Got Somethin For Ya

A few things are coming up in the future, like the Linux telephony subject and the rep-from-the-wonderful Linux Journal BUT FIRST let's look at this Saturday's 2pm show at Hal-PC: remember about a year ago when I did the show about Linux security distros? The stars of that show were STD and Hakin9 Magazine's yearly-or-so live CD. Well, there's two others that deserve a look - and not H-9's latest one, either. Although the version I showed last time (3.0, I think) was a crowd pleaser due to offering the KDE desktop with all its goodies, the latest version (3.1.2) is too heavy to run on my antique Louis XIV laptop. And STD offers many tools not updated in some years, plus is a bit scruffy in appearance. And we can't have that. So we'll move on to two other examples.

And I won't tell you which ones they are until you see them. Nyah nyah nyah. It'll be hard to guess since there are so many of these things, and as is often the case with OSS (open source software) security projects, many of these distros are out of date and reside in a Sargasso Sea of broken links. But here's a little help.

Clue: the first one will be one that claims to be the most popular security package going (and there may be more than several that make this claim).

Clue: the second one will be heavy on tools of a... suspicious nature, so I'll demonstrate it without using it online. It apparently is written by a couple of white hat penetration testers, but just in case that's a cover story I'll airgap the thing. To use it online (risking a few auto-updates) would only rile up Allan at the other end of the hall. Besides, due to the date and time of the event (plus location) he'd immediately know it was me. All told, this second specimen is the slickest thing I've seen so far, has a compact desktop option AND the tools are pretty current.

A possible extra will be two attempts at using a particular tool (often included in security distros) to do some data recovery, one attempt of which is guaranteed to fail. I can't resist putting you through this since failure is often instructive. BE THEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Meeting, LAN thang and onward

Saturday's meeting concerned my look at the offerings of Linux Journal. The important thing to first note is that there's about a 35% lack of overlap in mag-vs-site material. There's considerable stuff unique to both publishing channels, so don't neglect either one. One thing you get on the website would be the video production known as the "Linux Minute", hosted by one of the editors. We played back the segment that IN ONE MINUTE demonstrated OpenSUSE's equivalent of what most of us do in the Debian world via apt-get, which would be several command line updating options, specifically Zypper. It's about as easy as apt-get and now allows me to avoid Yast or the Gnome updater, which use more memory than the machine I loaded Suse on can conveniently provide. Without another crash. My fault; I knew what I was doing when I loaded a modern OS onto a 9 year old computer. But now I can update faster and safer, thanks to Linux Minute via linuxjournal.com.

Playback would have been more elegant had I solved the screen resizing difficulty I often get with Hal-PC's equipment. Maybe I need to find the controls on my own (naturally) different desktop (we're dillitants in the club, constantly changing our machines in every way)...sp? Other things covered were our "favorite flag" command review feature, my common question of "does this job offer sound proper or are they scrambling to replace 4 or 5 walkouts?", and a pitch for membership and support for our venue organization, the venerable Hal-PC.

The LAN party was next and I got killed 313 times in Urban Terror, one of the games recently ported over which uses the Quake 3 engine. If my caffeinated excitement doesn't drive 'em away, this event should continue to pack 'em (or us) in for quite some time.

Up next on the roster of speakers will possibly be a certain Java programmer on internet telephony alternatives, a certain webmaster of a certain Linux magazine published locally, and possibly either Russell or me again on a subject to be concocted shortly.

Past And Future

Although my Mardi Gras parade prevented me from attending the paravirtualization show last Saturday, I have it on good authority that Mr. Lightsey provided a wonderful show. There's no way to prove it, however, since the video equipment wasn't present. However, it probably will be next time.

That will be Saturday Feb. the 28th at 2pm at the Hal-PC office and will feature me. Although contact has not yet been established with the Linux Journal staff to allow me to shanghai one of them for a presentation, I've gotta get something on soon regarding the stuff in their recent wonderful Security Issue (one back now). So I'll do it myself, covering at least six quite useful articles.

Plotting continues for the second Saturday in March, at which it is my wish that the programmer who knows about Linux Telephony will finally cave in (she's done such presentations for users' groups before, I'm told). And I understand that encryption issues will come up... always useful.

Didn't think I was gonna update, did ya?

SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY!! Mr. John Lightsey will present an overview of Xen Paravirtualization in Linux. I don't know what that means, but since HE DOES, come hear him Saturday, 2pm, Hal-PC HQ.

AND in two weeks I just might be able to deliver somebody who can do a program on Linux Telephony. Stay tuned.

I didn't make Tech Fest, but a glimpse at their website (linked below) will indicate what subjects their agenda covered. Looks to be more for the programmer than the admin.

Oh, yes - THE SUN BOX. Carlile must read my blog, since he thought it would be funny not to show up last night to the Wednesday lab meeting. So a few of us looked through man pages for likely commands and just as time ran out, we bumped into some promising dhcp stuff. So looks like I'm close to an answer...

AAAAAAND I made gaming night last Sat. and will probably make this Sat's night as soon as I'm released from another commitment. I was flayed, boiled, mangled and impaled. But I got a script into all the attackers and it flipped their language packs to Portugese JUST KIDDING.

Hello There HEY FIX MY SUN BOX

Although registered, I missed Tech Fest and will follow up with testimony from Jim or somebody else that kept that commitment. I did, however, make the convocation of Holtzmann's Helldemons as they Urban Terror'd and card game'd their way into the night. Way, way into the night. Gaming night is BACK.

Program note: I have been informed by my employer that no, I can't have Wednesday to bring my Blade 100 up to HAL so Carlile can fix the network settings (don't think it fails to route due to hardware problems since the local Solaris 10 version of ifconfig says stuff like "up and running". Also, this Solaris load takes note of open network connections at about the 5th line of the boot sequence (in this case having sensed "100mbps"). In the immortal words of John Belushi, BUUUUUUUUUUUT NoooooOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo. I have to work and won't make it until NEXT Wednesday.

Rumblings are rumbling about us assisting the area's AIX club (more details as they develop) and we may be able to get John Lightsey to present what he's discovered about Xen Linux paravirtualization and Katherine Druckman is looking strong for an upcoming (probably February) meeting to tell us about the wonderful Linux Journal operation (great mag; pick it up at Micro Center and other fine purveyors of magazines). Wish I'd made it to Linux Journal's meeting thing at a local coffee house (I think they do that monthly).

Next meeting is on Feb. 14th, and I'll be there PROBABLY. Perhaps late (that's the date for the first day parade of the Galveston Mardi Gras) but we'll see. And the speaker should be announced here within days.

Current Scene

As mentioned earlier:

Jan. 24th meeting IS CANCELED for UH Tech Fest (registration is needed but free).

Also, a speaking event on Linux Journal is in the works. Katherine Druckman is checking to see whether Feb. 14th or 28th would work better for her.

AND remember, if you're a Hal-PC member and are interested in Linux gaming, Allan Holtzmann runs Gaming Night every Saturday from 5pm to midnight. Bring your gear, a load of Unreal Tournament 2004 or/and Urban Terror (latest) and perhaps a large polo mallet for wall hackers.

And a very special Jan. 12th to you

Mr. Lewallen's talk on SANs was just peachy, detailing how his outfit now relies on some firmware-commanded storage, so as to take a bit of load away from any of the OS's concerned (one of the things I particularly liked). He also revisited his virtualization arrangement, viewing status through a Windows client (which in this case is practically identical to the VMware Linux client).

New info: my excuse to cancel the Jan. 24th HLUG meeting (Tech Fest) requires a free registration here:

Houston Tech Fest

Its major sponsors are small-time outfits like Oracle, Microsoft and Sun. It's not a job fair but a seminar series on the various emerging technologies sold by the various participants. The location is the UH Central campus and it's on the 24th of this month (pre-empting the traditional fourth Sunday meeting of our group). Jim Ward and myself will definitely be there, and no doubt many others.