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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th January.
by Viperfang 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

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

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How to set system date/time automatically at power up, no CMOS clock
by Chris Green 15 Dec '16

15 Dec '16

I have a BeagleBone Black system which monitors things on a boat. When it powers up the time is basically random, there's no CMOS clock to give it a start. Thus I need a way to get it to about the right time and date for ntpd to take over and keep it correct. What's the normal way of doing this? It needs to be automatically run at startup. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 138, Issue 3
by Christopher Dawkins 15 Dec '16

15 Dec '16

>> 1. Re: Building an (air gapped) offline Linux laptop as a >> newbie to Linux (mick) > What is your threat model? A question I wonder too, but welcome to the Unix world. If you have been previously on Windows I suppose you would be worried about security, but I'd suggest you stop worrying now. Unless you are in a public position and disliked by many, such as being Donald Trump, since almost any networked system can be breached by a skilled and determined opponent. If the threat to you is such that you need an airgapped machine then I wonder how you plan to protect the machine itself, as apart from some special products (iPhones?) it's usually possible to get inside a machine if you can get it to your laboratory bench. So the important questions are not software ones, they are: Do you live in a bunker or in a house? How many security men do you have guarding this bunker or house? How many steel or six-foot-concrete walls are there between you and the outside? If you have glass windows, is the glass toughened and more than several inches thick? Do you ever leave the house with the machine inside and not guarded by a small army? Would you ever carry the machine outside without a military guard? Do you search and scan all your visitors? Will your machine have internal explosives wired to all the case screws? If you don't apply the measures suggested by the questions above, the airgap could prove to be of no use, so much so that it's not worth bothering about. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DU cchd(a)pjcd.org 07816 821659 01371 821076

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Building an (air gapped) offline Linux laptop as a newbie to Linux
by Ian Henderson 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

Hi, all, I am new to Linux. I'm porting over to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the Unity desktop from Windows 10. I want to keep things as simple (and hopefully therefore as reliable) as possible, for home/office critical use. I also want to stick to the main and universe repositories. Because prices were much lower for Linux-compatible laptops than with Win 10 installed, I can afford two. I plan to divide them into one for critical offline-only use, and the other for universal online use. I will air-gap the two. But it also means that I need to complete the final build of the offline air-gapped laptop ahead of porting data, after which it will not go online again (unless for a wipe and rebuild). For the offline-only laptop, I am looking at the following range of apps. Could I ask that you check my ideas, and offer suggestions and advice, please.:- 1) An office-like suite, for which I will be using LibreOffice, which is installed by default. 2) I need a whole-directory and free space overwriting utility, as well as the means to securely delete individual files. My understanding is that shred and wipe are available by default. I am looking at bleachbit for the whole-directory and free space wiping. But the software centre says "sudo" for this app: does that mean it has elevated privileges and is this a bad idea? 3) GtkHash for SHA256 etc. cryptographic hashes, primarily to verify backups. 4) Can anyone suggest an archiving utility which also verifies the files within the archive (I can then hash the archive file backup)? Archiving does not necessarily have to include compression. Are any installed by default? 5) GnuPG. I understand that this is installed by default? Am I correct that I can encrypt with password files if transferring on FAT32 USB or CD/DVD with this? Is it GUI? 6) CD/DVD burning, including both copying using a single optical drive, ordinary file burning and creating bootable CD/DVD from ISO images. I'm looking at Brasero for this. Can anyone suggest any other apps I should include ahead of locking off the build? I'm also assuming that the default 16.04 LTS supports formatting USB sticks to ext4, including encryption? Also, anyone any thoughts on using live-CD version of Ubuntu for online banking (in case the online unit got owned)? Please remember that I am a complete newbie to Linux. So please remember if you start talking about OpenWTF 0.666.1066 I will have no idea what you're talking about! Not for some months yet, anyway. :) Thanks for your help, Ian (C) Copyright 2016 by Ian Henderson. All rights reserved. Do not pass on my email address without my prior written consent (if emailing multiple recipients at the same time, use the BCC field in place of the To field).

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mail failures
by Nev Young 07 Dec '16

07 Dec '16

Hi, Can any one offer advice about a problem I've been having with email for a few months now? I suspect it has something to do with increased security at host mx4.hotmail.com but I can not confirm this. The problem (in brief) I host a number of websites. Each of these has a "contacts" page where any one may send an email. The page contains the following fields: 1 a drop down box to select the recipient (e.g. secretary, chair, treasurer, events co-ordinator, etc.) 2 a text field for the sender's own email address 3 a free text field. This prevents the sender knowing the email address of the recipient and sends an email with: To: = the recipients real email address From: = the sender's own email address Subject: = "website contact" and the body containing the free text stripped of any HTML. All of the above works fine for all sender addresses and recipient addresses *except* when the sender is <sender>@yahoo.co.uk and the recipient is <recipient>@live.co.uk which results in a failed to deliver message which contains: A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: <recipient>@live.co.uk SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host mx4.hotmail.com [65.55.37.120]: 550 5.7.0 (COL004-MC4F7) Unfortunately, messages from (212.23.1.5) on behalf of (yahoo.co.uk) could not be delivered due to domain owner policy restrictions. ------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------ Meanwhile a copy of the email sent at the same time to me as site administrator works fine and is delivered. 65.55.37.120 is microsoft 212.23.1.5 is Zen internet (my isp). obviously <sender> and <recipient> have replaced real email names. Any ideas what I need to change to make hotmail accept these emails again. Or do I just have to wait it out? Nev

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th December
by Viperfang 05 Dec '16

05 Dec '16

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th December at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 2nd December.
by Viperfang 29 Nov '16

29 Nov '16

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

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Wanted - Audio player which works sensibly
by Chris Green 25 Nov '16

25 Nov '16

I have a large number of audio tracks on my computer[s] which I woiuld like to play occasionally. When at home I stream them from my desktop machine and that works *moderately* well with an Onkyo media centre and also using VLC for Android in streaming mode. However I can't find anything that simply allows me to select and play tracks (a directory at a time) directly on a laptop. I need to do this when using my laptop away from home and disconnected from the world. So, can anyone recommend a media (just audio is all I need) player which can do the following:- Navigate a hierarchy of directories containing a mix of MPG and FLAC files. Play individual files. Play the contents of a directory *once* only by default in a sensible order (classical music sounds a bit silly if you play the movements in the wrong order!). VLC is strangely almost totally useless playinmg from disk on Linux, quite unlike streaming on Android. Parole doesn't seem to be able to play a directory of sound files, at least I couldn't see how to do it. -- Chris Green

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Server permissions issue
by Chris Walker 24 Nov '16

24 Nov '16

Hello, Having built myself a Ubuntu server on an HP Proliant box, I've had it downloading iPlayer files without a problem using a cron job. I now want to add an image to the mp3 files and I do that using a script from this machine. Here's the full error :- Writing ID3 version v2.3 [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'/media/ProLiant/Media_Share/iPlayer_downloads/radio/Im_Sorry_I_Havent_A_Clue_Series_66_-_2._Episode_2.mp3' My interpretation of that is that it's caused by ID3. So (a) is it?, (b) why? With the final one (c) what can I do about it? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] Digital Ocean
by Jonathan McDowell 21 Nov '16

21 Nov '16

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 09:57:01PM +0000, Mick wrote: > Now Tor operators tend to be a suspicious, sometimes paranoid, bunch, > but given that DO now has a substantial proportion of the Tor network > on its ASs that suspicion may, just may, be justified. I still use DO > because I get huge bandwidth for bugger all money (15 dollars a month, > compared to the 12 quid I (happily) pay Bytemark for my > mail/webserver). But I would not, and do not, use DO for anything I > care about in personal terms (such as mail, or XMPP messaging). I've got a single VM with DO that handles my parents' email (so running exim/dovecot/roundcube and little else). Not had any issues with them (and in terms of the traffic stuff you mentioned and I snipped I suspect that people like me hardly using their allowance are averaging out with people like you using a lot. Bandwidth in well connected datacentres has got scarily cheap). Like you my personal stuff (such as the machine which hosts this list) is with Bytemark. > Most importantly from my (admittedly somewhat paranoid viewpoint) the > VM allows me to choose my own kernel to go with the OS of my choice. > DO don't do that. You get to "choose" one of their kernels underneath > your installed OS. This has changed; when I started I was limited to the DO provided kernels, but my Debian VM with them is now using Debian provided kernels I installed - they've got a "grub" option in the web interface now which then boots a kernel from the VM image. J. -- Revd Jonathan McDowell, ULC | You want me, but it scares you.

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