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Weekly IRC meeting reminder
by Adam Bower 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

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. Popular irc clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and ircII on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.bitchx.com http://www.xchat.org http://freshmeat.net http://www.epicsol.org/ (for Brett!) Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Next Meet :
by Earl Brannigan 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

Hi all, well apart from the fact that the next meet date is yet to be arranged I thought I'd get into this with a public apolology. Sorry to everyone who wanted a security thingy for the last meet, I had a little family prob come up which took me to the Midlands on that day. No time (or memory) to notify you all. Anyways : > David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> wrote : > Yes Mr newman, I wanted to chat to you about the wearables, I here you > did some demos for Lonix of your wearables stuff, which means you are > pencilled in for the next meet to do a wearables demo. Also While on > the subject, Earl your doing a security demo. Out of interest for input > devices what is there for a wearable? I quite like my split keyboard, > could I some how still use a qwerty keyboard with a wearable? > Looks like Dave is grabbing the bull by the horns here and kicking us LUGGITES into line. So OK. Act of God permitting I will do an overview/demo at the next meet. This will be the format (assuming no-one else wants to get involved and up things a little) 1)TCP/IP as an inherently insecure protocol. 2)DOS : Why RFC compliant TCP/IP implementations leave your machine open to Denial Of Service. This will be the standard DOS, hopefully with a demo. Though I will nedd to run an older implementation of Linux to show this so unless I can get it right (or eeeeeeeek! use a windoze box) then it will have to be theory only. 3)Buffer Overflows : a)If its binary you can send it and get the remote machine to execute it. Demo1-Local : A simple bufer overflow program which yields a shell. Demo2-Remote : wu_ftp : A classic buffer overflow yielding a root shell. 4)Once compromised its easy to get back in : Standard things that are done to make sure you can get back in (Backdoors) Someone or other may wish to have 2 penneth, esp. if you have any info on current backdoors, other B.O.s (I'm currently looking at Adore) I would be glad to share the load. I will not be touching on firewalling/NIDS either, I'm sure there are other ALUGites who could do this better. Feedback, thoughts, comments, suggestions, offers of cash or other involvement..... you have my email address. Cheers Earl

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Help with Mulinux please
by Ruleng＠aol.com 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

Hello Steve and others, First I must say that there appears to have developed > some peripheral discussion, under the heading of my original request for > help, that I do not understand, and so I cannot respond to. > I forgot to mention in my original note that I have 16Mb RAM. I became > curious about Unix when I bought a "C/Utilities Toolchest" from MIX software > many years ago. This contains quite a lot of commands that emulate those > found in Unix, such as: cat, chmod, cp, cpio, etc. but run under DOS. A > script was included called "Words" that listed, in four columns, > alphabetically, all the words that occurred in a text file, and the number of > occurrences of each. > It worked well on relatively small files, but when I tried to apply it to the > KIng James Bible I ran out of memory. I wondered if an OS that provided > multi-threading would solve the problem. Does it? And so I began to look at > Unix/Linux. I looked at small distributions because of my hardware > limitations, and muLinux seemed the most attractive. It seems to be kept very > much up-to-date; it uses only from 1-12 1722Kb floppies, ( I do not have a > CDROM drive, but I do have a 5 1/4 in. fdd!), and it can be run from my DOS > hdd. Its originators describe it thus: > 'MuLinux is a full configured minimalistic but mostly complete > application- > centric Linux distribution fitted on a single 1722 Kb floppy with many > pluggable add-ons. Main goals: Linux proselitism, rescue. > Using the only SRV additional disk muLinux transforms in a little NT, > acting also as a Samba file server, print server and WWW gateway, fax server, > cd-rom server, mp3 remote player, combust server , and can be configured and > controlled enterely via browser, using the builtin VGI RCP server the rustic > ("Remote Control Panel").' [All sic] > This seemed quite attractive considering that there were 10 more floppy > add-ons, all close to a downloadable 1.7 Mb, and that a free distribution of > "Storm Linux" with LINUX FORMAT required a pentium processor, 32, preferably > 64, Mb RAM, 300 Mb minimum, 1Gb or more recommended, of hdd space, and a > CD-ROM. > My stumbling block remains as the downloading of the addons to my DOS > hdd, and the conversion of the files onto muLinux-acceptable floppies. I am > up in King's Lynn. Perhaps I should try to get to a meeting! > I have read that when sending notes to groups like alug one should be > brief and concise. I am sorry if I have not done that. > Regards, Norman

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Re: [Alug] Small question
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Andrew J Glover <flexifoil(a)btinternet.com> writes: > Well, it IS a screenshot, I dont think pixel perfect matters much :) That reminds me. http://markj.towers.org.uk/comp/ss.png and it's broken in netscape ;-) -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Curious
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Andrew Savory <a.savory(a)btinternet.com> writes: > Heh. I just punt everything through my stereo. I don't think it does my > ears a favour though (or my neighbours, come to think of it). If your soundcard is producing substandard output, surely this just gets you a better rendition of it, not any better quality signal? -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Small question
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Andrew J Glover <flexifoil(a)btinternet.com> writes: > import -window root some.jpg png for screenshots, surely? Depends if you have a photo-like backdrop, I guess. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] What have I done wrong now!
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

John Seago <john.seago(a)btinternet.com> writes: > Error Message Unknown Host mail.btinternet.com. > > As it is sending and receiving through btinternet why is it an unknown host? Is that exactly what you've typed and definitely the right host to use? "unknown host" indicates exactly that... it can't find the host you've give it. If it's really right, maybe your ISP is at fault. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Small question
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Steve Kuo <drakioned(a)yahoo.co.uk> writes: > Anyone know how I'd go about taking a screenshot? Not > in KDE or anything, just plain bash Lots of ways. GIMP has a "Screenshot" menu entry, for example. -- MJR

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Curious
by MJ Ray 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Well, I was getting some nasty errors on my CDROM recently while trying to play a CD that I knew worked before. XMMS just hung there, while xconsole showed errors about "SeekComplete DriveReady Error". So I rebuilt my kernel with only the drivers I actually use (removing the swsusp patch that makes my machine panic if I try to use it) and that didn't work. I installed ALSA (which debian have now got quite a nice build process for now, I think, although I hacked it about a little bit). The sound quality is absolutely loads better, but it still hung on the "bad" files. I searched around the net a bit, confident that my system was fairly neat and tidy now. Someone mentioned that they see that error when the CD is scratched. I took the CD out, polished it with the "Magic Cloth" I use on my glasses (3 pounds or so from Boots Opticians) and now it works. Ooops. -- MJR

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What have I done wrong now!
by John Seago 08 Jul '01

08 Jul '01

Having had problems with setting up Balsa, I used another user name to set up the KDE mail client, and whilst it will send and receive, It shows me the Error Message Unknown Host mail.btinternet.com. As it is sending and receiving through btinternet why is it an unknown host? John Seago

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