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10374 discussions

27U rack looking for a new home
by Adam Bower 04 Jun '14

04 Jun '14

At work we have a 27U rack cluttering up our office, it has front and rear doors, some fans in the top and is on wheels to make it easy to move around. For this wonderful item I hear you say "but how much does he want for such a lovely thing?" well, the answer to that is, it's free if you come and collect it from Cambourne business park (8 miles west of Cambridge). Please mail me off list if you are interested, I have offered it around a few other places so it will be first who is able to collect gets it. Adam

1 0

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th June.
by Viperfang 03 Jun '14

03 Jun '14

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Probably OT: Using a wifi connection as a WAN
by Mark Rogers 28 May '14

28 May '14

I'm not sure if this is simple or not; if not then the solution is almost certainly going to use a Linux box so this might be on topic, but if not I can't think who else to ask. In my office I have a Draytek router, connected to ADSL (was O2, now Sky), with it's WAN port connected to another ADSL router, itself connected to PlusNet, and load balancing between the two. I have it set up this way due to the pretty useless speeds we get here (I just ran a speed test and got 3Mbps up, 0.5Mpbs down). No prospect of it changing much either in the short term. On the other hand, the same speed test on my phone shows 20Mbps down, 8Mpbs up (4G on Three). And I have free unlimited data including tethering. So I want to find a way to tether my office network onto my phone when I'm in the office. Is this just as simple as replacing the second ADSL router with an access point, or do I need to be more clever than that? (Also: the Draytek has a USB port for (eg) a USB 4G dongle, but could I use a USB wifi dongle to tether to my phone instead?) The "right" solution is to get a 4G dongle for the Draytek, but data plans on data SIMs don't seem all that great - and even phone contracts aren't as good as they were (I get unlimited tethering, but new contracts limit to 5GB while tethering). So I'd like to find a way to use my existing phone connection if I can, albeit that it's going to kill my battery when I use it. Although if anyone can point at decent 4G data plans instead I'd be happy to switch (I am already paying for two ADSL lines so I can ditch one of those if I get this working). (Apologies to anyone who would kill for the 3Mbps I currently get!) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Does NFS across subnets need to be able to 'see both ways'?
by Chris Green 28 May '14

28 May '14

As part of my improving security exercise I have implemented a DMZ system on a subnet separate from my main home subnet. Thus I have (similar to Mark Rogers) the following:- Draytek Vigor 2820n on subnet 192.168.1.0 WAN1 ADSL connection WAN2 Ethernet 192.168.13.0 to second ADSL router I have a Raspberry Pi plugged into to the second ADSL router's LAN so it's on the 192.168.13.0 subnet, this is the DMZ machine which will have a number of ports open to the internet. The 192.168.1.0 firewall doesn't allow any connections from the 192.168.13.0 subnet, but the Draytek Vigor 2820n does route anything addressed to 192.168.13.0 to WAN2. Thus for example I can ssh from my desktop machine on 192.168.1.0 to the Raspberry Pi. Now (finally!) to the question, can the Raspberry Pi export its files to my desktop (or anything on the 192.168.1.0 subnet) without opening up any holes in the firewall? I tried the obvious:- / *(rw,async,no_subtree_check) on the Raspberry Pi but although I could mount the filesystem successfully on my desktop any attempt to access it just hangs. -- Chris Green

1 0

Decent player wanted for internet radio streams (specifically BBC)
by Chris Green 28 May '14

28 May '14

I'm looking for a way to (simply) play BBC Radio 4 and other BBC stations on my desktop machine. I used to use radiotray but updating to xubuntu 14.04 seems to have broken that completely (it was always a *bit* flakey). I don't want a full blown music player really, though one that's easy to configure to play BBC would be OK. I *definitely* don't want a list of thousands of stations to select from which rarely includes BBC anyway, I just want to be able to enter a BBC radio URL and hear the radio. I have clementine installed but I can't see how to get that to play URLs, it looks like it should but seems to be broken when you try it. Like so many other players I've found. -- Chris Green

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Would someone burn a distro for me?
by James Freer 24 May '14

24 May '14

My PC I think has a faulty DVD drive/corrupted installation as it doesn't seem to burn. My spare machine with a CDROM doesn't seem to work now and for some odd reason neither boot on the USB (even with PLoP). Not been a good day! If someone is prepared to help me out maybe you can reply off list - I live North of Bury. The distro is Fedora xfce and Salix (CDs as opposed to DVD). thanks james

1 2

Fwd: Re: Overheard in the bar
by RustyHinge 24 May '14

24 May '14

Apropos Chalk Hill? -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Overheard in the bar Date: Sun, 18 May 2014 12:53:41 +0100 From: Znep <E-0C001302-5256-E(a)cleopatra.co.uk> Organization: None, really.... Newsgroups: uk.rec.sheds etc. In uk.rec.sheds, (Murff) wrote in <ll917d$q4k$20(a)dont-email.me>:: >On Sun, 18 May 2014 01:58:53 +0100, Mike Fleming wrote: > >> I've had some that's been good and >> some that hasn't coped so well. > >Just finishing some Naylor's Old Ale, from Kildwick. About 1 mile from >here, bought by the case from the brewers. At that distance, whether beer >travels or not is rather less of an issue. Um. I once took a mate of mine to the Lass o'Gowrie, and had a pint of their finest- which I rather liked. He didn't. "Where's this from?" he asked. "They make it out the back, there." "Huh. Doesn't travel well, does it?" -- Marc

1 0

I haven't tried *really* hard, but...
by Anthony Anson 19 May '14

19 May '14

Thunderguts is set to read Usenet offline. Posts for only one group are duly downloaded, but try to access them? Every time I try to open one, the cursor on the newsgroups column goes to the next one, where there are, of course, only headers. Is this a feature? Or am I doing something silly? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] Is there any point in using an 'unusual' private IP address range for security?
by Phil Ashby 18 May '14

18 May '14

On 18/05/14 12:00 Chris Green <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > ... > What I'm thinking of doing to improve my security (or at least reduce > the likelihood of a break-in doing much damage) is to have a dedicated > 'dmz' server on the LAN/WAN between the Speedtouch router and the > 2820n's WAN port. I can then open up the appropriate ports on *that* > system to provide access from the outside world but if someone breaks > in they won't be able to see anything much except that machine and a > couple of routers. This would be a "good thing" (tm), provided there are appropriate firewall settings on the 2820 that prevent connections from the DMZ back into the house network (ie: treat the DMZ as the internet from the house network point of view). > My question is about what private IP address ranges to use, currently > they're as follows:- > > 2820n - 192.168.1.1 > This has *everything* hanging on it, backup NAS, family > computers, media boxes, etc. > > Speedtouch - 192.168.13.254 > 2820n WAN - 192.168.13.65 (assigned by Speedtouch DHCP) > New dmz computer would be added to this LAN > > > Would it be worth changing things around so that the Speedtouch LAN is > 192.168.1.x (the almost universal default for home LANs) and the 2820n > one is 192.168.13.0, or even 10.0.0.0 or 172.16.0.0 so that an > intruder is less likely to guess that there's another LAN to look for? > I know this is 'security by obscurity' to some extent but it's no > effort really except some minor configuration changes to some static > addresses and DHCP servers so if it offers any advantage it's probably > worth doing. Prior knowledge of internal network addressing may help someone prepare a drive-by attack on your 2820 via your browser, otherwise there won't be much extra protection once they are on the DMZ host and can see all the network traffic passing by. Phil

1 0

Is there any point in using an 'unusual' private IP address range for security?
by Chris Green 18 May '14

18 May '14

I am in the process of reconfiguring my home LAN. Currently my desktop computer (which is also an 'always on' server machine) is visible to the outside world on several ports: ssh, smtp, http and maybe a couple of others (I'd have to check the router configuration to be sure). I have two ADSL connections, both with static IP and I use a Draytek Vigor 2820n router for load balancing. The 2820n handles one ADSL connection and there's an old Speedtouch ADSL modem/router on the other phone line whose LAN side connects to the 2820n's ethernet WAN input. What I'm thinking of doing to improve my security (or at least reduce the likelihood of a break-in doing much damage) is to have a dedicated 'dmz' server on the LAN/WAN between the Speedtouch router and the 2820n's WAN port. I can then open up the appropriate ports on *that* system to provide access from the outside world but if someone breaks in they won't be able to see anything much except that machine and a couple of routers. My question is about what private IP address ranges to use, currently they're as follows:- 2820n - 192.168.1.1 This has *everything* hanging on it, backup NAS, family computers, media boxes, etc. Speedtouch - 192.168.13.254 2820n WAN - 192.168.13.65 (assigned by Speedtouch DHCP) New dmz computer would be added to this LAN Would it be worth changing things around so that the Speedtouch LAN is 192.168.1.x (the almost universal default for home LANs) and the 2820n one is 192.168.13.0, or even 10.0.0.0 or 172.16.0.0 so that an intruder is less likely to guess that there's another LAN to look for? I know this is 'security by obscurity' to some extent but it's no effort really except some minor configuration changes to some static addresses and DHCP servers so if it offers any advantage it's probably worth doing. -- Chris Green

1 0

Is there a better 'locate' anywhere?
by Chris Green 16 May '14

16 May '14

Does anyone else find that 'locate' does all the wrong things for them? It's not that it's incapable of doing what I want but the defaults seem to be set up to be purposely the opposite of what I actually need it to do. The defaults for 'find' on the other hand are almost exactly what I want to do when searching for files. When you give 'locate' a name to search for it finds everything with that string of characters in it, this nearly always results in zillions of hits I don't want. However 'find' only finds exact matches unless you specify an RE explicitly. Yes, I know that you can tell 'locate' to find only exact matches but the default is wrong for me. Secondly 'locate' searches the whole file system, I very rarely want to do this especially as there are incremental backups which produce dozens of near identical hits. With 'find' I can specify (have to specify in fact) the root of the search which again is nearly always exactly what I want to do. In this case it's much more difficult to make 'locate' work the same way as 'find' because you'd have to rebuild the database (I did do that once but my changes got lost in an upgrade I think). So, is there an alternative out there that works (by default preferably) like 'find' but uses a pre-built database like 'locate' so is reasonably fast? -- Chris Green

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FTP server with compression for large text files
by Mark Rogers 16 May '14

16 May '14

I need to set up an FTP server to host fairly large text files (.CSV). At the FTP client level these need to be uncompressed but I'd like to reduce server disk requirements by using compression. I guess I could either do this at a file system (FUSE) level or transparently within an FTP server, assuming there is an FTP server that can do this. Anyone got any experience with this or suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

3 10

Scrap IT kit
by Laurie Brown 13 May '14

13 May '14

Hi all, Does anyone on the list know of a company in East Anglia that buys scrap IT kit? Servers, desktops, routers, that sort of thing. I've got quite a lot to clear, and I don't really want to give it to the Council! Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

2 1

Re: [ALUG] What am I doing wrong?
by mark fernandes 11 May '14

11 May '14

But the mailing list page does point to this About.com page on setting various clients to plain-text http://email.about.com/od/netiquettetips/qt/When-In-Doubt-Send-Plain-Text-E… HTH, Mark

1 0

Why do apache2 and leafnode need /etc/hosts configured with a FQDN?
by Chris Green 10 May '14

10 May '14

I have just moved dnsmasq from one machine to another, the machine I moved it from was only running dnsmasq so it was a bit of a waste of electricity and configuration maintenance. I'm now running dnsmasq on the machine where I also run apache2 and leafnode. Both leafnode and apache2 were perfectly happy before the dnsmasq move, they got a FQDN from dnsmasq presumably as there was nothing in the local /etc/hosts. Since moving dnsmasq to the same machine as leafnode and apache2 I've had to add a line:- 192.168.1.4 chris.zbmc.eu to my /etc/hosts, just chris won't do, even though dnsmasq delivers a correct FQDN with just chris. It's as if leafnode and apache2 go direct to /etc/hosts first. It's hardly a big deal but it just seems wrong somehow, why don't apache2 and leafnode use 'the proper channels'? -- Chris Green

2 2

What am I doing wrong?
by Paul Lenton 10 May '14

10 May '14

Hi all, Every time I send a message to the ALUG list I get a bounceback saying that my message is awaiting moderation for a "suspicious header". Am I adding anything funny into my emails that is causing this? Cheers -- Paul GitHub - EckoZero https://github.com/eckozero Registered Linux user #557339 https://linuxcounter.net/user/557339.html

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Memtest86 always reports bad ram on a specific motherboard
by Srdjan Todorovic 10 May '14

10 May '14

Hi all, I've inherited an old Dell PowerEdge desktop, with 3GB DDR2 RAM in modules of 1GB. Naturally, I ran Memtest86 from one of the Ubuntu CDs. With all 3 RAM modules, memtest fails at approximately 50% of the whole test, at approximate offset of 128MB (40,000++ errors). I then tested each of those RAM modules in isolation, same result. I ran the test of 1 module in a different slot, same result. I then took one of my old DDR2 modules, and tested that in isolation, same result. I have no reason to suspect that my old DDR2 module is faulty. I ran memtest with that module some time ago in an old motherboard and had no issues. The ram was stored in an anti-static bag, but maybe it's possible for that old RAM module to get zapped in storage. Could it be possible that the RAM controller on the motherboard is partially damaged? I have ubuntu running on this machine, and so far no detectable problems. Could it be that memtest86 itself has a bug or cannot execute the tests correctly? >From what I remember, all the BIOS settings relating to RAM are set to auto, but even so the BIOS beeps at me on bootup saying that the memory configuration is not optimal. I am trying to decide if it's worth keeping it for an experimental box or just salvaging workable parts and recycling the rest. Thanks! Srdjan

4 3

Any WordPress experts here - need help selecting a plugin
by Chris Green 10 May '14

10 May '14

I'm adding what is effectively a membership database to a WordPress site, there are a couple of special requirements:- 1 - The members can be individuals or organisations. An organisation member will have the organisation details - Name, address, phone, etc. - plus the ability to add up to five named individuals with simple details for each. 2 - It's a paid for membership so there will be a PayPal button for both individual and organisation membership, we obviously don't want to enter details for someone who hasn't paid. The PayPal buttons can have a 'Take customers to this URL when they finish checkout' option so this could be done by having a separate commit for the input form. The actual data for a member is pretty standard, nothing beyond Name, Address, E-Mail, Phone, etc. Looking for 'membership' or similar on the WP Plugins site pulls up hundreds of plugins all aimed at giving multi-level access to the web site which isn't what we need at all. So, any ideas anyone? I'm happy to customise an existing plugin, I can code in PHP reasonably well, but the more off-the-shelf it is the better of course. It feels like a good club membership database plugin would do but I can't find one in the morass of website membership plugins. -- Chris Green

2 5

Can anyone suggest why this ssh connection only works sometimes?
by Chris Green 09 May '14

09 May '14

I have a Beaglebone Black system on our boat in France which is connected to the internet via a WiFi hotspot. To allow me to connect to it with ssh it is set up to create ssh tunnels to a couple of places where I have logins. I used to run something similar on an ancient eeePc, on that system it remained permanently accessible but on the Beaglebone Black it only allows me to connect some of the time. I have to repeatedly try to connect over a few minutes to get connected:- halon$ ssh -p 51234 localhost ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host halon$ ssh -p 51234 localhost ssh: connect to host localhost port 51234: Connection refused halon$ while true; do ssh -p 51234 localhost; sleep 60; done ssh: connect to host localhost port 51234: Connection refused ssh: connect to host localhost port 51234: Connection refused chris@localhost's password: It's not that the ssh processes on the BBB are dying, they've been running for several days:- chris@beaglebone$ ps -ef | grep ssh root 968 1 0 May04 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd -D root 1262 1 0 May04 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/autossh/autossh -N -R 51234:localhost:22 -l chris cheddar.halon.org.uk root 1263 1 0 May04 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/autossh/autossh -N -R 51235:localhost:22 -l isbdnet3 shell.gridhost.co.uk root 1264 1 0 May04 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/autossh/autossh -N -R 51236:localhost:22 -l timetode shell.gridhost.co.uk root 3288 1264 0 11:13 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh -L 34227:127.0.0.1:34227 -R 34227:127.0.0.1:34228 -N -R 51236:localhost:22 -l timetode shell.gridhost.co.uk root 9614 1262 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh -L 34448:127.0.0.1:34448 -R 34448:127.0.0.1:34449 -N -R 51234:localhost:22 -l chris cheddar.halon.org.uk root 9727 968 3 18:20 ? 00:00:00 sshd: chris [priv] chris 9752 9727 0 18:20 ? 00:00:00 sshd: chris@pts/0 root 18064 1263 0 May08 ? 00:00:01 /usr/bin/ssh -L 61875:127.0.0.1:61875 -R 61875:127.0.0.1:61876 -N -R 51235:localhost:22 -l isbdnet3 shell.gridhost.co.uk So what could be making the tunnels work some of the time but not all of the time? -- Chris Green

2 2

Norwich
by Anthony Anson 07 May '14

07 May '14

Is there a meeting tomorrow? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

2 4

How is this - LAN - supposed to work?
by Chris Green 01 May '14

01 May '14

How is one supposed to use a LAN with a mixed collection of 'things' on it such that you can actually connect to them without simply guessing their addresses? I have just arrived on our boat in France where we have a TP-link WA5210 WiFi box connection to the local WiFi hotspot, on the 'local' side it uses 192.168.13.x. Then there's a standard domestic WiFi router whose WAN is 192.168.13.x hard-wired to the WA5210 that provides WiFi and wire ethernet within the boat. On the boat there's the following:- My Acer Aspire netbook Seimens C475IP 'gigiaset' VOIP phones A Beaglebone Black computer nmiontoring various things An Android tablet (or two) Sometimes an HP printer So it all works from the 'client' point of view in that I can use the iternet from my netbook, the phones work, my wife can read and send E-Mail from her tablet, etc. However it's a total disaster if I want to connect from one system to another. How am I suppsed to find the address of, for example, the Beaglebone Black? Why do routers seem to have forgotten the ability to register names when DHCP clients come along? OK, with just four or five systems I can just try them all but it's a bit crude and painful. Once you get to ten or more it's hopeless. It's why I run dnsmasq on a server on my LAN at home, all my systems (well, nearly all, one insists on being anonymous) have 'names', what an amazing concept! -- Chris Green

4 9

Re: [ALUG] Robolinux
by Phil Ashby 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

On 28/04/14 12:00, Chris Walker <alug_cdw(a)the-walker-household.co.uk> wrote: > I've just downloaded and installed a copy of Robolinux on a spare > desktop machine. It says that it's a replacement for Windows XP as it > will keep the Windows stuff secure without fear of a virus or malware. > > I paid a few dollars for the basic version as I thought I would be able > to configure the XP stuff myself. But it seems they want me to pay for > more of it first. > > But then the thought occurred to me that I might be able to do all this > stuff with VirtualBox anyway. This is the link to the info about the > secure bit - http://www.robolinux.org/stealth-vm-info/ > > There's a video on the site showing how a virus attacks the VM. What I > find more than a little annoying is that it says I can do this for free > and yet there's no way to get past the donation page. > > The question remains though. Is this special software or simply a > cunning bit of configuration of a virtual machine on the part of > Robolinux? > Interesting - not looked at Robolinux before. I fear making claims such as: "A Windows keylogger, virus or malware cannot attack a native Linux application." and "Windows Viruses and Malware do NOT attack Linux file systems." is just asking for trouble - I can hear the shouts of 'Challenge accepted!' already :-/ Many virii already detect VM environments and self-destruct to avoid the reverse engineering teams who study them, it's only a short step from there to breaking out of the VM via it's 'convenience features' such as drag/drop file transfer, guest-based tools, file shares and clipboard support to infect the host.. game over. Made easier with robolinux using the popular VirtualBox platform too. I've just spent half an hour trying to find their source code: given it's largely built on a GPL Debian base they are obliged to publish their code under GPL too - nothing found. So I've asked on their official support forum if they are open source or not - if they admit to not I'll shop 'em to gpl-violations.org, if they are, I'll ask for the code and notify gpl-violations.org anyway. Phil (in hacker/legal mode today!)

6 7

chromebook for linux - repost from correct address (sorry)
by mick 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

Hi guys I currently run mint on a couple of old Acer Aspire One ZG5 netbooks and have been considering getting a chromebook as an upgrade. The use case is travelling light, VPN back home, access to a browser and email, so nothing that will really stretch a laptop (but I /don't/ want an android tab for this). So I need light weight, long battery life, clear (but not necessarily large) screen, decent keyboard. Probably something like the 11.6" Samsung or the Acer C7xx series. But of course I don't want chromeOS so I want to install a linux distro (probably mint) but any distro with XFCE will do fine by me. Any experiences/recommendations out there? Any devices in particular that I should stay away from? Thanks in advance Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Emulating a parallel printer in Linux
by Mark Rogers 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

I have a potential customer with some industrial kit that currently prints to an obsolete parallel port (Centronics) printer. They need to keep the kit but ditch the printer, sending the data to a "black box" instead that logs that data. I'd like to do this on a Linux box, any suggestions? Off the top of my head I am thinking I'll need to do a parallel to serial conversion first, then pull the raw serial data into something that can interpret however the data is being encoded for printing. But it's turned out to be quite a hard thing to Google for (although I have found some bits that might be useful). Alternatively I wonder whether the I/O pins on a Pi or Beaglebone could be used to emulate a printer (although I might be way out of my depth there...) Another approach might be lptcap[1] although that's intended for DOS (FreeDOS??) [1] http://www.qi.fcen.uba.ar/materias/iqi/paralel1/home.clear.net.nz/pages/khe… -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

4 9

How to make a terminal window stay 'on top' automatically?
by Chris Green 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

I want to start a terminal window in "Always on top" mode, is there any way to do this? I can use wmctrl to set the 'above' option but it's a command line utility itself so as this is running from a detached script I'd have to fire up yet another terminal window to run wmctrl to set the option. I need a wmctrl that can run without a terminal! -- Chris Green

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