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[Alug]Norwich meeting schedule.
by Syd Hancock 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

I would like to have regular sunday meetings in Norwich every two months, held regularly on the last weekend of the month (i.e. roughly mid-way between the mid-monthly evening meetings). 1. Syleham is planned for every third month so every six months there would be a possible overlap. But, provided we don't choose the same date, I suggest that it is worth trying out since the extra mileage means that for some people Syleham is just that bit too far south of Norwich and for others Norwich is a little too far north compared to Syleham. 2. Use of UEA facilities with bandwidth would be great if it could be arranged regularly and reliably. If not then a reasonable venue that happens is better than a great venue that doesn't. **If there is anyone on the list who is able to book a room at UEA please contact me.** Can people who work at UEA book rooms? As has been said before, you don't need to do anything except make the booking. No organising, no responsibility to take, nothing... unless you want to do more of course :-) Any comments on these suggestions? Syd

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[Alug]isdn card
by Syd Hancock 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

I've bought an ISDN pcmcia card (may be cardbus, not sure) to use with a Thinkpad T23 running mandrake 9.1. It is made by IBM and has the name "International ISDN PC card" printed on it. P/N is 09N3606 I (perhaps naively) assumed that it would be recognised as a serial port just like my pc-card analogue modem but it isn't. If I'm logged in to a console as root when I insert it then I get a message to the effect that it is an unsupported card, product info "ISDN", "CARD" followed by function: 6 (network) I've spent some time with google but am still not sure whether it is possible to use it with linux. Any and all help, advice or explanations suitable for a puzzled novice will be very welcome. TIA Syd

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[Alug]Bourne Grammar Open Day
by Ben Francis 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Bourne Grammar School in Lincolnshire will be holding a general 'Open Day' on 2nd October after school finishes for the day (I *really* hope that date is right ). I'm in the sixth form there and hopefully will be showing off my 'GNU/Linux Lab' on the day. Any luggers are more than welcome to attend to have a peep and make suggestions for future improvements. Please don't expect anything special as I'm new to Linux myself, it's basically 6 workstations running a hard disk install of Knoppix (main reason being ease of re-installing if someone breaks something) and a Debian web server, all low spec machines that are surpless to requirements elsewhere in the school. They're wired into the school's windows NT/2000 network and the 2 meg ADSL line. The workstations currently don't *do* much either as they've only been there since the beginning of term! It's nothing like the established system I've heard about at Skegness and *still* haven't been to see ;) I'd really appreciate the support, and if you do come up to the IT rooms and I start to try and explain Linux to you *please* stop me before I embarrass myself completely! I could do with some help convincing the Director of ICT that Linux in school is a good idea if I'm going to have a lasting effect before I leave :) Confirmation of date and a more specific time to follow. Many Thanks -- Ben "tola" Francis

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[Alug]ADSL and security
by Dan Beimborn 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > From: bsamuels(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk (Barry Samuels) > Subject: [Alug]ADSL and security > > My local telephone exchange is becoming broadband enabled at the end > of September and I am working on the assumption that I will be able to > use it (BT's site says I MAY). > > I have a firewall running (Endoshield - very easy to set up) and have > just changed it to Bastille which seems to be working (grc.com). > > Bastille recommends 'psad' which is also now installed. I had Snort > and Samhain installed but do I need these? > > Do I need Packet Mangling enabled in the Kernel which it isn't at > present? Oo, lucky you. There are a couple ways to manage it. Are you planning a separate firewall machine eg adsl -- firwall -- desktops, servers ? If so, the short version of your design goal is to turn off everything on the firewall except reply packets, then forward ports from the outside to the inside only for what you need. Example: firewall has a "real" IP of 1.1.1.1, and an "inside" IP of 10.1.1.1 You sould make your gateway 10.1.1.1 on the machines inside the firewall, and set the firewall up to NAT packets from the lan to the outside. if you have a web server that you want to host at 1.1.1.1 port 80, you would port forward 1.1.1.1 port 80 to 10.1.1.2 port 80, for example. If you are just surfing the web, reading email, and not running any servers, that's dead easy. You can even just ensure that a single desktop machine isn't running any unwanted services and run without a firewall. The best ways to check what ports you have open are the following: nmap localhost (this portscans yourself) lsof -i (this lists any open TCP/IP ports) chkconfig --list | grep :on (this shows what daemons are running on many linux distros) you can also man iptables to see the built-in firewall commands.. iptables -nvL will list any firewall rules in place packet mangling is really only necessary if you want to create some fancy custom rules to allow stateful protocols through, to do complex packet tracking, or other stuff outside the realm of a normal home firewall. If you would like more detail on any of those options, or some sample iptables rule pop up another message and I'm sure that many of us will be able to help! DB

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[Alug]Ford switches to Linux
by Nick Daniels 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

FORD is joining the ranks of governments and local authorities across the world that have switched from Microsoft software to the free open-source alternative Linux. The car giant will run its sales operations, human resources, customer relations management and the rest of its infrastructure operations on the upstart technology. Until now, defectors to Linux have largely been national governments such as China and local authorities in countries like Germany concerned that Microsoft’s Windows operating systems represented a security risk by not allowing them to inspect the source code, the systems’ software foundations, for weaknesses. * Business software applications can now run as easily on Linux as on Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.* Maybe this should be sent to Norwich Council? Regards Nick

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[Alug]RE: EDP
by Ben Norcutt 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

With reference to the story I can throw some light being a network manager in a high school. I too wondered why they said the BB connected schools weren't affected as that is where it hit first and some are still infected. Let me just take a look at my ids logs hmm at least 22 still trying to attack me. Cheers, Ben

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[Alug]Alug evening meet last thursday
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Six people met at the Forum - Graham, Mark, Jonathan, Tarquin, Syd and a new comer Robert who heard about the meet via the website. We talked a lot about wi-fi, mini-itx, driveless servers based on compact flash - and various pssible combinations of these technologies - and probably lots of other things that I've now forgotten. An enjoyable evening. Next evening meet will be on the second thursday in October - i.e. the 9th Syd

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Re: [Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

On Monday, Sep 15, 2003, at 18:25 Europe/London, Ian Bell wrote: > On Monday 15 Sep 2003 9:45 am, Craig wrote: >> Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? >> >> How.. er.. amusing. >> > Two bits particularly caught my attention. First that despite their > best > efforts they could not get rid of it, and second that their broadband > connections seemd unaffected (why??). Why they failed to get rid of it is a mystery. Seems that they don't employ active directory? I don't like it when they say 'computer expert'... just really annoying... C

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[Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? How.. er.. amusing. C

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[Alug]Norfolk County Council response (fwd)
by Tarquin Mills 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

---------- Begin forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:56:38 +0100 Subject: Norfolk County Council response Briefing note in response to questions raised by Mr. Tarquin Mills on NCC use of free operating system software. How much do we spend on Microsoft Software? As NCC has over 6,000 PC's and a wide range of servers we would need to undertake some further research into the number of MSOffice, Project, Publisher, Visio and Windows Server licences we currently have in order to give a comprehensive answer. As there has not been any significant growth in the number of PC's and servers then the number of new licences would not be great but there would be the costs of upgrades to existing licences as well as the annual maintenance costs to consider. All our new PCs come with Windows installed and therefore it is difficult to identify the actual cost for the operating system software element. Initial discussions with PC suppliers indicate there is unlikely to be any discount in buying PCs without the Windows operating system. Quantifying these costs will therefore be difficult. NCC in conjunction with other local authorities has negotiated various commercial arrangements with suppliers in order to ensure that its procurement of software achieves value for money. Some of these arrangements may be confidential and therefore it may be difficult to provide more than summary information. Is the Authority trailing free Operating Systems? Whilst 'Linux' is an excellent operating system and would be a cost-effective choice for many organisations, there are significant reasons why Norfolk County Council is not considering its use at the moment: We have a huge range of applications, many of which are specifically designed to run on Windows desktops or servers. Many of our applications will simply not run on Linux so it's not just a question of replacing the operating system. We would have to evaluate all of our systems to identify which are and aren't compatible with Linux. Those that aren't will have to be rewritten or replaced. This will be a very time consuming and costly process and it would probably take many years to get a return on our investment. It will also divert resources away from other projects and impact on the day-to-day running of services as both users and support staff are trained and have to become familiar with the new systems. The risks associated with such a migration will be very high. Many of our applications help meet statutory obligations or support critical services. Since the change of operating system will impact on a large number of applications, it follows that many of the Authority's key services could also be affected. Although the Linux user-base is growing, there are a limited number of companies doing application development for the operating system. Moving to Linux now will reduce the number of software suppliers available when procuring new system. This would be particularly acute in the already specialised Local Government area. Gartner (an independent ICT research company) have recently (June 2003) conducted some research into the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the Windows v Linux desktop. These vary from a saving of £400 per user/year to an increase of £100 per user/year depending on the version of windows and the application software. These calculations did not include any of the migration costs which for a enterprise like NCC would be considerable nor the cost of dealing with document compatibility issues when trying to share documents with other users running Microsoft Office. Supported versions of Linux are not free and it would not be feasible for NCC to rely on the open-source community for support in the delivery of its business critical systems. NCC is continually looking at ways of reducing its costs and believes that bigger gains can be had from deploying desktop management tools more effectively and implementing new processes rather than migrating to a new operating system. NCC has recently worked with Gartner on developing its Technical Architecture Strategy and this included a review of its operating system and software standards. The outcome of this review was a recommendation that our strategic direction should be Microsoft. Ann Carey e-service directorate =============================== One of the reasons give above points to illegal activities by M$. -- Tarquin Mills RUNG (RISC OS Users, Norfolk Group)

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