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WLUG meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '15

27 Jul '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting tomorrow: "Ian Stewart will talk about the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and how to connect to it using thin clients and Raspberry Pi. Peter Reutemann will give the new Linux Mint release a quick spin." Details can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223850397 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/

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SSH -> getting the originating IP of a client using RDP
by Eric Light 24 Jul '15

24 Jul '15

Hey all This is a total edge case, but I thought it may be interesting to some. We have thin clients, which RDP to a Windows Terminal Server, through which users SSH (using PuTTY) into our Linux server. This isn't flexible (for good reasons which I won't go into here). However, to talk properly to our new EFTPOS units, we need to know the IP of the thin client. Of course, through SSH you only get the IP of the client, which is the Terminal Server. Here's how I fixed it: 1) Add the following line to /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and restarted ssh: * AcceptEnv CLIENTNAME* 2) Added the following to the Windows login script: * REG ADD HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\DG\ /v Environment /d "CLIENTNAME="%CLIENTNAME% /f* 3) Result: * ~ $ env | grep CLIENTNAME CLIENTNAME=eric-lmde* >From there, we can do what we needed with the EFTPOS! Eric -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es

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Troubleshooting Over The Phone
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '15

23 Jul '15

I just helped someone unbork their Ubuntu system over the phone. It was reporting “disk full”, without being more specific than that. I got him to open up a terminal window, and use the “df” and “du” commands to narrow down the directory that was filling up the disk. Sometimes /tmp gets filled up with stuff, but in this case it was /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/. I have had an instance of high disk usage on that directory myself, a while back. I think it’s where apt keeps partially-downloaded repo index files, though I’m not sure why—is it to retry downloading the rest? But when the problem hits, it just seems to fill up with failed downloads. So I carefully led him up to executing the command “sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*”, and that cleared the problem. The main thing I was careful with was spelling out the commands phonetically, and getting him to read them back to me. But imagine having to do this with a GUI, over the phone. I don’t think I would even try...

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Why Debian Returned To FFmpeg
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '15

23 Jul '15

<http://lwn.net/Articles/650816/> What impresses me about this is, even though the Debian package maintainer is also a libav developer, he “...in the end, could not bring himself to say that he was sure libav was the better choice.” With regard to the commit statistics, it seems like much of the activity in FFmpeg commits is wholesale copying of code from libav. But so what? If sticking with FFmpeg gives you the best of both worlds, why bother separately including packages for libav at all?

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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '15

22 Jul '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "Ian Stewart will talk about the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and how to connect to it using thin clients and Raspberry Pi. Peter Reutemann will give the new Linux Mint release a quick spin." Details can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223850397 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/

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On Being Pro-GPL
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '15

22 Jul '15

'Christopher Allan Webber, recently returned from OSCON, shares his thoughts on the GPL and why he dislikes people pitting one type of software license against another. He says, "I am not only pro-copyleft, I am also pro-permissive licensing. The difference between these is tactics: the first tactic is towards guaranteeing user freedom, the second tactic is toward pushing adoption. I am generally pro-freedom, but sometimes pushing adoption is important, especially if you're pushing standards and the like. But let's step back for a moment. One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source software... at the same time that computers have become more locked down than ever before! How can this be? And notice... the rise of the arguments for permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend. ...The fastest way to develop software which locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give back at this stage... and they might not want to. ... Copyleft's strings say, 'you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it.' But the proprietary differentiation strategy's strings say, 'I will use your stuff, and then add terms which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of it.' Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are worse?"' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/07/21/2256243 Personally, I'm a pro-GPL person. Simply because I don't like software getting locked down and nothing flowing back to the community. Especially, when open source is so community centred. 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/

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Open Document Format 1.2 Becomes ISO/IEC Standard
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jul '15

21 Jul '15

Only four years after its creation, ODF 1.2, the native format for the current version of LibreOffice, has been officially accepted as ISO/IEC standard 26300:2015 <https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/07/17/open-document-format-odf-1-2…>. By the way, if you try downloading the specs from the links on that page, you will be confronted by copyright warnings forcing you to click an “accept” button. You can get the same thing from here <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office#technical> without the nonsense.

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Fwd: Re: Customs Minister Wants Right To Demand Passwords From Device Users
by Chris O'Halloran 20 Jul '15

20 Jul '15

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 12:59:12 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz> wrote: > I would say this relevant to everybody in New Zealand or visiting New > Zealand, Linux user or not. > > “Powers that would require a person to provide a password or access > to > their electronic device will be useless if their material is instead > stored online, Customs Minister Nicky Wagner admits. It's interesting in the sense that normally you're not obliged to say anything that might incriminate yourself. David Bain didn't have to give his version of events.

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Customs Minister Wants Right To Demand Passwords From Device Users
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '15

19 Jul '15

I would say this relevant to everybody in New Zealand or visiting New Zealand, Linux user or not. “Powers that would require a person to provide a password or access to their electronic device will be useless if their material is instead stored online, Customs Minister Nicky Wagner admits. However, Ms Wagner insists such a change to legislation is necessary and will still enable Customs to catch people with illegal material.” <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11480…>

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ARM Support Comes To SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

"SUSE announced partner program expansion to include support for 64-bit ARM server processors. This expansion makes available to partners a version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 that allows them to develop, test and deliver products to the market using 64-bit ARM chips. To simplify partner access, SUSE has also implemented support for ARM and AArch64 into its openSUSE Build Service. This allows the community to build packages against real 64-bit ARM hardware and the SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 binaries." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/07/15/1720216 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/

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