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How can a user unmount something mounted with smbmount?
by Chris Green 23 May '05

23 May '05

I am using 'smbmount' to mount a Windows file system on a directory in $HOME on my Linux box. This works for a user if smbmount is SUID. However I don't seem to be able to umount the file system except as root, it just says:- umount: /home/chris/win is not in the fstab (and you are not root) The umount executable is alread SUID but this doesn't seem to help. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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thanx tony
by thedeceiver 23 May '05

23 May '05

thanks for the welcome, i practice my daily rituals i black notley,essex.kneeling to face pluto, leftthumb in right ear,right toe in left ear whilst chanting Suse Suse Suse,thus begins mt linux day (only joking ;) ) andy -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.15 - Release Date: 22/05/2005

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Further to ssh security without a passphrase for the key
by Chris Green 23 May '05

23 May '05

I was reading the ssh (and other ssh utilities) manual pages just now and it would appear that hostbased authentication offers an improvement on 'no passphrase' user keys. As I understand it what it does effectively is make a key for the host you are connecting from rather than the user. This key can then be protected from casual access by being owned by root (or even better a special user) and a utulity program ssh-keysign which is suid is used to access the key. If your host machine is reasonably secure and you have root access (or a friendly sysadmin) this does offer a step up in security, though maybe not quite as good as using ssh-keygen - it depends on the way you use ssh. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Suse 9.3 changes to xdm login
by Nick Daniels 23 May '05

23 May '05

Hi I am running Suse 9.3 on two machines, and the login, seemingly at random changes to xdm. I have tried editing the etc/sysconfig/displaymanager to kdm but about every 4th boot it changes back I have come across reference to it here http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/lofiversion/index.php/t14756.html but I do not use Nvidia cards Any ideas would be appreciated Regards Nick Daniels

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/etc/shadow - password field
by Chris Green 23 May '05

23 May '05

I was looking in my /etc/shadow file to see which users had passwords (so I could change them to something more secure, I know some are rubbish at the moment) and now I'm not sure what the password field is signifying. Most of the non-login 'system' accounts like 'bin' have a password field of '*', but there are a couple ('postgres' and another) which have a password field of '!'. Do both '!' and '*' indicate no password? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 23 May '05

23 May '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Backing up IMAP mailbox
by Ben Francis 22 May '05

22 May '05

Eventually I hope to run my own mail server at home, but at the moment I use IMAP with my broadband ISP. I use IMAP because it let's me keep track of what I have and haven't read between work, home and my girlfriends house and a central store for all the emails I've sent. The amount of space on the IMAP server I use is starting to get quite large because of a lot of attachments and I'm paranoid that my ISP is going to notice and delete some of my emails without informing me first. I've been backing up my inbox by downloading the emails via pop3 in Thunderbird to my desktop computer but leaving a copy on the server, but this only backs up my main inbox, not all my subfolders and sent and drafts folder. How can I backup all my IMAP folders remotely? Thanks Ben -- Ben "tola" Francis http://hippygeek.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER SUPPORT for small businesses and home users http://tolatech.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------

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Restricting ssh logins to certain users (not root)
by Chris Green 22 May '05

22 May '05

Is there any simple way of restricting ssh logins to a system to prevent remote root logins? I'd like to do this to add a little more security so that one has to login as a non-root user and *then* su to root (if you want root privileges for some reason). This would mean that an intruder would need to guess/hack two passwords to get root access. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Welcome
by andy 22 May '05

22 May '05

thanks for the welcome folks,nice to see there are other users in my area. felt a bit lonely as most of the people i know use winbloze software. mention linux to them & they go all glassy eyed or stare at you as if you're from another planet. i sometimes feel as if i'm a scientist who has made a great discovery & no one is listening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! andy

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Moving Mozilla config etc to Firefox
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 22 May '05

22 May '05

Hi Folks, As mentioned in another mail just composed, I run Mozilla on a somewhat puny laptop. I also have Firefox installed, which is a much more compact and nippy program. The main reason I still keep running Mozilla is that I have a massive collection of bookmarks on Mozilla, built up over the years, and also an assortment of auto-login data for certain websites (userids & passwords), and an unknown number of cookies also accumulated over time. Not forgetting sundry plugins. In order to switch cleanly and conprehensively over to Firefox, I would need to transfer this lot from wherever Mozilla looks for it to wherever Firefox would look for it. I have not succeeded in sussing this out. Nor do I wish to re-create it all by hand! Any tips? (Are the two even totally compatible in this respect?) With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 08-May-05 Time: 13:38:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: Humongous computing with Windows XP 64bit Edition
by tom potts 22 May '05

22 May '05

Just a comment on linux memory use vs windows. If I remember rightly the file system on linux tends to keep files in memory until it needs the space so the memory usage goes up so when it says your using 700meg of ram this may actually mean your only using 200 meg for the system but there are 500meg of closed files. Windows seems to scrabble every last bit back and still suffer. I have an amd with 256MB ram with w2k it struggles to get started but isnt too bad after that even though I use VS.NET but it does seem to choke a lot. Running RH9.0 it almost seems to get bored. You can run suse9.2 in 16MBytes Ram but you seem to need 64Mbytes to install it using the graphical interface. Same for RH9! Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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new member
by thedeceiver 22 May '05

22 May '05

hi my names andy, & i thought i'd join your lug mailing list as i have been using linux for about 3 years,mainly suse,mandrake & fedora core.i'm not the greatest user but if i can help in any way i will. i currently run suse 9.3 on my laptop & dual boot on my main p.c.mainly for the kids as they are used to winbloze software. gradually working them to a switch. i also help out in my local school as i am fairly well versed in most i.t. issues. if i don't know the answer i can always find out. thanks for letting me join your lug hope to hear more from other members Andy -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.12 - Release Date: 17/05/2005

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Combining a collection of images into an animation file
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 21 May '05

21 May '05

I have a collection of image files that I would like to combine into an animation file, e.g. an MPEG. I have been playing around with the ImageMagick toolkit and mpeg2encode. They work, but the quality is not very good. Let me explain that - my images have some fine detail in them I need to preserve in the final animation, and mpeg2encode does not seem to provide any options for encoding quality. Can anyone recommend a better mpeg encoder for linux, which will allow me to control the quality of the final animation? Alternatively, if there is someone on the mailing list who does this sort of activity of a semi-regular basis, could you share the best way to do what I am attempting? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com/ "I remember the very things I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget." - Cicero

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Where does PHP get it's host name information from?
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I'm trying to get PHP5.02 and Apache2 working again having upgraded my slackware from 10 to 10.1. I've got Apache going OK but PHP is acting a bit odd. The essential problem is that I've got my DNS a little bit awry (this may sound unrelated to PHP but we'll get there). Before we had broadband my system had no name as there was never a need to access it from the outside world. Now we have broadband I've got a sub-domain pointing at the system:- home.isbd.net 84.51.144.229 I have a router which is what the outside world sees when it connects to home.isbd.net and the NAT and firewall are set up to send packets to the appropriate systems on the LAN side. Within the LAN I the systems have names such as fred.isbd.co.uk (I own the isbd.co.uk domain) which only exist within the LAN and, on the Linux box, are set up in /etc/hosts. Thus there are entries such as:- 192.168.13.5 fred.isbd.co.uk fred These are very convenient as one can use the short form 'fred' to connect to that machine. However there are now some oddities occurring and I'm thinking I may have to change some/all of my hosts file. Firstly PHP keeps using the Linux server box's full name (server.isbd.co.uk) to try and do things and is failing miserably. Secondly for some reason the DNS on the LAN can't find home.isbd.net whereas everyone else in the world can find it and DNS on the LAN works for all other addresses. In general what do others here do about naming machines on a small SoHo LAN behind a router? Is there some accepted way of doing it? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Risks (or otherwise) of passwordless ssh use
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I currently use ssh for various logins from home and from work. I have set up the logins so that they work without me entering a password or key phrase at all, i.e. I *think* when asked for a key to generate the encrypted string used for authorisation I entered nothing. I know this creates some security holes but I'm not at all clear what they are really, can anyone elucidate? I realise that anyone with access to my work machine or my home machine will be able to login to these remote systems without knowing the password but that's not a big problem really, there is far more important and sensitive information on my desktop machines than there is on the places where I remotely login. Is this the only risk or is the encryption inherently weaker if I didn't enter a key? -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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How to find out what mysql databases I have?
by Chris Green 20 May '05

20 May '05

I always have this problem when I come back to using mysql. How do I find out what mysql databases I have set up? The mysql daemon (mysqld) is running, I can run 'mysql' and I get the 'mysql>' prompt but that's it, there seems ot be no simple way of finding out what databases there are there to use. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Apache + modssl + mount -o ro = segfault
by MJ Ray 19 May '05

19 May '05

Here's one I've not met before: I have an Apache (1.3.x) server doing SSL. The server has a read-only root partition and then read-write partitions for things like /home, /var, /tmp and so on. If Apache is started, all the https sites fail, return no data and say in the log "[notice] child pid 563 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)" or similar. If / is mounted read-write, Apache started, then / is remounted read-only, it works. I can't see any read-only directory being used in the httpd.conf - what's going on at startup that I'm missing? -- Thanks for any tips, MJR/slef http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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ADSL Router configuration question
by Chris Green 19 May '05

19 May '05

This isn't really a Linux question but it is network/computer related so it's not that far off topic. We've just got ADSL and I'm now up and running with a Zyxel 660H router/switch. I would like to be able to configure the Zyxel remotely using the web interface but I would also like to make a Web server on one of the machines in our home network visible to the outside world. Is it possible to do both of these things at the same time? The Zyxel has a specific menu for setting up access to the management interface, you can enable/disable the telnet and HTTP interfaces for LAN or WAN or LAN & WAN. You can also set the port number associated with these. In the NAT configuration you can set up services on the LAN which you wish to be visible to the outside world. However I don't see how one can have a web server visible to the outside world at the same time as making the management interface visible as they will both appear as the same port number and IP address. I tried changing the port number for the managment interface access from the default 80 to 8080 but that just stopped it working completely because the firewall at the other end wouldn't pass traffic on port 8080. Is there any clever redirection I can do on the LAN to make it possible to connect to the Web server on the LAN and then to the Zyxel router from the LAN side? I could configure using telnet, I'm quite happy to do that, but it's hardly secure over the internet. I suppose I can set it so that it's only accessible from specific IP addresses which might be OK. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Can one create 'per user' host name aliases?
by Chris Green 18 May '05

18 May '05

I've just got broadband (small village in Suffolk) and have a static IP address, however the host name is impossibly long, it is 84-51-144-229.isbdlt032.adsl.metronet.co.uk So, is there any way for me to provide my own personal alias for this name so I can (for example) say "ssh -l username home" where 'home' will be expanded to the full host name? This is on systems where I don't (mostly) have root access, two Linux systems where I have shell access and Solaris systems at work. What I really want is a sort of local copy of the /etc/hosts file which a user can add to. I know I could set a shell/environment variable but this requires prefixing with $ to use it and I'd like something cleaner if possible. -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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Cleaning a filesystem for compression
by Stuart Bailey 17 May '05

17 May '05

I have a CF card with two partitions - one ext2 and the other ext3. I want to create an image for the card but since it's about 1Gb in size, the image requires compressing before it can be ftp'd. Is there a way to zero out any unused areas in the FS in order to optimise the compression? Many thanks, Stuart. -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) Linux Specialist (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please email postmaster(a)linusoft.co.uk immediately. You should not copy or use this email or attachments for any purpose nor disclose their contents to any other person. NO BINDING CONTRACT WILL RESULT FROM THIS E-MAIL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS A WRITTEN DOCUMENT IS SIGNED ON BEHALF OF LinuSoft. LinuSoft cannot accept any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of this message as it has been transmitted over public networks. *************************************************************************

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"All for the best"
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 17 May '05

17 May '05

Hi Folks, Browsing the Guardian "Online" section this morning I came across an interesting story from last Thursday's edition which I have not seen discussed elsewhere: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1481272,00.html "All for the best "Linus Torvalds, who developed the Linux operating system, once more inspires a community of coders to make his open source software even better. Glyn Moody reports Thursday May 12, 2005 The Guardian You may not have noticed, but the open source community had one of its inner-circle virtual punch-ups recently. What is interesting about the spat - aside from the sight of Linus Torvalds and other top hackers swapping e-insults - is that its resolution helps to explain why Linux is so good, and why it will get even better." [now read on] Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-May-05 Time: 08:43:27 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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RE:Samba Fileserver and vpn, etc.
by tom potts 17 May '05

17 May '05

If your looking for a low powered machine (and can wait) this might be what you need... http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23271 ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - want a free and easy way to contact your friends online? http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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re: [ALUG] Samba Fileserver and vpn, etc.
by David Noble 16 May '05

16 May '05

Considering the school's connection runs at 2 megabit via fibre, and my home ADSL connection has an upstream connection of 160 kb or something like that, the connection speed should be close to what I get at a school terminal anyway. Dad's a bit concerned about the power usage of running a pc 24 hours a day, so I think i'll put something fanless and energy saving together- possibly a mini-ITX box or something, and run this. Dad also only seems to use the connection for internet banking, e-mail and other stuff, so it's a bit overkill anyway, and he shouldn't mind the bandwidth usage too much :) Cheers to all that have replied- I shall keep you posted on how it goes with all. Dave.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 16 May '05

16 May '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Samba Fileserver
by David Noble 14 May '05

14 May '05

Hi I'm kind of new to this LUG- I've been subscribed for a while, and am just trying to learn more about Linux. At the moment I only have a dual boot Linux/XP box, connected to my dormmate's laptop via a switched 10/100 connection, and to a few other computers in other dorms via a wireless access point. (I am at boarding school at a STRICTLY CLASSIFIED location) However, next year, I would like to get or put together some sort of server that is almost silent (so I can leave it on 24 hours per day), run Samba fileserving, run a vpn to a second computer at home, through the school firewall, and run a downstream proxy so people can get unrestricted internet access (from my home adsl connection) My eye is currently on getting two school computers (they are getting rid of these for about £10 or so), stuffing my copy of SuSE 9.1 on them, using remote desktop to control the one at home. I believe the spec is something like Pentium 3, 400mHz, 64 or 128 megs of RAM, 10/100 NIC, 10GB hd. I plan to upgrade one of them with a wireless card (to connect to the unsecured access point via the cantenna), and to put a 300 gig hard drive in the same one. This one would be used at school. The other one, I would leave 'as is', and use it at home, but this would have to have some sort of remote desktop connection, as my dad knows nothing about computers in general. The school is currently running an old version of Novell or something, and people have managed to use HTTPort and worms through it before. The rest of the unofficial wireless network runs Windows XP (bar one which runs Mac OSX). Is this possible? Do any of you have any suggestions?

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