directory is not what the script thinks it is. For example, my wipetree script <https://github.com/ldo/git-useful/blob/master/wipetree> checks that there is a .git subdirectory in the directory you want to wipe. It also helps to use “set -e”, so bash aborts the script on an error, instead of barrelling on.

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Canonical Launches Internet-of-Things Version of Ubuntu Core
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

'Ubuntu Linux isn't just for desktops, servers and the cloud anymore. Mark Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to be the operating system of choice for the Internet of Things too. The new Snappy Ubuntu Core is targeted at device developers and it's the basis for an entire new division of Canonical Inc. The promise of Snappy Ubuntu Core is also one of security, protecting the devices of the world, by keeping them updated. "With Snappy there is also a division of responsibilities for updating that can also help protect IoT devices and users. So we could deliver an update for a Heartbleed or Shellshock vulnerability, completely independently of the lawnmower control app that would come from the lawnmower company," Shuttleworth said.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/20/2347214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The current state of video editing for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

"I often ask myself what the current state of video editing is for free and open source software (FOSS). Here are my thoughts. I've spent many years in the visual effects (VFX) industry from the perspective of being either an artist, compositor, video editor, or systems engineer. (I've even got film creds on IMDB!) In the past, I had the pleasure of cutting on, training people on, setting up, and supporting Avid Media Composer, the cream of the crop of professional real-time video editing tools for film and TV alike—at least before things like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere became useful enough to professionals." Tested: Pitivi, OpenShot, Lightworks, Avidemux, Cinelerra, KDEnlive, Blender The winner (spoiler): Blender -- source: http://opensource.com/life/15/1/current-state-linux-video-editing Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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dates for meetings
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

Hi everyone I've talked to the Bernhard Pfahringer, head of the computer science department, and he's willing to sponsor our meetings (WLUG and Python) again this year. Therefore, I booked the following dates for WLUG: Feb 23 Mar 23 Apr 27 May 25 Jul 27 Aug 24 Sep 28 Nov 23 NB: Some months are unavailable due to exam periods (these periods start already during study week, when the rooms get prepared and cannot be disturbed anymore). This brings me also to the next question: who's up for presenting at the first meeting in February? Any new, funky distros that anyone has taken for a spin? Any Linux-related projects tackled during the summer break? Feel free to contact me off-list and I'll add you to the meeting on meetup.com. As a reminder, our meetings get scheduled here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/ Thanks and see you in February. Hope you all had a good summer break (at the least the folks in the southern hemisphere)! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Adobe's Photoshop Ditched for Krita at French University Due to Lack of Support
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

"The ATI (Art and Technology of Image) department at University Paris 8 is switching to Krita this year. This department has the double aim to train students both to use graphic software (2D,3D,VFX and Compositing) and to code their own (Python, C#, C++). Until recently the classes used only Adobe Photoshop, but because of inadequate support from the company the department decided to replace that." -- source: https://krita.org/item/goodbye-photoshop-and-hello-krita-at-university-pari… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

Apologies if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaco Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 9:05 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15 To: NZOSS Open Discussion List Thanks to everyone who attended, participated or helped in the Linux Conference last week. Video's should be available online now: * http://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2015 * http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2015/ * Local ‪NZ‬ mirror at http://mirror.slingshot.co.nz/pub/linux.conf.au/2015/ thanks to SlingshotNZ! Was good to see many familiar faces, but I was also hoping to see others. OTOH I was running around so much & attention focused on the above, I doubt I would've noticed anyway. Looking forward to working at the next one (this counts as doing my bit for the community, right?) cheers - Jaco _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Tails 1.2.3 is out
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

"Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.2.3, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible. On January 3rd, the SSL certificate of our website hosting provider, boum.org, expired. This means that if you still are running Tails 1.2.1 or older, you will not get any update notification. Please help spreading the word!" -- source: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.2.3/index.en.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

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Security Products Are Wasting Our Time
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Apparently 4 out of 5 alerts reported by malware-detection products are false alarms <http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/survey-says-security-products-waste…>. And of course the result is predictable: In 2013, for example, when cybercriminals broke into Target’s systems and loaded malware, the company’s FireEye security system issued an alert for the activity, but the company ignored the alerts. As a result, a District Court judge in Minnesota has given the go-ahead for banks to sue the retailer.

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How Many Weeks Has “The Spectator” Been Publishing?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Jan '15

16 Jan '15

Any other readers of “New Scientist” on this list? In the issue of 3rd Jan, the “Feedback” column tried to work out how many weeks various magazines that are still in existence had been publishing. The oldest they could find was “The Spectator”, which first came out on 6th July 1828. Unfortunately they were using Microsoft Excel to do their calculations, with predictably nonsensical results. :) Here’s what I came up with, using the good old “date” command, together with the arithmetic facilities built into bash. Taking it step by step: date +%s prints out the number of seconds since midnight 1st January 1970 to the present time. date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s does the same for 6th July 1828. Of course this is a very small negative number. It computes and displays fine on my 64-bit system, but might overflow on 32-bit ones. echo $(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) prints out the subtraction of the above two numbers, giving the number of seconds from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. And finally, echo $(($(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) / $((86400 * 7)))) divides that number of seconds by the number of seconds in a week, giving the number of weeks from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. Which, by my reckoning, is 9732.

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Run Your Choice Of Linux/Android On A Chromebook
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Google has posted details <http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2390180/google-will-now-allow-andr…> of how to boot up your choice of Linux distro (including Android) on a Chromebook, as an alternative to its built-in ChromeOS. This is still extremely fiddly, risk-prone and not for the faint-of-heart.

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Australia Bans Crypto Research
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

A law currently being phased in in Australia <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/australia_tries_to_ban_crypto_resea…> would seem to mean serious jail time for those trying to discuss certain advanced crypto technologies with those outside the country: “Was the government warned that it was making a mistake? Apparently so...” Other countries have exemptions for academic researchers. But why should they be treated differently from ordinary people, anyway?

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Microsoft Offers Ubuntu Image with Docker Engine in Azure Marketplace
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (seen here) made big headlines late last year when he sang the praises of open source and Linux. Reversing what was long perceived to be a hostile stance for open source, Nadella said that he "loves Linux" and also claimed that 20 percent of Microsoft's Azure cloud is already Linux-based. Furthermore, Microsoft seems to remain committed to providing support for popular Linux distributions in its public cloud offerings. Now, the company has announced Azure Marketplace's first Docker image: Docker on Ubuntu Server by Canonical and Microsoft Open Tech." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/microsoft-offers-ubuntu-image-with-docker-engine-in… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fun With Fontconfig
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Fontconfig <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/> is a set of command-line utilities, as well as an API for programs to use. It allows matching of fonts by names and other characteristics, rather than having to hard-code paths to font file names, or having to embed fonts into every document. For example, you format some text in a LibreOffice document. In the GUI, you will see a popup menu of all the fonts available on your system. Having chosen a font to use and saved your document, you send a copy to a friend. But they don’t have the same font installed, so LibreOffice uses Fontconfig to find the next best available font. As another example, Web pages commonly specify fonts by names like “serif” or even “Arial” (actually the name of a Microsoft-created clone of the original “Helvetica” font). While those who really care about typography and layout will use CSS font specifications to get the exact font they want from some server, the rest of us will muddle through with the common names, and expect the Web browser to find a suitable match on the user’s local machine. The command-line utilities allow you to observe this process in action. Given a reasonably vague font name, the fc-match command will show you the exact font file that will be chosen; thus, on my system: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" arial /usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf (You will likely get a different result, depending on what fonts you have installed.) Sometimes the file names are not so explanatory: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" palatino /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb in which case, the fc-query command will give you more info about what exactly is in that font file: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-query -f "%{family}\n" /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb URW Palladio L Or, you could have combined both steps into one: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{family} %{file}\n" palatino URW Palladio L /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb The list of what information item names you can put in those “%{...}” format specifiers is not mentioned in any of the man pages, but you can look in /usr/include/fontconfig/fontconfig.h, which is part of the libfontconfig1-dev package. Be warned, though: not all the items listed there will work with all fonts.

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SystemD Gains New Networking Features
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"A lot of development work is happening on systemd with just the recent couple of weeks seeing over 200 commits. With the most recent work that has landed, the networkd component has been improved with new features. Among the additions are IP forwarding and masquerading support (patch). This is the minimal support needed and these settings get turned on by default for container network interfaces. Also added was minimal firewall manipulation helpers for systemd's networkd. The firewall manipulation helpers (patch) are used for establishing NAT rules. This support in systemd is provided by libiptc, the library used for communicating with the Linux kernel's Netfilter and changing iptables firewall rulesets. Those wishing to follow systemd development on a daily basis and see what is actually happening under the hood, can keep tabs via the systemd Git viewer." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/14/2030259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Samsung Launches Tizen Phone In India
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"After plenty of speculation and an abort launch in Russia last year, Samsung has finally managed to release its first phone powered by the Tizen operating system. The Samsung Z1 is coming to India initially, where it is available to buy for 5,700 INR — that’s around $92 — from today. The Z1 is an affordable device, both in price and specs. It packs a four-inch WVGA PLS screen, and is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 768 MB RAM. There’s a 3.1-megapixel camera on the rear, and a limited VGA camera on the front. The phone runs version 2.3 of the Tizen operating system, and comes with 4GB of on-device storage which can be expanded by up to 64GB via a micro SD card. It supports dual SIMs, as is commonplace with devices in India." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/01/14/2023220 Cheers, peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Make a Handheld Linux Terminal with a Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

"Robinson's build uses a Raspberry Pi A+, a USB hub, battery, touchscreen, charger, backlit keyboard, and a few other random parts. The whole thing is housed inside of two, 2.5-inch plastic hard drive enclosures that are connected with a piano hinge. You'll need some extra tools like a drill, a soldering iron, and some wire cutters, but otherwise Robinson's guide is pretty straight-forward. " -- source: http://lifehacker.com/make-a-handheld-linux-terminal-with-a-raspberry-pi-16… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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What Does Using A Supercomputer Look Like?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

This article <http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1649635/sgi-advances-linux-hpc> is from a few years ago now, but it stuck in my mind about how running Linux on a proper supercomputer is little different from how it works on your own PC. Standard commands like “lspci” and “more /proc/cpuinfo” work exactly the same, except their output does go on a bit longer when your machine has 4096 cores, and peripheral attachments to match. And all done with a stock-standard Linux kernel: Goh was keen to mention that whatever SGI does to the Linux kernel, it does after making sure that any changes it makes will be accepted by the Linux kernel maintainers. Apparently getting the number of cores limit increased to 4,096 was something that he and his colleagues had to personally convince Linux founder Linus Torvalds to accept. According to Goh, convincing Torvalds was "tougher than designing the hardware".

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Wireless Keylogger Masquerades as USB Phone Charger
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

"Hardware hacker and security researcher Samy Kamkar has released a slick new device that masquerades as a typical USB wall charger but in fact houses a keylogger capable of recording keystrokes from nearby wireless keyboards. The device is known as KeySweeper, and Kamkar has released the source code and instructions for building one of your own. The components are inexpensive and easily available, and include an Arduino microcontroller, the charger itself, and a handful of other bits. When it's plugged into a wall socket, the KeySweeper will connect to a nearby Microsoft wireless keyboard and passively sniff, decrypt and record all of the keystrokes and send them back to the operator over the Web." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/13/183226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ask Slashdot: Linux Database GUI Application Development?
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

"I have been developing some applications to use in small businesses using Windows and SQL Server. I would like to move on and start doing the same thing in Linux. I have looked at several Frameworks/Databases/Development environments and I really don't know what is the best/simplest/fastest to learn approach. I use VS and C# mostly, although I could easily go back to C++. I found Qt and GTK+ are the most common frameworks, but they seem to lack controls that deal with datasets and stuff (sorry, spoiled by the .net form controls), but I also know that I could use Mono in order to make the jump. I would have no problem on moving to MySQL, as I have done quite a lot of work on that side, and I would like to stick with the traditional client server application, as I find it easier to maintain, and a whole lot more robust when it comes to user interaction (web apps for POS applications don't seem to be the right way to go in my view). Any suggestions/comments/recommendations?" -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/01/13/1525235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The 4 Best New Linux Distributions to Watch in 2015
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"There was a time when new Linux distributions popped up on what seemed like a daily basis. They came and went so fast, you might have completely missed their short lives. That’s not so much the case these days. Linux distributions arrive a bit less frequently and, when they do finally arrive, tend to have a bit more staying power. Why is that? My guess would be that the stable of standard distributions has become so strong, it’s hard for competition to stand up to the likes of Ubuntu, Arch, Mint, Fedora, SUSE, and Debian. That doesn’t mean, however, that new distributions don’t try to take down the mighty standard bearers. In fact, there are a few distributions that could give those kings and queens of Linux a run for their money this year. Which ones, you ask? Let’s take a look at what I believe will be the distributions to watch in 2015." 1. Evolve OS 2. SparkyLinux GameOver Edition 3. Korora 4. Ozon OS -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/801303 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Eight Security Vulnerabilities Patched by OpenSSL Project
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"The risks they pose range from denial-of-service attacks, changing the fingerprint certificate, client authorization without verification message for a DH (Diffie-Hellman) certificate, client accepting the use of a temporary RSA or a handshake that leads to removing the forward secrecy from the ciphersuite." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Eight-Security-Vulnerabilities-Patched-By-Op… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Finally Gets GNOME 3.14
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is just one of the many official Ubuntu flavors and its developers have been working to implement the latest version of GNOME 3.14. One of the problems faced by the Ubuntu GNOME developers is the fact that their project is not in sync with GNOME, which puts a little bit of pressure on them. For example, they have been criticized for not having the latest GNOME desktop in Ubuntu 14.10, even if that particular piece of software was released after the feature freeze." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-GNOME-15-04-Finally-Gets-GNOME-3-14-4… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Would You Rent Out Your Unused Drive Space?
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"There is a new idea out there, proposed by Shawn Wilkinson, Tome Boshevski & Josh Brandof, that if you have unused disk space on your HD that you should rent it out. It is a great idea and the concept may have a whole range of implementations. The 3 guys describe their endeavor as: "Storj is a peer-to-peer cloud storage network implementing end-to-end encryption would allow users to transfer and share data without reliance on a third party data provider. The removal of central controls would eliminate most traditional data failures and outages, as well as significantly increasing security, privacy, and data control. A peer-to-peer network and basic encryption serve as a solution for most problems, but we must offer proper incentivisation for users to properly participate in this network." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/181208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases Second Issue CC-BY-SA
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"As covered previously on Slashdot, Linux Voice crowdfunded its way to success in late 2013, showing how a small team can make things happen with a different business model (giving profits and content back to the community). Now, a few months after the magazine made issue 1 freely available, they've released issue 2 under the Creative Commons for everyone to share and modify. If you've ever fancied making your own Raspberry Pi-powered arcade machine, there's a full guide in the second issue." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/0311258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Sloppy File Permissions Make Red Star OS Vulnerable
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"Red Star OS Desktop 3.0, the official Linux distro of North Korea, which recently found its way onto torrents and various download sites in form of an ISO image, is interesting for a number of reasons, including its attempt to look like commercial operating systems (currently OS X, earlier versions mimicked the Windows GUI). Hackers are also poking Red Star for security vulnerabilities. An pseudonymous researcher noted in a post to the Open Source Software Security (oss-sec) mailing list, that the OS has one significant security hole: Red Star 3.0 ships with a world-writeable udev rule file /etc/udev/rules.d/85-hplj10xx.rules (originally designed for HP LaserJet 1000 series printers) which can be modified to include RUN+= arguments executing arbitrary commands as root by Udev. In the post he also mentions how the older Red Star 2.0 shipped with another schoolboy mistake: /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit was world-writeable." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/032207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Rust Programming Language Reaches 1.0 Alpha
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"Rust, a new a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency, has released the 1.0 alpha version of the language. This means that the language and core libraries are feature-complete for the 1.0 release. In practical terms, this means that the rate of change experienced by early adopters will slow down dramatically and major breaking changes should be very rare (during the alpha cycle some major changes may still occur if considered necessary). The language will stabilize further when the beta stage is reached (planned for six weeks from now)." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/0254252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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USB 3.1 & Type C Connectors
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

At the recent CES exhibition in Las Vegas, there was being shown a lot of new hardware taking advantage of the new USB specs <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/usb-3-1-and-type-c-the-only-stuff-at…>. There are 4 quite separate parts to these specs: * the USB 3.1 spec, supporting theoretical data rates up to 10Gb/s * the USB Power Delivery spec, which can supply up to 100W to connected devices * the new “Type C” connector, which has 4 separate physical data channels on it, including one for backward compatibility with USB 2.0 * USB Alternate Mode, which can use some or all of the Type C channels to communicate non-USB data (e.g. DisplayPort). In principle, it is neat to be able to replace all the different kinds of ports on a machine with ports all of a single kind. However, the article suggests that Alternate Mode could be a problem: it seems inevitable that different ports on a machine will be restricted to different uses for the Alternate Mode function. Which means, instead of the current situation where a monitor connector is different from a USB connector so you cannot plug a cable for one into the other, you will have the situation where all the connectors and cables _are_ the same, but if you plug the wrong device into the wrong port, it just won’t work. I remember in an e-mail exchange with Stuart Cheshire a few years ago (he was the mastermind behind the Zeroconf initiative, which Apple implemented as “Rendezvous”—later renamed “Bonjour”—and Linux users know as the “Avahi” packages), he said that there should indeed be just a single type of port on a computer, all speaking the same protocol. And that protocol should be TCP/IP. After all, why shouldn’t you run full TCP/IP between your keyboard, mouse and PC? The silicon it takes to implement the network stack shouldn’t amount to much of a cost these days. Of course, it should be IPv6, not IPv4...

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NZ Postcodes Database
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Jan '15

10 Jan '15

If you didn’t know about it, this guy Nick Le Mouton has put together a pretty extensive list of postcode information for New Zealand, available here <https://www.noodles.net.nz/2007/09/14/new-zealand-postcode-database-v2/>. There are details on 43457 streets in 1260 suburbs with latitude/longitude positions, and separate tables of rural delivery addresses and P O boxes/private bag locations.

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Got an Asus router? Someone on your network can probably hack it
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

'If you're running an Asus wireless router, chances are good that someone inside your network can take full administrative control of it thanks to a currently unpatched vulnerability in virtually all versions of the firmware, a security researcher said. While the vulnerability isn't as serious as those that allowhackers on the Internet at large to compromise the devices, it's nonetheless concerning. People with administrative control can reroute everyone connected to malicious websites and possibly install alternate or even malicious firmware updates. "I trust people that join my network to some degree, but I don't want them to be able to reconfigure the router," Joshua Drake, research director at Accuvant and the person whobrought the vulnerability to light Thursday, told Ars. "I can't prevent them without this getting fixed (short of the workaround)."' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/got-an-asus-router-someone-on-your-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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meetings
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

Hi everyone We're currently in the process of sorting out the dates for the monthly meetings this year. Ian S. suggested to not bother moving the meeting forward by a week if it falls on a Monday that is a public holiday, as we've done in the past. Why this change? The advantage would be that there is no confusion over *when* the meeting happens, it's always the 4th Monday. However, the downside could be that people are away or have no public transport to get to the meeting. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Intel’s “Compute Stick” Computer In An HDMI Dongle
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/intels-compute-stick-is-a-full-windo…> Available with either Windows 8.1, 2GiB RAM and 32GiB of flash storage, or Linux, 1GiB RAM and 8GiB flash. Is there some kind of deal with Microsoft to never offer identical hardware configurations with your choice of Windows or Linux?

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Extra Leap Second To Be Added To Clocks On June 30
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

"On June 30 this year, the day will last a tad longer — one second longer, to be precise — as a leap second is to be added to clocks worldwide. The time UTC will go from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 in order to cope with Earth's rotation slowing down a bit. So, what do you intend to do during that extra second added to that day? Well, you may want to fix your systems. The last time a leap second was added, in 2012, a number of websites, Java and even Linux experienced some troubles. Leap seconds can be disruptive to precision systems used for navigation and communication. Is there a better way of dealing with the need for leap seconds?" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/06/1821234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ODFPY Now Supports Python 3
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

ODFPY is a very handy set of tools for manipulating Open Document Format files. Besides its own command-line tools, it also offers a Python class library that you can call from your own programs. I have been using this in my own billing system for many years to generate invoices for clients. This used to kept in a SVN repo on a somewhat slow server at <https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/odfpy/home>. But now they have moved to GitHub at <https://github.com/eea/odfpy>, and I see the current library works with Python 3 as well. This pleases me no end, as I have been moving many of my older projects across from Python 2.

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Tips For Securing Your Secure Shell
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"As you may have heard, the NSA has had some success in cracking Secure Shell (SSH) connections. To respond to these risks, a guide written by Stribika tries to help you make your shell as robust as possible. The two main concepts are to make the crypto harder and make stealing keys impossible. So prepare a cup of coffee and read the tutorial carefully to see what could be improved in your configuration. Stribika gives also some extra security tips: don't install what you don't need (as any code line can introduce a bug), use the kind of open source code that has actually been reviewed, keep your software up to date, and use exploit mitigation technologies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/07/161227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Browsing in privacy mode? Super Cookies can track you anyway
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"For years, Chrome, Firefox, and virtually all other browsers have offered a setting that doesn't save or refer to website cookies, browsing history, or temporary files. Privacy-conscious people rely on it to help cloak their identities and prevent websites from tracking their previous steps. Now, a software consultant has devised a simple way websites can in many cases bypass these privacy modes unless users take special care." -- source: http://goo.gl/jnkuaA Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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I Just Want The Root Filesystem!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Sometimes you want to perform some operation on the volume mounted at /, but not in any volume mounted under it. Some commands (e.g. “find” and “rsync”) provide options to avoid recursing into lower filesystems, but others (e.g. “du”) don’t make it so easy. A simple technique for getting around this is to use a bind mount. For example, after mount --bind / /mnt the /mnt directory shows you a view of the same filesystem as /, except you will notice that directories like /mnt/proc and (assuming your user files are on a separate volume) /mnt/home are empty. Or, to be more precise, those directories are now showing their original contents, unobscured by any other filesystem mounted on top of them. An example use of this is, the root partition on a machine might be filling up, and I want to know why. To narrow down which directories are using the space, I try to do du -ks /*/ but this wants to scan /home/ as well, which on this machine is a separate volume and therefore just adds greatly to the time taken without telling me anything relevant. But with the bind mount, I can do du -ks /mnt/*/ and it will only check the root volume. Another use of this is, as I mentioned above, you can see what is originally in the directories being used for mounting other filesystems. For example, one machine might normally have a network volume from another server mounted on a directory into which it regularly saves files. For some reason the network link might go down, and during that interval it blithely continues saving files into the local directory where the network volume was mounted, rather than the network volume itself. After the network mount is restored, you will probably want to check what files were accidentally saved locally, and move them onto the network volume where they belong. A bind mount lets you do this without disrupting access to the network volume. Then when you are finished with the bind mount, you can get rid of it in the usual way: umount /mnt

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Life With Debian Unstable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Doing an “apt-get dist-upgrade -s” on a Debian Unstable system is currently telling me it wants to remove most of KDE. This even though I tried an apt-get update on two different repo mirrors. I think I’ll leave it, and check again in a few days...

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Browsing The Linux Kernel Sources Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

You may remember at one of my presentations I was trying to bring up a website that allowed browsing and linking to the Linux kernel sources online, complete with cross references and search. However, that original site seems to have long gone. The good news is, another site <http://lxr.free-electrons.com/> is offering exactly the same thing, and I think they’re using the same software (developed by people at Oslo University in Norway) as well.

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AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To and Beating Windows
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'Along with the open-source AMD Linux driver having a great 2014, the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux has also improved a lot. Beyond the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver closing in on Catalyst, the latest Phoronix end-of-year tests show the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is beating Catalyst on Windows for some OpenGL benchmarks. The proprietary driver tests were done with the new Catalyst "OMEGA" driver. Is AMD beginning to lead real Linux driver innovations or is OpenGL on Windows just struggling?' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/03/1426208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Red Hat Engineer Improves Math Performance of Glibc
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

"Siddhesh Poyarekar from Red Hat has taken a professional look into mathematical functions found in Glibc (the GNU C library). He has been able to provide an 8-times performance improvement to slowest path of pow() function. Other transcendentals got similar improvements since the fixes were mostly in the generic multiple precision code. These improvements already went into glibc-2.18 upstream. Siddhesh believes that a lot of the low hanging fruit has now been picked, but that this is definitely not the end of the road for improvements in the multiple precision performance. There are other more complicated improvements, like the limitation of worst case precision for exp() andlog() functions, based on the results of the paper Worst Cases for Correct Rounding of the Elementary Functions in Double Precision (PDF). One needs to prove that those results apply to the Glibc multiple precision bits." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2025232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Bots Scanning GitHub To Steal Amazon EC2 Keys
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'As one developer found out, posting your Amazon keys to GitHub on accident can be a costly mistake if they are not revoked immediately. "When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes! Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently; hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2342228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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