- main - earth.li

Re: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by MJ Ray 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

Simon: [...] > > Why on earth would anyone want to download 600Mb and only use around 200Mb > > of it? > > So, the answer's simple: use Debian! ;-) > I agree with your comments, but..... Sounds lame, but I'd rather have the > full distro (maybe I'm odd) that way I can get all the extra goodies, bits > and pieces that come along.. Fair enough most of them will never see the > light of day... But I just gotta have em.... How does not having the ones you don't want downloaded stop you getting the ones you do? New goodies (including ones from alternative suppliers) are only ever an apt away. > Anyway I've got to stick with RedHat, company policy etc... Company policy prevents you using better tools for the job? Time to look for a new company... ;^) > P.S. Does anyone know how to get the spell checker working with KMail ? Nope... I'm just going to try to get it working in this email client. Thanks for the idea! -- MJR

2 1

Re: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by MJ Ray 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

Simon: > The idea (and reason) is I downloaded the RedHat 7.2 ISO's down an ISDN line > and it took 3 days (including 2 disconnects that I didn't pick up on)... Yes, getting some shared ISOs is probably useful, although I wish more distributions would follow Debian's lead of starting PPP network installations from nothing more than a few floppies and some hard disk files. They're taking it even further in the next version and letting you download the hard disk files after the installation has started, I believe. Why on earth would anyone want to download 600Mb and only use around 200Mb of it? So, the answer's simple: use Debian! ;-) -- MJR

2 1

Re: [Alug] Weekly IRC reminder
by MJ Ray 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

> Which UK network(s) would you suggest? We are currently 2 for, 1 neutral I think. Therefore: Tonight's IRC meeting will be at 8pm on penguin.blitzed.org #alug (or try irc.blitzed.org if that doesn't work) as a trial. The rest of the details are the same, except: ,---- TONIGHT 8pm --------. | irc.blitzed.org #alug | `-------------------------' Point out any irony to me only by email off-list, please. -- MJR

1 0

Re: [Alug] Next Meeting - Jan 27?
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

MJRay wrote: >"As to the software library: do you mean that, or would a software directory on the web site be more useful? While the lending library is good (although David seems to have gone away with it?), some of us do not want to fund proprietary software products." That was Simon mentioned that. Not sure what he has in mind? As for the lending library david has run off with - I could trade him a vax for it back. :-) and >"It's not dropped. I'm still on the case." I kind of meant the support side from alug members. I feel a personal responsibility for not offering support, enthusiasm and help, but it may be a female thing ;-) (Jo?) Jen.

1 0

Re: [Alug] Nessus and Nmap
by Ricardo Campos 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

> You need to have nmap installed too, have you? > Mike Yeah, that was my first step. I used a bastille-linux hardnening script recently, I'm wondering if that has somehow interfered the nessusd server. However, it was set to the lowest reccommended for someone on the 'net, rather than paranoia level. The man pages for nmap, if anyone who's been following this thread *hasn't* read them, are amazing. I actually understand them! lol. But then TCP/IP is the only computer stuff I've had formal training in (other than Louts Notes and Windows NT). REALLY, if you are thinking of any firewalling (iptables or ipchains or just in general) READ the nmap manual. Believe me! ;) >of scan I can run is tcp connect() scan... I kinda thought the point of nessusd was that it ran as root so the others are possible. > > > > Do you think this is just a symptom of scanning the loopback address? > > I guess from the response on-list that I'll get a chance to see if it *is* a symptom of loopback. ;) "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Re: [Alug] Nessus
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

Ricardo wrote: >Anyways, I'll be on IRC tonight, so if anyone wants to use up some of their CPU scanning my IP (nick: ConfuZed), >feel free to do so, as long as you send me the report! ;) Ricardo, - I too have been setting up ipchains and wondering if they do what i think they do over the last few weeks. I'll be grateful if anyone can try the same on my box tonight. Would the way to go about it to be to declare the IP (dynamically assigned) on the IRC session and award a prize to the first person to get in, or is that, erm, uncool? Jenny.

2 1

Re: [Alug] Nessus
by Ricardo Campos 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

>Would the way to go about it to be to > declare the IP (dynamically assigned) on the IRC session and award a prize > to the first person to get in, or is that, erm, uncool? > Jenny. LOL Well, I guess it's gonna be a free-for-all tonight! Nessus produces reports in HTML, so we can get proper feedback prolly best we get one person scanning one person rather than 5 people scanning one poor fella (or lass as the case may be) We'll work it out on IRC.... ricardo -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Re: [Alug] Weekly IRC reminder
by MJ Ray 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

> The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.openprojects.net in the > #alug channel, you can take a look at www.openprojects.net to get more > info on the openprojects network. I'm thinking that maybe we should move to a UK network, as OPN still only has one usable UK server and is developing in strange ways[1]. Anyone have strong feelings on this? [1] - For people who know about IRC: abolishing O-lines, disabling some useful commands, kicks that look like you did a /part, 4 million americans and thousands of brits banned from their help channel and many more. -- MJR

3 2

Nessus
by Ricardo Campos 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

OK, so I've been playing around with that lovely security program Nessus (http://nessus.lug.org.uk/) scanning both my eth0 and pp0- for some reason the only kind of scan I can run is tcp connect() scan... I kinda thought the point of nessusd was that it ran as root so the others are possible. Do you think this is just a symptom of scanning the loopback address? Anyways, I'll be on IRC tonight, so if anyone wants to use up some of their CPU scanning my IP (nick: ConfuZed), feel free to do so, as long as you send me the report! ;) Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

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.openprojects.net in the #alug channel, you can take a look at www.openprojects.net to get more info on the openprojects network. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server uk.openprojects.net" or "/server eu.openprojects.net" 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!)

1 0

Netscape 6.2 (Mail & News too)
by Ricardo Campos 06 Jan '02

06 Jan '02

Here we go again.... Anyone had problems with Netscape 6.2 not saving stuff like bookmarks, the default view you want (i.e. without "My sidebar" etc), or even forgetting mail/news accounts? I can set them up, and then darn it when I close Netscape and fire it up again, it doesn't save them! The permissions of ~/.mozilla imply that the owner (me) should have read/write permissions (and execute on some), so I don't really get it... Still running Mandrake 8.0 as Debian's still being a pig to get X up and running on... "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

RE: [Alug] mbox
by Ricardo Campos 06 Jan '02

06 Jan '02

Awww... you guys is great!!!! lol ;-) Well, I'm off to repair it using (my favourite text editor- maybe I'll need to put "no HTML e-mails" on my sig SO bulky in a txt editor). Luckily, however, I was able to retrieve the message by the help of Micro$oft... lmao I actually added the pop3 acct to my hotmail acct (linuxmail is blocked by the ISP due to spam) and retrieved it from there- seems Evolution (spit spit) didn't actually d/l the message, just fragged it's own mailbox... I've also got 1.2 MB of spurious Qmail weirdness sent to that mailbox too. you take these risks running beta software, but then someone's gotta do it, right? lol (well, it *does* put up a disclaimer when you run it) again, saved by the LUG... MUCH appreciated, Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

mbox
by Ricardo Campos 05 Jan '02

05 Jan '02

Does anyone know of a way I can retrieve mails from an mbox file? Evolution successfully managed to trash my Inbox, and there's a message in there with really important info, which unfortunately cannot be resent. The error I get is: " The folder appears to be irrecoverably corrupted" ...which sounds quite ominous, but I am hoping is not true! eek! help! Ricardo -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

2 1

Re: Firewall security Testing
by tom potts 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

http://www.fish.com/satan/ is a nice thing to try on yourself! SATAN stands for Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks Tom __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

1 0

UK Govnmt Consultation on Free/Open software
by John Seago 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

The papers on this matter can be found at : http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/rfc/rfc_document.asp?docnum=429 http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430 those members who have an opinion on this mater now have an opportunity to make it known to the UK government. John Seago

2 1

I'm Back!
by Brett Parker 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

Well, after a spell of not being subscribed to alug (linuxfreemail.com cheerfully refusing mails from certain places) I'm back. Now using my sourceforge address (which redirects to the linuxfreemail.com one) that seems to get round the issue. I suppose I should go catch up on the archive at some point! Cheers. Brett Parker

1 0

Re: [Alug] Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Ricardo Campos 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

> Find a really dodgy IRC channel and say something like "I bet no one > can break into my box!", sit back and watch your logs fill 8). > Maybe I'll see Earl there... ;) lol (joke, mate) Can you imagine the paranoia... (is he a Fed?). I could troll as a 13 year old scriptkiddy.... > Failing that, get a mate to run nmap or nessus (which uses nmap) on your > IP address. If you let me know what it is, I'll do it for you. (Ma ha > ha ha) I'll try and lock it down a bit more, and I'll do just that! My ISP is demon so I always have the same IP anyway. Maybe if I can get my laptop's pcmcia network card working, I could do it from there, or even failing that, put the card in my housemates' Win98 laptop and run some poor quality scanners! ;) Ricardo ------------------ I must be a geek- I think TCP/IP is actually very interesting. -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Re: [Alug] UK Govnmt Consultation on Free/Open software
by Ricardo Campos 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

> Please, before you reply, take note of the arguments put forward at > http://www.alex.uklinux.net/Documents/ > > The author is willing to accept improvemnts and I think this may form the > basis for a combined response. Interesting... I had to read this in Moz rather than IE5.5. lol. Back to the point though... I think that to a certain extent his points are somewhat academic. I work in the public sector so perhaps parts of the document have a little more meaning (QinetiQ implies certain things without explicitly mentioning- it is a public document after all). Yes, they have somewhat missed the point of Free Software, but in all, it is an encouraging report. BELIEVE me. I've been trying to persuade these guys from the inside that licensing costs are going up and do not provide better software, that we need to think of different solutions, etc. To have a report, that although conservative is mostly favourable (and you're can't convince *me* that Linux is a suitable desktop solution YET-but let's not get into that one again) -it's a great advantage to us. Certainly my take on the report is not to criticise it (lest we bore them with nitpicking over licensing etc), but to say "what it fails to mention is this;" and also selling it... let's not get too idealistic (I mean it's only a socialist <cough splutter> govt after all ;) ), but rather talk in their terms which is: 1) Money, and 2) Money (Oh, and if it works, it's a bonus) lol The TCO would plummet amazingly; licensing costs are huge, support will stay the same. It's just not true that *nix people get more money than MCSE's etc (I'm currently 'surveying the job market' and typically people are asking for NT, M$ 2K AND UNIX/Linux experience for an equivalent wage to mine). Hardware, these days, is possibly the cheapest part of the TCO, so overall the TCO WILL go down. Also, I can site an example where a major proprietary application caused one hell of a problem when the software company went belly up and didn't release source code... (eventually they did, for megabuck$!) My two pence.... Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Re: [Alug] UK Govnmt Consultation on Free/Open software
by MJ Ray 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

John: > The papers on this matter can be found at : > http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/rfc/rfc_document.asp?docnum=429 > http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430 > those members who have an opinion on this mater now have an opportunity to > make it known to the UK government. Please, before you reply, take note of the arguments put forward at http://www.alex.uklinux.net/Documents/ The author is willing to accept improvemnts and I think this may form the basis for a combined response. The QinetQ report is badly flawed and misses the point of Free Software. It's not very surprising that the proposed policy carries these flaws through. Although it calls it Open Source, please remember: there is very little difference between the Open Source Initiative definition and the Debian Free Software Definition. Many of us prefer the less ambiguous term "Free Software", while we wish to see the original idea behind both implemented. -- MJR

1 0

Re: [Alug] Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Ricardo Campos 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

> Hi All, > for anyone who gets security-focus you will have seen this - for others it > may be of use. > If you're having phun getting your firewalling working or making sure you > have a sensible ruleset(s) then this should give you some extra input/fff. > Handy! I think I need to spend an evening sifting through these and the iptables man pages.... Does anyone know of a good way to test a home system? Everything works for me (i.e. I can do everything I could do before), but that doesn't mean that the firewall actually works (i.e. blocking nasty portscanners on the internet)... I tried the online portscanner at www.grc.com but somehow I don't trust it, as it's targeted at Windows. It did show up my SMTP port as open, and I use my ISP's SMTP server, so I'll have to look at that..... Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

1 0

Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Earl Brannigan 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

Hi All, for anyone who gets security-focus you will have seen this - for others it may be of use. If you're having phun getting your firewalling working or making sure you have a sensible ruleset(s) then this should give you some extra input/fff. Cheers Earl [earl.brannigan(a)lindenhouse.co.uk] www.lindenhouse.co.uk Intellectual : Someone who can spend a whole day locked in a room with a tea cosy without once thinking of trying it on. Highbrow : Someone who can listen to the entire William Tell Overture without once thinking of the Lone Ranger. > -----Original Message----- > From: Hal Flynn [mailto:flynn@securityfocus.com] > Sent: Tuesday 25 December 2001 06:24 > To: focus-linux(a)securityfocus.com > Subject: Firewall Rulesets Are Available > > > Hi again, folks! > > After some delay, and a bit of wrangling to get them up, the firewall > rulesets contributed by Focus-Linux members are now available! > > For anybody that's forgotten, a few months ago we had a discussion about > firewall rulesets. During that time, a number of members contributed > their firewall rulesets to the list for the benefit of everybody. These > folks were so kind as to give me their permission to post them in the > Focus Area for everybody's browsing, analysis, and use. They're now > available in the Unix Focus Area. > > I'd like to personally thank Ross Vandegrift, Jem Berkes, Matthew Sachs, > skylinux, vogt, and dewt for all taking time out of their busy schedules > to share with us all. Thanks guys. You rock! > > The UNIX Focus Area can be accessed at http://www.securityfocus.com/unix. > > The firewall rulesets are at URL > http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/unix_topics.pl?topic=fwrules. > > > Hal Flynn > UNIX Focus Area Manager > SecurityFocus > > "Semper Fidelis"

1 0

Embedded Linux
by Peter Bassill 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

Hi All. - Happy New Year Does anyone have any experiance in running linux from an M-SYS disk on chip system? And does anyone have any ideas on the better OS for embedding with? I await your replies with baited breath, Pete Bassill "Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention."

1 0

irc meeting reminder
by abower＠thebowery.co.uk 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

hi people, don't know what has happened to the irc meeting reminders but however there should be (if you are not all out drinking etc. etc. tonight) an irc meeting in #alug on uk.openprojects.net starting at 8'ish i guess, erm the full announce message will be somewhere in the archives if you want to (or need) to know more. I guess the archives url should be appended at the bottom of this message. Anyhow happy new year to you all... don't get too drunk =) Adam

1 0

Re: Gateway problems
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Dec '01

30 Dec '01

Hi Barry - I usually hesitate in replying as I tend to get it mostly wrong, but just in case it helps: I have a win98 computer using a linux box as a gateway, and not only did I have to set the gateway etc settings, but in the properties for my browser ( Internet Explorer) I selected connections, "never dial a connection", then in LAN settings put the linux box Ip in the proxy server using port 80 (also selected "bypass proxy for local addresses"). Jenny.

1 0

ipchains replacement
by Ian Douglas 30 Dec '01

30 Dec '01

Hi Folks, I am a newbie home based Linux user with dial-up access to the internet. Up until now, because of the small, infrequent, amount of time I am actually connected to the internet, I have simply been ensuring that I always log on as a normal user (rather than root) to protect my PC, however I have recently been wondering whether it would be wise to install some kind of protection for my PC. Looking in my little Linux text book it would appear that "ipchains" would probably be sufficient for my needs (rather than setting up a dedicated firewall), however, when I try to use ipchains I get the error message: ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel. The kernel I am using is 2.4.10 and I am wondering if this error message is hinting that ipchains has now been superseded. Is there a modern replacement for ipchains? If so then what is it and where could I find some info on setting it up to protect my PC? Thanks, Ian.

5 11