main May 2001

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43 participants
110 discussions

Next Meeting
by MJ Ray 11 May '01

11 May '01

Are we still hoping for a meeting at the end of May? Has something been arranged and I missed it? Someone from UEA has suggested that the next meeting at UEA shouldn't be at a weekend. How do people feel about weekday evening meetings? Personally, I'd not be overjoyed and suspect room bookings might be more difficult (Union House not really available because of Ents, so need to use main university buildings), but if it's what people want... -- MJR

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ALUG Library: Librarian and Security stuff
by brodders＠cwcom.net 09 May '01

09 May '01

ALUGL Librarian and Security stuff Hi. Been thinking over things and have some thoughts re Librarian & Security. Librarian =========== Who volunteers for this? The Librarian has to be present at all meets and must oversee all returns / loans, maintain the database, fixe occasional errors, chase people for overdues, carry out stocktakes and bring the current ALUG stock with them to every meet in case a loan is wanted. May need a truck I dont like this would you do it? so Ive been kicking around the idea of allowing casual person-person item passing. These need to be verified transactions on the database otherwise fraud is simple. The protocol I suggest below is good enough?? Comments appreciated. What Ive got is: Stock items are scattered i.e. held by who-ever-has-them-right-now. A potential borrower searches the library database and discovers Item X. They request Item X. The database sends an email to the current holder saying to bring Item X to the next meet. The database generates a random release key for the trade and emails it to the requestor. Eventually Item X and the release key change hands. The old holder enters the release key into the database and the transaction is verified. Kicker: Until the release key is in & verified the old holder is responsible for Item X; responsibility gets passed to the new borrower by entering the key. Further, requests for popular items can be stacked (thats the idea behind having requests as transactions; these can be ordered by item / time sequence making a request stack as well as other very useful life-history stuff). Is this adequate?? There is still a need for a librarian but the job is much less onerous, for it frees them from compulsory attendance, involvement in every transaction & removes the drag-the-stock-about problem. Also, an item swap is not geographically limited to a meet could be down a local pub etc. Again please kick holes in it people! Security =========== Other than people hacking in and diddling the transactions database, items database etc to generally kill the system there is a security issue over the names & addresses and account passwords. I want to encrypt the lot; ideally the entire database. And the transactions from server to client must be secure too otherwise login accounts get compromised. This is a job for an expert. I can get the database functional but I would not put the system live in unencrypted form. Also does this complicate backup/restore/maintenance? Ill databases are tricky; an ill, encrypted database might be quite irrecoverable & un-de-encryptable. Security Expert Needed! Steve

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Spam Blockers
by KEV＠hartmann.dk 09 May '01

09 May '01

Hi, IMHO option 3 should work against most. Kevvy alug-admin@stu .uea.ac.uk To: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk cc: 06/05/01 06:26 Subject: alug digest, Vol 1 #223 - 9 msgs Please respond to alug Message: 7 To: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk From: MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> Organization: Cat-killingly bad Date: 06 May 2001 01:16:23 +0100 Subject: [Alug] Increasing spam We're getting more spam now. There are a number of options open to us: 1. Can whoever has posted our mailing list address on a web site *please* remove it again and email alug-admin(a)stu.uea.ac.uk to let us know? 2. We can lock the list down so that only subscribed addresses can sent without being approved. 3. We can lock the list down so that only emails with [Alug] in the subject line are allowed through. 4. We can try to fight a rear-guard action and try to block obvious spammers. 5. We can hold anything which looks like it might possibly be spam for approval 6. We can ask Brett to hook the list software up to ORBS or MAPS. Opinions/votes? I hope that option 1 would work, but I quite like option 3 too. -- MJR --__--__--

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Re: [Alug] Increasing spam
by MJ Ray 09 May '01

09 May '01

Neill Newman <neill(a)entora.co.uk> writes: > I think that 4 is a little dificult, you can setup the mail > server to use RBL/ORBS, but in my experience the spammers change addrees > regularly an this becomes a little pointless If the mail server uses RBL or ORBS and adds headers, we could hold any posts with the warning headers for approval. Anyway, we're doing option 2 (restrict free posting to subscribed addresses), so make sure your subscription address (emailed to you last week) matches the address you use. -- MJR

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Increasing spam
by MJ Ray 08 May '01

08 May '01

We're getting more spam now. There are a number of options open to us: 1. Can whoever has posted our mailing list address on a web site *please* remove it again and email alug-admin(a)stu.uea.ac.uk to let us know? 2. We can lock the list down so that only subscribed addresses can sent without being approved. 3. We can lock the list down so that only emails with [Alug] in the subject line are allowed through. 4. We can try to fight a rear-guard action and try to block obvious spammers. 5. We can hold anything which looks like it might possibly be spam for approval 6. We can ask Brett to hook the list software up to ORBS or MAPS. Opinions/votes? I hope that option 1 would work, but I quite like option 3 too. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Increasing spam
by Peter Delf 08 May '01

08 May '01

>> The first and easiest is to make subscription into a two step process. >I think it already is. was for me. Peter Delf u9947868 and yes it is technically SYS U1 >-- >MJR _______________________________________________ alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list Send list replies to alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug See the website for instructions on digest or unsub!

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Re: [Alug] More on spam
by MJ Ray 08 May '01

08 May '01

Laurie Brown <laurie(a)brownowl.com> writes: > relay: relay=catalog.com [207.240.40.4]. I've mailed them several times, > as it happens, I'm a catalog customer myself, but they refuse to do > anything about it. Are there any sanctions I can intitiate? Is there > anywhere to report them to? MAPS and ORBS are the best places. When their email to a significant number of sites starts bouncing, people tend to move. Maybe their upstream provider has something in their AUP against it? It's a lot of work to take it beyond ORBS and MAPS, though. > I'm withdrawing my business from them, not just because of this, but > because I no longer need their services. If you've no compelling reason otherwise, tell them it is because of this. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Newbie needs help
by MJ Ray 08 May '01

08 May '01

linux user stuff <linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> writes: > I know I shouldn't but I normally log on as root but I'm the only person > using the machine. Still a bad idea. Can you say "virus" or "trojan"? Permissions are your friends. > It said similar thing about the Ethernet controller with the device ID as 900 > (see above in the bit about the module) and IRQ still as 11 and different > I/O addresses of course. It looks like the sis900 is supposed to discover these by itself. Does "lsmod" show sis900 as loaded? What is the exact error caused by a "modprobe sis900"? It looks like wrong IRQ/IO settings, but it ought to work themselves out. Most confusing. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] MS Access
by Laurie Brown 08 May '01

08 May '01

"Ashley T. Howes" wrote: > Would you mind sharing the macro (or point me in a direction which > would > help me construct one). This would be very useful for me. > > Thanks for any help you can give. Ashley, Here's one: http://www.slink.net/mpdb/docs/msaccess.html I can't remember if it's the base for the one we use or not, but I do know we made quite a few changes to ours. I don't have ours here, but this will get you started. I found it doing a google search using "msaccess macro mysql" Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com PGP key at http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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