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Why always public-key encryption algorithms?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 23 May '06

23 May '06

Why is it that *everything* uses some sort of public-key encryption algorithm for storing sensitive data? It's stupid! OK, it's brilliantly useful for sending data across the internet and so on but for storing one's own sensitive data it is entirely pointless as far as I can see. For example if I want to store a file with some sensitive data in it and only only want to be able to decrypt it myself then surely anything *but* a public key encryption algorithm makes sense. Essentially a public key algorithm means that there is always a brute force way of getting at the data, it may take more computing power/time than is available but it is in principle possible. Other ways of encrypting can be made essentially uncrackable if you want. Are there any encryption experts here who can persuade me that I'm being silly? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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USB On Old Laptop
by Simon Royal 23 May '06

23 May '06

Hi I have an old laptop with no USB, a ThinkPad 380ED which has 16bit PCMCIA slots. Can anyone suggest where I would get a USB PCMCIA card from? I have searched eBay but even the great online garage sale failed to return anything. It doesn't have to be USB 2 a simple USB 1.1 card would do but all they have is cardbus cards. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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For Sale
by Wayne Stallwood 23 May '06

23 May '06

As previously mentioned I have upgraded my home server and the old one is looking for a new home if anyone is interested. It's a converted Gigabyte NAS box. Originally it was a Linux based appliance server that offered basic filesharing, print, firewall and mail services. It's a very nicely built little unit, a tiny tower measuring about 400x300x90mm. Quiet enough to sit in the corner of a room without causing much annoyance (it is a LOT quieter than my new 1U rack server) Many moons ago it was de-commissioned at one of my clients due to hard drive failure (the original OS was lost as part of that failure) I fitted a 120GB hdd and installed Ubuntu Server. It has served me very well ever since. In fact the main reason I retired it was that I couldn't find a half height PCI line card (the only type that will fit) that would play nicely with Asterisk. It has a PIII 866 Mhz CPU 128MB of RAM (standard dimm slots, one free) 2 NIC's (so it could make a nice firewall if nothing else) 1 PCI Modem 120GB HDD (with space for another) It also has a little LCD on the front that shows POST status during startup. This was originally also controlled by the OS and showed running status as well. It is plugged into a PCI card (more on that in a mo) on what I think *may* be a parallel port. However I have never managed to get lcdproc to drive it (and can't for the moment even remember what chipset the LCD is) so at the moment it shows the post bits and then stops at "Starting operating system....." at which point the OS driver should be taking over. A brave new owner can have another go or take one of my spare hd44780 displays to try and replace it. The PCI card also has a socket for a "disk on chip" I still have the 8MB part that was in there, however this contains the bootloader for the original OS and was interfering with the Ubuntu boot so I removed it. The only slight complication is that it is a headless unit (no VGA and no PS/2 keyboard socket) When I originally set it up I got around this by taking it apart and plugging in a PCI graphics card and a USB keyboard on an internal USB header. Alternatives would be to perform a minimal installation with the drive in another machine. With this in mind I would install the new owners OS of choice and set it up for their network prior to handing it over. I am told that the Debian installer will default to ttys0 if there is no local graphics, which would make life a little easier (it has a serial port on the back panel) £80

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Secure web access to password protected data - suggestions?
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 22 May '06

22 May '06

I'm after setting up a small amount of 'secure' data on my web server that I can access and, preferably, modify via the internet using a browser. I.e. I basically want a web page (or a hierarchy of web pages) whose content is password protected. The ideal sort of interface would be a Wiki sort of approach - I think. Is there anything out there that can do this sort of thing? There are a number of PHP based password storage utilities but these are rather restictive of the format in which you can store data, I'd much prefer to be able to store free format text. There are two basic approaches as well:- Use client side decryption (i.e. Javascript or Java) so that only the encrypted data is sent over the internet. For me it wouldn't even be necessary to send the decryption code with the pages as I'm quite happy to install that on the two or three systems where I want to be able to view and modify the data. This approach has the advantage of not requiring an encrypted (https:) web server. User server side encrypt/decrypt and an https: server. This requires more effort to set up apache to do https: but I suspect is rather easier to do the actual encrypting and decrypting. In fact, given that the 'source' code lives on a fairly secure machine at home how vulnerable would the data be if it was just in a password protected Wiki? (i.e. the data itself isn't encrypted) Any and all ideas welcome. (well, except writing it down on a piece of paper and carrying that around with me) -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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SysAdmin position
by James Green 22 May '06

22 May '06

Hi, If anyone's looking for a sys-admin position and has relevant experience, you might like to submit your CV to employment(a)stealthnet.net Job involves administering various Debian installations including production web, database and mail servers. Also involved with be a certain amount of looking after our "admin" network in Gorleston including Windows XP workstations. Although the successful candidate will find a Mac Mini on their desk should they want to use it :) We're ideally looking for 4 years experience, but 2+ will be considered. You will also be expected to take part in on-call rotas. Desirable experience: MySQL Replication Exim4 / Cyrus Bind9 PHP/Perl Windows administration CVs to: employment(a)stealthnet.net P.S. Don't look at www.stealthnet.net and believe it all - it hasn't been updated in years. Complete new version in beta! Kind regards, James Green

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RE: [alug social] Re: [ALUG] Fwd: First ALUG competition of 2006
by Keith Watson 22 May '06

22 May '06

> From: sfr Sent: 21 May 2006 12:14 > > On 20/05/06, Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote: > > On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 10:07:14PM +0100, Paul > <lists(a)bulldoghome.com> wrote: > > > > > Guess Brett wants to keep the prizes all for himself... > > > > Have we ever worked out what they are yet? > > yes.. well... > > first prize is LOTS of Kudos, international fame, and a certificate. > and something else ... an early release copy of Windows Vista > > second prize is some kudos, slightly less fame, and er... > something else. > ... TWO early release copies of Windows Vista > hang on a minute, I'll look in the charity-shop box. > > -- > eli alternatively... 1st prize - the opportunity to supply Brett with pints of beer for a whole night 2nd prize - ditto (but followed but a chinese/indian take away of Brett's choice) 3rd prize - you don't want to know about the 3rd prize Regards, Keith ____________ Even before I can say it, it is no more. - Sengai

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 22 May '06

22 May '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! 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 xchat, irssi 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://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Apple Front Row
by David Noble 21 May '06

21 May '06

Hi All At boarding school, I decided to get a Mac Mini as a 'Media PC', to be able to play films through the projector. (The advantages of the Mac Mini being that it is supposedly fast enough for the job, quiet and small, and with a relatively bombproof operating system. Also, the video input quality on the projector is poor at best, and it is only worth using the RGB input on it.) However, the new Intel (core solo) chip is a pile of rubbish (compiles slower than my 3 year old AMD), and much to the amusement of my friends crashes when a DVD is paused in Front Row for over 5 minutes. I do not know why it does this, but I certainly wish Apple never changed to Intel. It was definitely a step backwards from a modern chip (PowerPC) to one that has had extensions bodged onto it (Intel 8086) over the past 20 years since the Intel 8086. (on my PowerBook G4, I have never had problems with DVDs freezing). I'd put up with it if it was open source, but being a commercial product, and still crashing /after/ a major system update (downloaded and installed all the patches today), but being a system that has cost a lot of money, I'd at least expect it to be able to pause a DVD without crashing. I want to see if Linux can be installed on it, and use that and Kaffeine or Xine just to play back DVDs. I warn anyone who wishes to rely on FrontRow. At least on the Intel series. Regards Dave

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Network drives for Linux
by chrisisbd＠leary.csoft.net 21 May '06

21 May '06

Does anyone have any experience of using a network drive with Linux? Nearly all the reasonably priced ones I have seen advertised tell you all about how they appear as a 'local drive' on Windows systems but give no clue as to how/whether they will work with Linux. One actually appears to be running Samba but that still isn't ideal for Linux. While I'm asking, if I press an old system into service with a basic Linux OS installed on it how can I network its drives? Can one just mount drives across the local network or does one *have* to run something like NFS or Samba? -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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Linux box
by Bob Dove 21 May '06

21 May '06

Hi Guys (and of course Ladies), I'm surprised by the relatively low spec some of you guys are running Linux on. I've got a Celeron powered box with 96mB RAM (Win98/2 word processing box) - I'll have a play and see what happens. Any of you tinkerers connected a 'doze and Linux box via KVM for quick change one to 'tother? Incidentally, I'm also surprised at the low regard for OOo - which is my main office in 'doze (I perforce have to have Bill's office installed 'cos most people seem to use it.) I would say that within my immediate circle - I'm the only non MS user. Can't understand why people spend so much on MS when there is so much good open source stuff out there? Perhaps I'll give AbiWord another go - the last time I tried it it was a pain - especially the blo**y US spell check (US as in RAF tech parlance as well as the place across the pond). Cheers, BD.

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