A plain computer illiterate guy rings tech support to report that
his computer is faulty.
Tech: What’s the problem?
User: There is smoke coming out of the power supply.
Tech: (keep quite)
Tech: You’ll need a new power supply.
User: No, I don’t! I just need to change the startup files.
Tech: Sir, the power supply is faulty. You’ll need to replace it.
User: No way! Someone told me that I just needed to change the startup
and it will fix the
problem! All I need is for you to tell me the command.
Tech support::
10 minutes later, the User is still adamant that he is right. The tech
is frustrated and fed up.
Tech support:: (hush hush)
Tech: Sorry, Sir. We don’t normally tell our customers this, but there
is an undocumented DOS
command that will fix the problem.
User: I knew it!
Tech : Just add the line LOAD NOSMOKE.COM at
the end of the CONFIG.SYS. Let me know how it goes.
10 minutes later.
User : It didn’t work. The power supply is still smoking.
Tech : Well, what version of DOS are you using?
User : MS-DOS 6.22 .
Tech : That’s your problem there. That version of DOS didn’t come with
NOSMOKE. Contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch that will give you
the file. Let me know how it goes.
1 hour later.
User : I need a new power supply.
Tech support : How did you come to that conclusion?
Tech support : (hush hush)
User : Well, I rang Microsoft and told him about what you said, and he
started asking questions about the make of power supply.
Tech: Then what did he say?
User: He told me that my power supply isn’t compatible with NOSMOKE.
Cheers John..
While fixes for security bugs on the Linux platform usually come out
quickly, there do seem to be a lot of laggards in deploying them
<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/28/vulnerabilities_report_9_million/>.
Why is this?
The researchers speculate that "Windows admins are more accustomed
to regular reboots after decades of conditioning," while "tooling
for managing Linux fleets at scale generally lags behind that of
Windows."
Also perhaps the Linux installations include a lot of embedded/IoT
devices that never get manufacturer updates.
By default, if a process asks for more (virtual) memory, the Linux
kernel never says no. (It can be easily configured to do so, if you
want.) Therefore, it is possible for a process to try to access more
memory than the system has available. This situation triggers the
dreaded “OOM Killer” <https://lwn.net/Articles/317814/>, which hunts
around for resource-hogging processes and kills them according to a
priority scheme that nobody quite understands.
To avoid things getting this bad, various people have come up with
alternatives in the form of userspace daemons that monitor system
resource usage, and implement their own (configurable) rules for
killing processes before things get dire enough to wake up the OOM
Killer.
The announcement of Fedora 32 mentions
<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/28/red_hat_summit/> the
inclusion of one of these solutions, “EarlyOOM”. Looking at the
project’s <https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom> readme page shows
mention of two others: “nohang” (written in Python) and “oomd” (from
Facebook).
I see all three available as standard Debian packages, at least as of
Debian Unstable.
>From the “Yet Another Subject For A Holy War” Department, Microsoft is
planning for the next update to Word to flag two spaces after a full
stop and before the next sentence as a typo
<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/27/microsoft_roundup/>.
Two spaces after a full stop was long-standing practice for typewritten
text, and carried over to some extent to computer users. But with the
advent of WYSIWYG word processing and proportional fonts, it became
more common to adopt the practice of typeset text, and only put one
space after a full stop, before the next sentence.
Where do you stand? Microsoft ran a poll on the question, and it seems
the majority favoured a single space.
'It looks like Lenovo may upstage Dell as the big name in OEM Linux
laptops—not counting specialty retailers like System76, of course. Red
Hat and Lenovo are announcing pre-installed and factory-supported
Fedora Workstation on several models of ThinkPad laptops at Red Hat
Summit this week.
Dell's Linux support has generally been limited to one or two very
specific laptops—first, the old Atom-powered netbooks and, more
recently, the XPS 13 Developer Edition line. Lenovo is planning a
significantly broader Linux footprint in its lineup.
Fedora Workstation will be a selectable option during purchase for the
Thinkpad P1 Gen2, Thinkpad P53, and Thinkpad X1 Gen8 laptops—and
Lenovo may offer even broader model support in the future. Lenovo
Senior Linux Developer Mark Pearson, who will be the featured guest in
the May 2020 Fedora Council Video Meeting, expresses the company's
stance on forthcoming integration:
"Lenovo is excited to become a part of the Fedora community. We want
to ensure an optimal Linux experience on our products. We are
committed to working with and learning from the open source
community."'
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/lenovo-is-joining-dell-in-the-oem-l…
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'Cyber-security firm Sophos has published an emergency security update
to patch a zero-day vulnerability in its XG enterprise firewall
product that was being abused in the wild by hackers. From a report:
Sophos said it first learned of the zero-day on late Wednesday, April
22, after it received a report from one of its customers. The customer
reported seeing "a suspicious field value visible in the management
interface." After investigating the report, Sophos determined this was
an active attack and not an error in its product. "The attack used a
previously unknown SQL injection vulnerability to gain access to
exposed XG devices," Sophos said in a security advisory today. Hackers
targeted Sophos XG Firewall devices that had their administration
(HTTPS service) or the User Portal control panel exposed on the
internet. Sophos said the hackers used the SQL injection vulnerability
to download a payload on the device. This payload then stole files
from the XG Firewall.'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/04/27/162211
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'If you're looking for the best gaming CPU or the best CPU for desktop
applications, there are only two choices to pick from: AMD and Intel.
That fact has spawned an almost religious following for both camps,
and the resulting flamewars, that make it tricky to get unbiased
advice about the best choice for your next processor.
But in many cases, the answer is actually very clear. In fact, for
most users, it's a blowout win in AMD's favor. That's an amazing
reversal of fortunes for the chipmaker after it teetered on the edge
of bankruptcy a mere three years ago, making its turnaround all the
more impressive as it continues to upset the entrenched Intel that
enjoyed a decade of dominance... Pricing is the most important
consideration for almost everyone, and AMD is hard to beat in the
value department. The company offers a plethora of advantages, like
bundled coolers and full overclockability on all models, not to
mention complimentary software that includes the innovative Precision
Boost Overdrive auto-overclocking feature.
You also benefit from the broad compatibility of Socket AM4
motherboards that support both forward and backward compatibility,
ensuring that not only do you get the most bang for your processor
buck, but also your motherboard investment. AMD also allows
overclocking on all but its A-Series motherboards (see our article on
how to overclock AMD Ryzen), which is another boon for users. And, in
this battle of AMD vs Intel CPUs, we haven't even discussed the actual
silicon yet. AMD's modern processors tend to offer either more cores
or threads and faster PCIe 4.0 connectivity at every single price
point.
"We're not covering laptop or server chips," the article notes, adding
"There's a clear winner overall, but which brand of CPU you should buy
depends most on what kind of features, price and performance are
important to you."
Still, it's noteworthy that AMD beats Intel in 7 out of 10
comparisons. The three in which Intel won were gaming performance
("only because we measure strictly by the absolute top performance
possible"), drivers and software ("the company has an army of software
developers [and] a decade of dominance also finds most software
developers optimizing almost exclusively for Intel architectures"),
and overclocking, where Intel "has far more headroom and much higher
attainable frequencies.
"Just be prepared to pay for the privilege."'
-- source: https://slashdot.org/story/20/04/26/1622236
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
Hi everyone
What about a distro showdown for our (virtual) WLUG meeting in May?
For instance:
- GhostBSD
- Ubuntu 20.04
- Manjaro
- Arch
- Gentoo
- ...
People can just demo a single distro for a few minutes via
BigBlueButton (you can share your screen real easy with BBB).
Thoughts? Volunteers?
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
Hi everyone
Our last meeting moved to virtual Google Hangout on short notice, which probably explained the low turnout.
My question is, whether speakers and attendees would be willing to move to virtual ones, to keep our little community together and going?
The last meeting was done with Google Hangouts, as it allows sharing the screen as well. Doesn't have to be Hangouts, it was simply convenient as a lot of people have gmail accounts. Open to viable alternatives.
Stay safe!
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
