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30.07.10: Stephan Hermann: Re: Red Hat, Canonical and GNOME contributions
Jono,

forgetting the "yadayada" about contributions of companies to the gnome project, I think it is the first time in one of your many blog posts, that you declared "Ubuntu, our primary product is a GNOME desktop..."

I think we have now more trouble coming up:

1. Ubuntu is a Product of Canonical (which is for me one of the points I'm using Ubuntu in a commercial environment, but feeds other trolls)
2. GNOME is and will be more pushed then other desktop environments inside the Canonical/Ubuntu universe by the product owner. (if this is being read as I interpretated it right now, there will be many people who are really going to be p*ssed)

I smell a follow up ;)

Have a nice weekend,

\sh

30.07.10: Martin Owens: Plus One Gnome Insightful

About Canonical’s contributions in the Gnome project…

Dylan McCall said:

This whole thing is really putting forwards an issue Gnome has right now: they can’t, as a community, decide whether they like the idea of external projects building new environments on the Gnome platform. (Case in point: Meego for netbooks).

I think there’s one camp that thinks Gnome should be a user-facing product, with its own special branding and its own distinctive look that everything ships in pristine condition. (I’ll inject my opinion in brackets here: I think that entirely defeats the purpose of having multiple distributions).

Then there’s another camp that sees Gnome as a starting point with lots of handy tools (and common modules) for distributions to build operating systems. For example, Unity, Meego, Jolicloud, UNR…

That first camp sees Gnome as a monolithic project; only internal work is worthy. The latter camp sees Gnome as something akin to Gnu.

Sorry for posting the whole thing, but I thought this comment needed to be made more widely.

30.07.10: Collin Pruitt: Linux IRC Clients/Bots – List, Reviews

IRC Background Information

For those of you that don’t know what the IRC protocol is: IRC stands for Interent Relay Chat. It was one of the first true real-time channel-based chatting solutions, and it’s the oldest still in regular use. IRC can trace it’s roots back to the late 80s to the old-style Bulletin Board Systems in common use at the time. The original IRC network (EFnet, which stands for Eris-Free Network) allowed anyone to link a server, which was quickly abused and eventually disabled. Afterwards, EFnet split into two halves over a disagreement about timestamping: The US side of EFnet remained EFnet, while the Europe/Asia side became IRCnet. This event is commonly referred to as “The Great Split“.

Later on, networks such as EFnet became known for their large amounts of script kiddies and channel takeovers were (and still are) common. DALnet is best known as the network that pioneered network services. DALnet also became known as a network with large amounts of netsplits.

Today, IRC isn’t anywhere near it’s former glory, but it’s still in active use. The current biggest IRC network, by users served, is QuakeNet. freenode – a network dedicated to FOSS, ranks fourth in users served and is the one that I frequent the most, as the majority of the Ubuntu channels are located on that network (my source for network usage statistics is the following web page: http://searchirc.com/largest-irc-networks).

Aside from network services, not very much of significance has changed since “The Great Split”.

My experience with IRC has ranged from a simple user to administering IRC servers and networks. In that time, I’ve learned quite a bit about the protocol itself and the wide range of people that use IRC. I’ve also learned to never be too hard on the IRC operators, since their job is a very difficult one .

Clients

GUI-based

• Name: XChat
• Description: GTK+ Linux/Windows IRC client with support for scripting in Perl and Python
• Review: XChat is my all-time favorite of GUI IRC clients. It’s powerful while not being incredibly hard to use. It’s support for scripting in Perl and Python makes creating a script for it a breeze. If you’re not a programmer, there are several pre-made scripts out there that add varying functionality to the client.

• Name: Smuxi
• Description: Client/Server modeled GTK IRC client
• Review: If I had to choose a second client to be my favorite GUI client, it would be Smuxi. Smuxi is relatively new on the scene, and, as such, it’s not as featureful (it doesn’t have support for SSL or IPv6, although it’s planned) or polished (not as user-friendly) as other clients out there. Even so, it gets the job done and it gets it done well. I like it’s simplicity and how it’s to-the-point. Even though it has a client/server model similar to Quassel, it can also function as a client on it’s own. I see lots of potential in this project, so keep an eye on it.

• Name: LostIRC
• Description: Simple GTK IRC client
• Review: LostIRC, from what I can tell, hasn’t been in active development since 2008. Even so, it’s still a nice client. It has a retro-looking interface (white text on black background), and is light on resources. Good if you want a no-frills and easy to use client.

• Name: KVIrc
• Description:  Powerful IRC client for KDE users
• Review: KVIrc is one of the most powerful GUI-based IRC clients in current existence. It’s the analogy of mIRC on Windows.

• Name: Konversation
• Description: Easy to use QT-based IRC client
• Review: Konversation is a client for the beginner. It’s very easy to use, although not very scriptable. It’s the default IRC client on many major distributions of Linux.

• Name: Quassel
• Description: Client/Server model-modeled QT4-based IRC client
• Review: Quassel is an excellent choice if you don’t want to run a full-blown IRC bouncer but want to be able to close your desktop client and keep your nick connected to IRC.

• Name: Pidgin
• Description: Multi-platform and multi-protocol chat client based off libpurple
• Review: Although Pidgin isn’t explicitly an IRC client as it supports quite a few other protocols than IRC, it’s also an excellent choice for the beginner. Support for IRC is pretty good, and the entire application supports scripting in Perl, Python, C#, and Tcl. It’s a good option if you don’t want to run a dedicated IRC client.

• Name: Empathy
• Description: Multi-protocol chat client with good integration into the GNOME Desktop Environment
• Review: Empathy is similar to Pidgin in that it supports multiple protocols including IRC, but the IRC support in Empathy is, relative to the other choices out there (Pidgin included), primitive. I don’t recommend using it as a IRC client until support improves.

Terminal-based

• Name: irssi
• Description: Simple to use but powerful IRC client
• Review: This is probably the best terminal-based IRC client out there for the end user. It’s easy to use and supports scripting in Perl, which allows you to add an almost limitless amount of features to the client.

• Name: EPIC (Enhanced Programmable ircII Client)
• Description: Descendant of the ircII client. Slightly older client centered around script packs.
• Review: As stated in the description, EPIC is a client centered around script packs. It can be a very complex client to use, which is why it’s mostly used by the more experienced IRC users. You have to have a script pack to exploit the full potential of the client. Otherwise, it’s almost identical to the ircII client described below.

• Name: ircII
• Descripton: The oldest IRC client still maintained.
• Review: ircII, compared to many more modern client, is rather lacking in features. However, it is an incredibly powerful client. It supports scripting in it’s own language, which is a very simple but powerful language.

• Name: WeeChat (Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat)
• Description: A very extensible, lightweight multi-platform IRC client
• Review: This is one of the very few clients almost completely made for the scripter. It’s very lightweight and supported on multiple platforms, which makes it great for a person who doesn’t want to devote many resources to their IRC client (IRC takes very little in the first place). This client has a relatively large database of scripts pre-made, so you don’t have to be a coder to use the client. It also supports multiple networks and windowing, which are both rare in terminal IRC clients.

Addons to other applications

• Name: Chatzilla
• Description: Easy-to-use and highly extensible IRC client, included in the Seamonkey Suite and also as a Firefox Addon
• Review: Chatzilla is a good option for frequent Firefox users, as it can function entirely within Firefox without having to start an addition application on your system. It’s clean and easily scriptable, supporting JavaScript. As it’s a Firefox addon, it can be used on any operating system that Firefox functions on.

Bots

Note that none of the bots listed here are for the purpose of flooding, DDoSing, or otherwise for malicious use. Such use of IRC bots is a very serious matter. It can and will get you and any bots you control banned from the IRC network that you used them on, and can potentially result in termination of service from your Internet Service Provider and/or legal action. Metaphorically speaking, if you do use IRC bots in the manner previously described, the IRC operators of the network in question reserve the right to use you as skeet. So don’t do it.

• Name: Eggdrop
• Description: Scriptable IRC bot coded in C++
• Review: Eggdrop is one of my personal favorites of IRC bots. It’s the oldest IRC bot still actively maintained, it can be scripted in the simple language of TCL, and it has a large database of scripts for almost anything you could need. It also supports linking bots into a botnet for more advanced uses.

• Name: EnergyMech
• Description: IRC bot coded in C, notable for supporting running multiple bots off a single process
• Review: I, and many others, consider EnergyMech to be the biggest competitor to Eggdrop. It has a notable feature over Eggdrop: the ability to run multiple bots off a single process instance. EnergyMech 3.0 has support for scripting in TCL, Perl, and Python.
• Note: If you’re in need of some comic relief, go look at their guide to programming languages: http://www.energymech.net/emech/programming.html

• Name: Wraith
• Description: Descendant of Eggdrop. Secure and easy-to-manage botnet-oriented channel protection IRC bot with support for multiple bots off one process
• Review: Wraith is the bot you want if you need a force of channel-protecting IRC bots. Like EnergyMech, it supports running multiple bots off a single process. That’s about all Wraith can do, as it does not support scripting or extending in any way other than modifying the source code itself, and then it wouldn’t be the same bot.

• Name: SupyBot
• Description: Highly modular Python IRC bot
• Review: SupyBot is the bot you’re looking for if you want a bot that’s easy to set up and maintain. The bot is highly modular, so you can add functionality very easily. It can do most anything that you need it to do.

• Name: Phenny
• Description: Fairly popular IRC bot written in Python
• Review: Phenny is another good bot for the beginner. It has many useful function built in, and can easily be extended by using scripts.

• Name: PieSpy
• Description: IRC bot in Java designed to build images of social relations between channel users
• Review: This is a pretty neat bot. I’ve seen it in action before in a few channels that I frequent, although I’ve also seen it absolutely destroy RAM when used in an active channel.

• Name: InfoBot
• Description: Perl IRC bot, best known for it’s pioneering of “factoids”.
• Review: InfoBot is pretty old, but it’s still actively maintained. It’s a one use bot, made for storing factoids, and it does it with efficiency and grace.

• Name: Psotnic
• Description: IRC bot coded in C++, specifically for IRCnet
• Review: Although the project seems to be a little on the inactive side (latest release was in 2008 and their wiki is a disaster), and that this bot is specifically for the IRCnet network, it is great at what it does. I’ve seen it used in a few channels on IRCnet, and it performs admirably in all of them.

The next two bots are technically IRC bots, although practically they’re more of a framework for building an IRC bot of your own:

• pyfibot
• rbot

The following bot projects are, by most definitions, dead, although I feel that they deserve a mention in this post anyway:

• PHP-IRC
• HAL9000
• Bobot++

Conclusion

I could never claim that this is a fully comprehensive list of all IRC clients and bots out there – there are just too many to list, and there are always new projects of both emerging. However, I’ve done my best to list the major projects out there, so enjoy it .

Related articles by Zemanta

• IRC on Linux de-mystified for new users only (amit-agarwal.co.in)
• Beginners guide to asking smarter questions in IRC (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Collin Pruitt is a teenage tech enthusiast, FOSS supporter, Ubuntu Member, blogger, computer programmer, web designer, and social media addict. He enjoys chatting on Internet Relay Chat, watching anime, posting on forums, and playing games. Follow him on Twitter: @Collinp6.

30.07.10: Zach Kriesse: Ubuntu-Lubuntu???

Well in the past couple days I recently became part of the VERY small Lubuntu LXDE project. LXDE.org So that being said, should I use Lubuntu or stick with Ubuntu? Lubuntu is supposed to VERY fast but at what cost? Will there be less resources? Because if you add them in it slows it down anyway so it’s a bit of a self defeating purpose. Maybe I should talk to a good pal Phill Whiteside who uses Lubuntu 24-7. He should know what to do….Ok peace ya’ll!

Filed under: Ubuntu in General

30.07.10: Jono Bacon: Red Hat, Canonical and GNOME Contributions

Earlier this week at GUADEC, the always affable Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work. Unfortunately, I was not there to see it, but I read his excellent post on the topic.

One of the reactions from the survey was that Red Hat are responsible for 16% of the contributions to GNOME whereas Canonical are responsible for a measly 1%.

Of course, this has generated some flame, such as a particularly angry post from Greg DeKoenigsberg and the rather pithy response from Jeffrey Stedfast. Greg is clearly pissed, and Jeffrey is clearly pissed at Greg being pissed, and I suspect Greg is going to get even more pissed at Jeffrey being pissed. The worse thing is that they are both going to be pissed at me for this blog post.

First I want to put these figures in perspective and then I want to talk about how we read the figures we do have.

I think the GNOME Census report is excellent, and it provides some excellent visibility into contributions in GNOME, but it only takes into account upstream contributions to GNOME itself. What the report doesn’t take into account are upstream contributions that are built on the GNOME platform but (a) not part of official GNOME modules, and (b) hosted and developed elsewhere, such as Launchpad. As such, while the report is accurate for showing code and contributions accepted into GNOME, there are also many projects built on GNOME technology that are not taken into account due to non-inclusion in GNOME modules or being developed outside of GNOME infrastructure.

As a general rule, Canonical staff develop inside Launchpad. The reason is simple; Launchpad and Bazaar provide a powerful development environment that was also built by Canonical and we therefore have lots of internal skills and best practice based on these tools. Launchpad is also a fundamental component in Ubuntu development and all the software we develop ultimately ships in Ubuntu, so using the same development forge makes sense. Finally, the site is a Free Software and Open Source project, so there really no philosophical reason to move, testified by the 18,000+ Free Software projects happily using Launchpad already.

Canonical is actively developing upstream desktop software, but doing it in Launchpad. Some examples include:

• notify-osd
• Messaging Menu
• Application Indicators
• Indicator Applet
• Indicator Date Time Applet
• Sound Indicator
• Me Menu
• Indicator Global Menu
• Unity

This is by no means the full list, and is other work such as Simple Scan, the Hardware Drivers tool, Computer Janitor, and more. Many of these contributions (such as Application Indicators and Simple Scan) could bring real value to GNOME, but they have not been accepted. I know that the Canonical engineers who work on them would be delighted if they were included in GNOME.

The above list also doesn’t include significant upstream investment in other areas such as Upstart, Bazaar, Launchpad, and a full team building Ubuntu. I don’t want to turn this into a “who contributed more” competition, but I think for some to suggest Canonical is a bad citizen who is not contributing upstream code is unreasonable. To suggest that Canonical has limited code inside approved GNOME modules is fair.

So that was the first thing I wanted to clarify; Canonical does invest heavily in upstream work, but GNOME is not the only home for upstream contributions.

If there is one thing that the GNOME Census has really outlined is that we should all be proud of Red Hat and their contributions to GNOME. You only have to take a look at all the red items on this image to get a feeling for the wonderful work that Red Hat is doing inside GNOME. Novell too. Look the green items in there; Novell has done a wonderful job maintaining many modules inside GNOME. In fact, there are many companies investing inside GNOME modules and inside GNOME infrastructure. I don’t believe it would be fair to undermine these contributions in any way; they are testament to the ethos of those companies and their commitment to GNOME. All of the people working at those companies are doing good work within the spirit of Free Software.

Likewise, I don’t think it is fair to undermine Canonical’s contributions just because many of them exist outside of GNOME. Our engineers are also doing good work within the spirit of Free Software. I have never claimed for a second that Canonical are equal to Red Hat and Novell in terms of our accepted contributions in GNOME; it is clear that there are far few contributions from Canonical staff inside accepted GNOME modules, but this does not for a second mean that Canonical is not (a) producing upstream contributions and (b) heavily invested in the GNOME platform. Ubuntu, our primary product is a GNOME desktop, and the vast majority of our engineers are GNOME users and developers and they work every day on a GNOME based product.

So in a nutshell, this is my take: both Red Hat and Canonical invest heavily in Open Source development, but they do it in different ways and different places. The GNOME Census clearly outlines that within GNOME modules, Red Hat are doing far more, but that doesn’t mean that Canonical are sitting on their thumbs and doing nothing, far from it.

30.07.10: Elizabeth Krumbach: Second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour

On Tuesday I hosted the second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour. We had four people in attendance (thanks for dropping by James, Grant and Michelle!).

It ended up being quite an evening for gadgets. As is typical, I brought along my mini9 and Grant showed up with his ever popular OLPC laptop.

Then Michelle showed up with a couple awesome toys! She had her HP Compaq TC1100, a tablet PC from 2005 that she has a couple of. The one she brought along was running Ubuntu 10.04 and she showed us screen rotation, how well the stylus worked and the nice docking station that goes with it. She writes a great post comparing it to an iPad on her blog: Meet Paddy-Pad, the new tablet in town.

She also brought along a Pandigital Novel, a $169 Android touchscreen device that’s sold at Bed Bath & Beyond. It was hacked back to a default Android navigation screen, the default one on the Novel being a bit slow. It’s a really cute 7″ full color device, and a default 800 x 600 resolution. I have to admit, after seeing it I was very tempted to head down to the store and pick one up for myself! But I think I’ll hold off until more of these cheap touchscreen devices start hitting the market. My planned use for it? Perfect RSS (and pdfs, and maybe even an e-book or two?) reading device.

In all, a very fun Ubuntu Hour, and I wish it could have gone longer! The coffee shop I selected for this is only open until 7, which really makes it so that our hour can’t go beyond that. There are a few other coffee shops in the area so I’ll be scouting those over the next few weeks to see if I want to alter the monthly Hour location.

What’s this Ubuntu Hour thing anyway? Check out more info over on the Ubuntu wiki, including how to plan your own (hint: it’s very, very simple!)

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hour

30.07.10: David Wonderly: HUGE win for Open Source

Okay, it’s good but, it’s still Open Source and let me explain this a bit if I can. I’ve spent the past 7 years working for the US Federal Government and have been preaching open source the entire time I’ve worked there. Well, we have scored a MAJOR victory. We knew it was going to come when U.S. President Obama talked about wanting open source initiatives in his plan. [1]

Well, it has started. The Federal Times (A small press dedicated to U.S. Federal Agencies) wrote that the GSA (General Services Administration) has approved Google’s package of cloud-computing applications and is the first cloud to be certified by the hard hitting Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). [2]

The U.S. Federal Government has relied on Microsoft for years. Maybe, just maybe this is the beginning of a wide new world for the U.S. Government and Open Source.

[1] http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/HQpress/111307%20Innovation%20fact%20sheet.pdf
[2] http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100727/IT01/7270305/

30.07.10: Sense Hofstede: Thursday: the second day of the #GUADEC core conference

As the end of GUADEC draws nearer my blog posts get shorter and today also there are no pictures, for the first time. To make up for that terrible loss on my side, I would like to point you to the GUADEC 2010 Flickr stream. There are some really nice photos on there.

The day

There were some really interesting sessions today. I haven’t attended much, but I did go to the keynote about activists and journalists and the treats for them in an online world, and what the (FLOSS) desktop can do against that.
Another interesting one was the “GNOME 3 for your Application” talk. Some really interesting plans were shown. I can’t help and wonder, though, if a lot of this isn’t just duplicating stuff from Ubuntu’s Ayatana project, or at least touching it very closely. RedHat’s GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s Ayatana seem to have a lot in common, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much cooperation and so far the standards and APIs proposed upstream were declined and refused to be used. It would be really a shame if GNOME Shell — which seems to be the big chunk that is going to contain all the new neat functionality — would be using a new API, separate from existing projects. If it would be using standards, but not be using existing libraries for them, then we’d have just dumb duplication of code. I can think of a better way to spend resources.

I hope there will be more cooperation, or at least communication, between RedHat and Canonical on this matter.

T-shirts

I hope this will be the last time I mention those blasted shirts here. Finally we were able to hand out all t-shirts today after some of the organisation went to pick them up from the printer in Nijmegen yesterday night. The good news here is that the Igalia logo, which the printer somehow had made disappear from the final prints of the first batch of t-shirts, is on the newest batch. But still, with the Igalia logo missing from the first sponsors and the huge delays in the deliverances we’re of course not too happy with the service.

Social Media Livestream

The first view days there have been some issues with Identi.ca the UDStream based Social Media Livestream on the GUADEC website. At first the dents were shown with the time in GMT, whereas the tweets were correctly shown in CEST. After I had fixed this everything appeared to be right, but fortunately Stéphane Maniaci was kind enough to keep nagging me about it until I had completely fixed all problems with the microblogging system used more often than Twitter by the attendees. See, my hacky fix for the date problems (‘+ 2 * 3600′) was only working on Google Chrome/Chromium, but made all dents disappear in any other browser. After fiddling a bit with the date format I thought things were completely fixed, but they weren’t in all browsers.

Then I cleaned the code a bit up and by delaying the formatting the Date until after the Date class has been initialised the time is now correctly everywhere without hack, and Identi.ca isn’t broken anymore. This also means that the screen of the livestream in the venue is working at long last!
I’ll push my changes to the GUADEC 2010 Website’s Git repository next week(end) and will backport the changes back upstream to UDStream as well.

Collabora barebecue

Unfortunately, after two weeks of very hot weather, the summer started to fade a bit at the beginning of the conference. Now, this isn’t that bad for a conference, it makes being inside much more bearable, but it is a shame for beach parties. We were having a barbecue at “Beach Company”, but no swimming! The party was very well organised, and the vegetarians were happy with their own stuff and barbecue, and everyone had a great time. New to most of the international guests was the presence of large quantities of the Dutch version of satay sauce (or ‘peanut sauce’), which we seem to put in litres on everything, according to some of them.

Last words

Tomorrow will already be the last day of the conference! I can’t believe that after all these months of preparation GUADEC 2010 will be over! I can surely say that it has been a great fun so far and I’ve met some really nice people. Despite some problems with ordered goods (ahem, t-shirts, ahem), there weren’t any major problems and I’m glad that everyone seems to be enjoying the conference so much.

On to a great last day!

30.07.10: Robbie Williamson: My Motivation for Doing Opensource

There’s been a lot of blogs, tweets, dents, podcasts, rants, etc about Canonical not giving enough back to the projects they use to build Ubuntu with.  I’m not going to go down that rathole, so if you are looking for a juicy quote to start a flame war on…you can stop reading now.

What I do want to comment on is why I personally like opensource.  It may shock some, but I don’t care too much about all software being free…just like I don’t care about all music, video content, or internet access being free.  It’s not because I wouldn’t love it if these things were, it’s just that I understand the people who create them might want to eat, or clothe their children, or have a home…and these things all require money.  The reason I like working in opensource is that I believe the fundamental core of it, is to give…that’s it.  Giving feels good.  I’ve donated my time and money to various charitable organizations, and while they are all good causes…helping people who needed…deep down, I do it because it makes me feel good (and I know I’m not alone).

When I was the maintainer for the Linux Test Project , while my initial reason for doing it was because my employer requested me to, the reason why I stuck with it for so long (even when my job and employer changed) was because I knew people needed it.  It felt good to know that I was helping to improve the “reliability, robustness, and stability of Linux”…it felt good to know that I was helping Red Hat, Novell, Terrasoft, and God knows how many other distros test their releases…it felt good to know I was helping IBM, Intel, HP, and loads of other technology companies test their hardware against Linux…it simply felt good.  Hell, I even created the infamous crash test tux logo over a weekend because I thought it would give the project more of an identity…which lead to shirts being printed…banners being made…and me sitting for hours in a 2 person booth in the “dot org” pavilion at too many Linux World Expos to mention. As a project, we were always happy to receive testcases, bug fixes, and improvements from our users and others looking to help, and not once did I ever point the finger at someone using the test suite to improve their for-sale product and say, “you’re not giving enough!”….because I wasn’t doing the work for that reason.  Now I’ll admit not participating as much as I should since passing on maintainership, but it’s not because I switched jobs, companies, or career paths…it’s because I got married, bought a house, and had 2 kids…and even got a dog…so how I choose to spend my free time has changed as a result of these life events…plain and simple.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that if the reason why you participate in opensource is because you want to push a utopian view of the world on to others, or berate those who you feel didn’t give you enough credit or contribute to your project in a certain way….well, then prepare to be disappointed a lot, I prefer to just give and be happy.

30.07.10: Matthew Helmke: A Foreigner’s Reception

I wrote a short article for Talk Morocco about the ups and downs of living as a foreigner in Morocco. Talk Morocco is a website dedicated to discussions related to Morocco, its people, society and culture.

Share and Enjoy:

29.07.10: Mohamad Faizul Zulkifli: Android On Your PC!
Android is popular linux based operating system for most of smart phones and also tablet PCs. Some said that android based phones is an iPhone killer. Can we run an android on your x86 pc ? yes we can!

Steps

1. Get android x86 iso here at http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/android-x86-1.6-r2.iso
2. you need UNetbootin to make bootable USB drive or just burn the iso if you got cd/dvd drive ( you can also run this iso in your virtual environment, vmware, virtualpc, virtualbox )
3. reboot your pc to your USB drive or burned cd/dvd

Screensnap

29.07.10: Risto H. Kurppa: How long has your system been up’n running?

I’m planning to wipe my Kubuntu desktop box root partition to re-install Kubuntu 10.04 LTS. I don’t have any major problems that would force me to reinstall the system, but I’ve installed many apps and packages from outside the repositories, manually and so on, so it’s quite hard to try to track down why something doesn’t work and then report the bug. And it’s nice to see the installer every now and then anyway, get a fresh start, tabula rasa, you know.

This is my setup:
File system. Size Used Free Use% Mount
/dev/md0 38G 26G 11G 71% /
/dev/md1 319G 276G 27G 92% /home

First I ran backups to an external 500GB USB disk:
time rsync -av --progress --stats /home/rhk /media/disk/2010-07-24-homebackup/

Then I decided to find out how long I’ve been running this system. A neat way to find it out is to find when the file system has been created:
rhk@rubert:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md0|grep created
Filesystem created: Wed Jul 9 17:35:59 2008
rhk@rubert:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md1|grep created
Filesystem created: Tue May 8 22:31:04 2007

So I’ve had my setup running since July 2008, from Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, upgrading to 8.10, then to 9.04, 9.10 and to 10.04. My home partition has been there since May 2007 – that’s when I got this computer and first installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04.

~daily usage, I think running two years in a row isn’t that bad, every now and then installing some off-the-repository packages. And as stated above, there’s still nothing that’d force me to reinstall it.

How long have you had your setup running? Are you always upgrading to the latest version or staying with LTS releases? Do you often install software outside the repositories?

Related posts:

• Disk space analyzers – updated version
• Ubuntu Finland & community effort
• Upgrade to Kubuntu Intrepid

Tags: planet-fnoss, planet-ubuntu, planet-vapaasuomi, ubuntu

29.07.10: John Baab: Sync Google Contacts with Asterisk

I posted a few weeks back about a SIP project I had been working on, this is the first in (hopefully) a series of posts about neat things I am doing with this setup. Spoiled by my Android phone, the Caller ID on my "house phone" wasn't up to par, so I set out to fix this.

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29.07.10: Launchpad News: Assigning bugs to someone else, or not

Recently, we changed the way assigning bugs works on Launchpad. It used to be that anyone could assign anyone else to a bug. This was open to abuse as you can imagine. Bug 511269 was filed about the potential problems with this, and we recently changed Launchpad so that only bug supervisors can assign a bug to someone else.

You can still assign a bug to yourself, but this does keep you from assigning someone to a bug to draw their attention to said bug. In the end, this is a good thing, though, as people should only be assigned bugs who are going to be responsible for working on them.

Now there is one issue with this change. Projects that had not established a bug supervisor for the project will find their developers can no longer assign bugs to each other. The easy fix for this is to create a bug supervisor team for your project and have the people working on your bugs assigned to this team. We do realize this might be a bit heavy weight for some projects, so we’ve opened bug 603281 about this issue.  A fix for this — only requiring bug supervisor permissions if bug supervisor is defined — should be appearing on Launchpad soon.

29.07.10: Jonathan Riddell: New Kubuntu Website, Canoeing in Prague
After many months kubuntu.org got a new look, complete with new logo. Many thanks to Ofir for his patience in seeing this through.

---

During the Platform sprint in Prague I took Aurelien Gateau, doko and a couple of nice chaps from SuSE Prague canoeing on the awesome whitewater course near the city centre.

Looking confident at the top

This flatwater is easy

King of the wave

This blury photo is the last anyone has seen of Aurelien, if you live downstream of Prauge please look out for him in his blue canoe

29.07.10: Launchpad News: Meet Benji York

Recently, Benji York joined Canonical’s Launchpad team. I asked him a little about himself and his work.

Matthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?

Benji: I work on the Foundations team. Right now I’m concentrating on the web service APIs and improving the OpenID integration.

Matthew: Can we see something that you’ve worked on?

Benji: There’s not much to see yet. Most of my changes thus far have been bug fixes or purely internal.

Matthew: Where do you work?

Benji: I work from my home in Virginia, USA.

Matthew: What can you see from your office window?

Benji: Just the shrubs that border my lawn. Once the weather cools off a bit I want to try working from the wifi-covered park/beach near my house.

Matthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?

Benji: I worked at Zope Corporation for about 6 years, most of that time as the team lead for their main product. Before that I worked in the automotive industry, mostly writing supply chain and manufacturing software.

Matthew: How did you get into free software?

Benji: I think the first piece of open source software I used to any degree was Python 1.5. Since then open source software has slowly taken over almost every niche of my computing world.

Matthew: What’s more important? Principle or pragmatism?

Benji: Pragmatism. If a thing doesn’t do what it needs to do, it’s not worth much.

However, I believe that principles are there to help us be pragmatic in a scope larger than the immediate moment. It’s not pragmatic in the long term to skimp on good design or testing just to get something out the door. Any good principal is grounded in pragmatism.

Matthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?

Benji: When I was in college the console (NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.) emulation scene exploded and I had a side project that let people connect console controllers to their PC. I was approached by one of the Linux input device guys about contributing some of that code. That was my first open source contribution.

Since then I’ve made large and small contributions to dozens of open source projects. Most of those have been in the Zope ecosystem.

Lately I’ve put most of my open source hacking time into Manuel, a system for writing better tested documentation and better documented tests — it’s sort of a spiritual successor to Python’s doctest.

Matthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about.

Benji: I’m sure most readers of this blog will know, but I didn’t know that the Launchpad and Bazaar integration is as nice as it is. Being able to branch from LP, make changes, mark the branch as fixing a particular bug, push the branch to LP, view the diffs online and then generate a merge proposal that will be automatically emailed to reviewers is very convenient.

Matthew: Is there anything in particular that you want to change in Launchpad?

Benji: I’m not familiar enough with LP yet to have strong feelings about changing it. Give it a few months and I’ll be plenty opinionated.

29.07.10: Thierry Carrez: How to package your Tomcat webapp

If you are a web application developer, you should want to properly make a Debian package to help installing your application in Debian and Ubuntu. This article will detail the options you have for Tomcat 6.0 webapps. It was also posted for reference (and further improvement) at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Tomcat/PackagingWebapps. It supposes you already know the basics of Debian packaging, and how Tomcat roughly works.

Option 1: Use the system instance

The tomcat6 package provides a system-wide instance. If your webapp is relatively simple and does not require a specific configuration, you should consider packaging your webapp for deployment there. That’s what the tomcat6-examples and tomcat6-admin packages do. To benefit from webapp autodeployment, you should:

• Depend on the tomcat6 package
• Install your webapp into /usr/share/PACKAGENAME/WEBAPP
• Install a deployment descriptor file into /etc/tomcat6/Catalina/localhost/WEBAPP.xml

For example, the tomcat6-examples package installs the webapp files into /usr/share/tomcat6-examples/examples, and then installs the following examples.xml file into /etc/tomcat6/Catalina/localhost :

<Context path="/examples"
 docBase="/usr/share/tomcat6-examples/examples" />
 

Your webapp should be automatically picked up by Tomcat !

Option 2: Use your own instance

Sometimes using the system-wide Tomcat 6.0 instance is just not the right solution. The most common case is when your webapp requires a very specific configuration. Rather than beating the system-wide instance into submission, by mangling the configuration file (or asking your users to do so), it’s better to set up your own instance. Tomcat 6.0 in Ubuntu and Debian provides the possibility to set up multiple instances of tomcat that share the same binaries, through the tomcat6-common package. You should then:

• Depend on the tomcat6-common package
• Deploy a full CATALINA_BASE directory with conf/ and webapp/ subdirectories in /usr/share/PACKNAME
• Create an init script in /etc/init.d/PACKNAME that starts catalina.sh with CATALINA_BASE=/usr/share/PACKNAME and CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/tomcat6
• Have postinst create a specific user to run under, and use that in your init script
• Create specific directories for logs and temporary files

What should the CATALINA_BASE directory look like ? Something like this:

/usr/share/PACKNAME
  conf/             <-- the configuration directory with your specific config
  logs -> /var/log/PACKNAME
  temp -> /var/cache/PACKNAME/temp
  webapps/          <-- the directory containing your webapps
  work -> /var/cache/PACKNAME/work
 

It is slightly more complex, but that way you can fine-tune your configuration without affecting any other webapp installed, since you use your own, separate, instance. Most importantly, you still get the benefit of bugfix and security updates in the common binaries.

If you need some examples, the tomcat6-user package provides a tomcat6-create-instance command that creates CATALINA_BASE directories for user instances, you can use that as a base. For the init script, /etc/init.d/tomcat6 can be used as a base.

29.07.10: Nigel Babu: Cleansweep Update!

Ok, this post was supposed to happen on Monday but due to real life, got postponed. Here it goes
Total bugs with patches: 2283 (+20)
Reviewed patches: 378 (+31)
—
Bugs with ‘patch-needswork’: 90 (+2)
Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-upstream’: 164 (+19)
Bugs with ‘patch-forwarded-debian’: 51 (+8)
Bugs with ‘indicator-application’: 42 (-2)
Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-upstream’: 50 (+2)
Bugs with ‘patch-accepted-debian’: 12 (-1)
Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-upstream’: 16 (0)
Bugs with ‘patch-rejected-debian’: 2 (+1)
—
Last updated: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:05:25 +0200

Ubuntu Global Jam is coming along and we’d appreciate it if you reviewed patches during the UGJ. I’ll post more details in the coming days. Probably even have a more detailed set of instructions.

29.07.10: Dustin Kirkland: TestDrive, then and now

29.07.10: Mohamad Faizul Zulkifli: Recover Your PDF Password
The scenario is,

i have created a pdf file for my personal document, and then to make it safe i put a password so anyone else cant read the file except myself.

After a month later, I've forgot the password but i want to read the file as soon as possible.

here it comes, pdfcrack! ( also available on win32 )


Mission: recover the password
target: piju.pdf's password
weapon: pdfcrack http://pdfcrack.sourceforge.net/
estimation time: depends on the length of the password
situation reports: no text, just photos

LinuxQuestions.org offers a free Linux forum where Linux newbies can ask questions and Linux experts can offer advice. Topics include security, installation, networking and much more.

30.07.10: LXer: Mozilla's Tab Candy is the first step to sweeter browsing
Published at LXer: Tabbed browsing has arguably had a significant impact on the way that people use the Web, but the feature hasn't really scaled to accommodate the increasing complexity of the...

30.07.10: iptables doubt
hi iam interested in iptables consider the following command, iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 192.168.14.0/24 -d 192.168.14.0/24 -j ACCEPT what it does? i am confusing as both option (-d and...

30.07.10: Mplayer Video Output Problem
Dear Experts, I am using Mplayer in Centos 5.3. Recently i was working fine, but today i noticed that its video windows is very small than the actual size of the video and monitor. I have played...

30.07.10: SO_BINDTODEVICE problem
Hi everybody; I try to generate a server client code. What i try to do is sending video streams from eth0 and eth1 to the other server programs' eth0 and eth1. In order to do that, i decided to...

30.07.10: STARTMODE=auto
Hi all, I have seen people adding the line STARTMODE=auto in the file /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-eth0 , in redhat based distros,for quick starting of the network interface , now my...

30.07.10: Installing Ubuntu Alternate with WEP and without a CD/DVD player
Hello. I am working with a "Legacy" computer (a Dell Dimension, 125MB RAM, and a Pentium III processer) without a working CD/DVD player. I am trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 Alternative i386 iso...

30.07.10: Serial Programming, Write-Read Issue
Hi, I am still new to serial programming in linux. So to communicate with an A to D device I found some code online and modified it for my purpose. The problem is I can never perform "Write then...

30.07.10: Upgrading openSUSE 11.2 to 11.3
Great to hear that openSUSE 11.3 is out. I have a system which is running openSUSE 11.2. I would like to know if i can upgrade it to openSUSE 11.3 by changing the 11.2 repos to 11.3 repos and then...

30.07.10: LXer: Python development - the golden rules
Published at LXer: As part of his Python Development Masterclass, Kunal Deo drew up some golden rules when working with Python. Have you got any Python gems to share? Read More......

30.07.10: LXer: Linux Music Players: Amarok vs. Clementine
Published at LXer: The recent history of the Amarok music player is like a scaled-down version of KDE's recent past. Like KDE 4, the Amarok 2 series was greeted with a user revolt that has only...

30.07.10: ffmpeg, "error opening filters" - how to solve this problem?
When running ffmpeg, I can extract audio from a video file fine with the few sample files that I tried it on. When running ffmpeg to convert video from one format to another, or to extract the video...

30.07.10: Mouse pointer commands
As you know it is possible to move the mouse pointer with the numlock keys on a standard keyboard. I would like to know what are the commands for moving the pointer up, down, right, and left? I plan...

30.07.10: replacement for -m owner --cmd-owner in iptables??
Is anyone found a way to allow / disallow traffic based on PID or command name since -m owner --cmd-owner is currently broken since kernel release 2.0 ?? I see that i can build rules based on user and...

30.07.10: LXer: Gnome 3.0 Delayed To March 2011 – Gnome 3.0 Beta On September 2010
Published at LXer: A lot of people was looking forward to use Gnome 3.0 stable release this year on many distributions also known as Gnome shell ”technology part of Gnome 3.0“. Read More......

30.07.10: LXer: Spotlight on Linux: SimplyMEPIS 8.5.x
Published at LXer: SimplyMEPIS is a simply wonderful distribution. It was the first to offer a complete out of the box experience all tied up in a pretty package. It would be fair to say that it...

08.07.10: Mandriva presents Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring

Mandriva, the leading European publisher of Linux solutions, announces today the launch of the final version of Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring.

read more

08.07.10: Mandriva restructures to establish European leadership

Mandriva is one of the cornerstones of Open Source, a technological pioneer offering the sole independent Linux distribution on the European market. Nevertheless the company has been faced with a mounting financial challenge for several years due in part to its size and lack of a clear publishing strategy.

read more

19.05.10: 3G modems certified on Mandriva Linux

Curitiba, 6th May, 2010 – Mandriva, Europe's leading publisher of Linux solutions, today announced the certification of its operating system Mandriva Linux for 3G modems.

The new generation of modems, adapted to the 3G, offers to users speedness, more quality and more possibilities to use diversified applications and to access the Internet.

It is more than natural for Mandriva to associate the simplicity and robustness of its distribution to this new technology.

read more

19.05.10: Paris Descartes University's UFR Biomédicale turns to Mandriva to improve its infrastructure management

Paris,  19th May 2010 – Paris Descartes University's UFR Biomédicale has installed the Mandriva Linux operating system on client desktops and servers to ensure a permanent stability and optimise the work of its 4,500 students.

The 'UFR Biomédicale' of Saints-Pères embraces within the Paris Descartes University different medical and life science academic units and 14 laboratories attached to the CNRS and INSERM research institutions.

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08.04.10: Mandriva Announces Arnaud Laprévote as CEO

Paris, the 8th April, 2010 – Mandriva today announced that its board of directors has named Arnaud Laprévote on the 24th of March to serve as the company's Chief Executive Officer.

Arnaud Laprévote succeeds Stanislas Bois. Arnaud will surround himself with Hervé Yahi, Chief Stategic Officer and Stanislas Bois, Chief Financial Officer at Mandriva.

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29.01.10: Now showing: opensource.com
Hi. We’re back. Well, not back exactly. We’d just like to take a minute to introduce you to somebody. Somebody that’s important to us. opensource.com We promised we’d let you know when we had news–and now we do. Opensource.com is our new adventure. It’s still sponsored by Red Hat, and still shining a bright light [...]

15.09.09: Where have we been?
It seems we’ve been a bit out of touch. Rather than bore you with excuses, let’s cut to the chase. Over the last year, we’ve slowed down—and then stopped altogether—publishing articles in Red Hat Magazine. And some of you have been contacting us to ask why. There’s really a couple of reasons. First of all, [...]

19.05.09: Video: Open source government
Download this video: [Ogg Theora] Open source is answering the call at government agencies on all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Why? Open source is stable, trustworthy, and secure, and Red Hat solutions are being used across government agencies to create efficiencies, [...]

28.04.09: Call for submissions: Innovation Awards and RHCE of the Year
It’s that time of year again–the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World are fast approaching, and with them, Red Hat’s annual awards ceremonies. But first, we need nominations. And for that we appeal to our customers, readers, partners, and friends. That’s you. Nominate that innovative business you worked with, or the admin who always has [...]

14.04.09: Red Hat and Intel: Smart processors, virtualization boost efficiency and performance
On Monday March 30, Intel announced the availability of their much anticipated new line of processors, the Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 series–nicknamed Nehalem. Red Hat, a long-time partner of the market-leading chip maker , collaborated on the chip’s debut, testing and optimizing the recently released Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.3 on the new processor. Changes [...]

Users, administrators and developers share their secrets in this online community which offers articles, tips, Q and A, and free tools to download.

20.12.07: Elapsed Time 4
Determine elapsed time of LDAP searches.

12.12.07: One Giant Leap: Cool Solutions gets some New Digs
Eleven years after launching the first Cool Solutions site, we have just taken a major step forward. We have some new digs - a full-on community site with all the Web 2.0 bells and whistles. Check it out!

03.12.07: Deleting Private Data from Your Linux/Microsoft Windows Machine
Private data can still be recovered after you format your Linux/Microsoft Windows machine. Here's a tip from Damian Myerscough that will help you make sure your data cannot be recovered.

30.11.07: Finding Open Files and Network Connections
Mike Farrell shows you how to use the lsof and netstat commands to get a complete list of all open files or network connections on your system.

29.11.07: List Running Resources on V1-style Heartbeat Cluster Node
Small Python script to check for running resources on your heartbeat cluster node.

This forum is for original Linux News. If you'd like to write content for LQ, feel free to contact us. All threads in the forum need to be approved before they will appear.

29.07.10: Legal action on 'zombie cookies' filed in US court
"A legal challenge has been launched in the US against a number of websites amid claims that they were engaged in "covert surveillance" of users." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10787882

29.07.10: Details of 100m Facebook users collected and published
"Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been collected and published on the net by a security consultant." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584

28.07.10: Snapshot of global internet speeds revealed
"A report based on analysis of huge amounts of net traffic has revealed the state of the internet around the globe." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10786874

28.07.10: Botnet hacker caught in Slovenia
"A computer hacker known as Iserdo has been arrested in Slovenia. The 23-year-old is believed to have written the programme behind the mariposa virus, also known as butterfly." ...

28.07.10: Game copiers for Nintendo DS ruled illegal in UK
"A High Court has ruled that devices that allow gamers to play pirated video games are illegal in the UK." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10790835

27.07.10: Yahoo Japan to use Google search
"Yahoo Japan has said that it will adopt Google's search engine technology, rather than Microsoft's which is used by its strategic partner Yahoo Inc." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10773532

27.07.10: StarCraft II goes on sale after 7 years in development
"Long-awaited real-time strategy game (RTS) StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has gone on sale after a 12-year wait." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10773395

27.07.10: UK 'misled' on broadband speeds, says Ofcom report
"Britons are not getting the broadband services they are being sold, suggests a government report." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10760069 Again, ruh-roh! :p

27.07.10: Jailbreaking iPhone apps is now legal
"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- IPhone users can now legally hack their phones to download applications that aren't in Apple's App Store. The U.S. Copyright Office, a division of the Library of...

26.07.10: BlackBerrys pose 'security risk' say UAE authorities
"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said that it could move to restrict or monitor BlackBerry mobile phones, as they pose a "national security risk"." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10761210

26.07.10: US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'
"The United States has condemned as "irresponsible" the leak of 90,000 military records, saying publication could threaten national security." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10758578

24.07.10: $35 tablet developed by Indian Universities runs linux.........what else?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10740817

23.07.10: Microsoft signs deal on mobile processors
"Microsoft has signed a deal with chip designer Arm that will give it in-depth access to processor blueprints." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10741448

21.07.10: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 4th edition available ...RSN
UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 4th edition, is finally out!...

16.07.10: Motorola deny eFuse Android bricking intent
"After speculation earlier this week that the eFuse technology used in their Android handsets could lead to bricked phones, Motorola has spoken out to clarify the purpose – and behavior – of the...

Fedora Weekly News is the weekly newsletter for the Fedora Project.

30.07.10: New Feed for FWN

30.07.10: Fedora Weekly News Issue 128

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The central voice for Linux and Open Source security news.

29.07.10: Sourcefire Debuts Integrated Security Tool
LinuxSecurity.com: Modern enterprise security often involves multiple security technologies, including firewall, IPS (define) and antivirus tools, which can't always integrate to provide a broader view of security events and data risks. But with attackers persistently probing a range of enterprise defenses looking for weaknesses, that broader view becomes a must-have.

29.07.10: Mariposa Botnet Creator Arrested
LinuxSecurity.com: The FBI announced that as part of a two-year, cross-border investigation into the Mariposa botnet, authorities in Slovenia last week arrested a Slovenian citizen and charged him with being the botnet's creator. The suspect, a 23-year old known as "Iserdo," has not been named. He is currently free on bail.

29.07.10: ATMs At Risk, Researcher Warns At Black Hat
LinuxSecurity.com: A security researcher today gave notice to companies that make automated teller machines (ATMs). Here on the first day of the Black Hat conference, Barnaby Jack, director of research at IOActive, demonstrated attacks that would allow a criminal to compromise ATMs, allowing hypothetical thieves to steal cash, copy customers' ATM card data, or learn the master passwords of the machines.

29.07.10: OpenStack - an open source cloud platform
LinuxSecurity.com: Rackspace announced the OpenStack project today, open sourcing much of the software it uses to run its own cloud. I spoke with Rackspace's Jonathan Bryce on the topic to get an in-depth overview, discuss Rackspace's intentions, and explore the operational future of OpenStack.

29.07.10: E-Commerce Security Is Broken, Vulnerable, Says Hacker Conference Founder
LinuxSecurity.com: Lots of code excitement will spring from the Black Hat hacker conference this week, but already a huge controversy is erupting: Black Hat's founder thinks SSL--the security code making much of online commerce safe--is broken.

29.07.10: WikiLeaks and the release of classified information on the Afghan war
LinuxSecurity.com: Re "A whistle-blower with global resonance," and "WikiLeaks wasn't wrong," Editorial, July 27 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian hacker, may end up being one of the best things to ever happen to our American democracy.

29.07.10: Debian: 2077-1: openldap: Multiple vulnerabilities
LinuxSecurity.com: Two remote vulnerabilities have been discovered in OpenLDAP. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems: [More...]

29.07.10: Red Hat: 2010:0574-01: java-1.4.2-ibm: Critical Advisory
LinuxSecurity.com: Updated java-1.4.2-ibm packages that fix several security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Extras, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Extras, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary. [More...]

28.07.10: Mandriva: 2010:142: openldap
LinuxSecurity.com: Multiple vulnerabilities has been discovered and corrected in openldap: The slap_modrdn2mods function in modrdn.c in OpenLDAP 2.4.22 does not check the return value of a call to the smr_normalize function, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation [More...]

28.07.10: Red Hat: 2010:0567-01: lvm2-cluster: Moderate Advisory
LinuxSecurity.com: An updated lvm2-cluster package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate [More...]

08.06.10: Review: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Second Edition
LinuxSecurity.com: If you've ever wondered what a "buffer overflow" was, or how a "denial of service" attack works beyond just a basic understanding, then there is no better book that will help you to delve into the nitty-gritty than Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Second Edition, by Jon Erickson.

25.05.10: Review: Ubuntu Unleased 2010 Edition: Covering 9.10 and 10.4
LinuxSecurity.com: Compiling a reference book of more than 800 pages, plus a complete DVD distributed with the book, is a huge project, even for four experienced Linux veterans such as those that wrote Ubuntu Unleased: 2010 Edition.

The central voice for Linux and Open Source security news.

08.06.10: Review: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Second Edition
LinuxSecurity.com: If you've ever wondered what a "buffer overflow" was, or how a "denial of service" attack works beyond just a basic understanding, then there is no better book that will help you to delve into the nitty-gritty than Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Second Edition, by Jon Erickson.

25.05.10: Review: Ubuntu Unleased 2010 Edition: Covering 9.10 and 10.4
LinuxSecurity.com: Compiling a reference book of more than 800 pages, plus a complete DVD distributed with the book, is a huge project, even for four experienced Linux veterans such as those that wrote Ubuntu Unleased: 2010 Edition.

13.05.10: Review: A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Fifth Edition
LinuxSecurity.com: Mark Sobell again delivers the answers to common Linux administration challenges, and provides thorough and step-by-step instructions to configuring many of the common Linux Internet services in A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fifth Edition.

02.05.10: Review: Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming
LinuxSecurity.com: Mark Sobell has again compiled a great collection of applications and utilities in A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, and his experience shows in this second edition.

30.01.10: Review: Mod-Security 2.5 by Magnus Mischel
LinuxSecurity.com: Thanks to Eric Lubow for contributing this great review.

16.12.08: Review: Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You
LinuxSecurity.com: If I ask "How much do you know about Google?" You may not take even a second to respond. But if I may ask "How much does Google know about you"? You may instantly reply "Wait... what!? Do they!?" The book "Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You" by Greg Conti (Computer Science Professor at West Point) is the first book to reveal how Google's vast information stockpiles could be used against you or your business - and what you can do to protect yourself.

The central voice for Linux and Open Source security news.

30.07.10: Study: Spammers use e-mail ID to gain legitimacy
(Sep 9) With few junk e-mail filters supporting a protocol for verifying the source address of digital messages, spammers have adopted it themselves as a way to appear more legitimate, according to a report released on Wednesday. . . . ...

30.07.10: Review: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Second Edition
(Jun 8) If you've ever wondered what a "buffer overflow" was, or how a "denial of service" attack works beyond just a basic understanding, then there is no better book that will help you to delve into the nitty-gritty than Hacking: The Art of Exploitat ...

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 964-1: Likewise Open vulnerability
(Jul 26) Matt Weatherford discovered that Likewise Open did not correctly checkpassword expiration for the local-provider account. A local attacker couldexploit this to log into a system they would otherwise not have access to. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 957-2: Firefox and Xulrunner vulnerability
(Jul 26) USN-957-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Firefox and Xulrunner. Daniel Holbertdiscovered that the fix for CVE-2010-1214 introduced a regression which didnot properly initialize a plugin pointer. If a user were tricked intoviewing a malicious site, a remote attacker could use this to crash thebrowser or run arbitrary code as the user invoking the program. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 958-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities
(Jul 26) Several flaws were discovered in the browser engine of Thunderbird. If auser were tricked into viewing malicious content, a remote attacker coulduse this to crash Thunderbird or possibly run arbitrary code as the userinvoking the program. (CVE-2010-1211, CVE-2010-1212) [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 930-4: Firefox and Xulrunner vulnerabilities
(Jul 23) USN-930-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Firefox and Xulrunner. This updateprovides the corresponding updates for Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10, along withadditional updates affecting Firefox 3.6.6. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 927-8: Thunderbird update
(Jul 23) USN-927-1 fixed vulnerabilities in NSS. This update provides theThunderbird update to use the new NSS. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 957-1: Firefox and Xulrunner vulnerabilities
(Jul 23) Several flaws were discovered in the browser engine of Firefox. If a userwere tricked into viewing a malicious site, a remote attacker could usethis to crash the browser or possibly run arbitrary code as the userinvoking the program. (CVE-2010-1208, CVE-2010-1209, CVE-2010-1211,CVE-2010-1212) [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 927-7: nspr update
(Jul 23) USN-927-4 fixed vulnerabilities in NSS. This update provides the NSPRneeded to use the new NSS. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 940-2: Kerberos vulnerability
(Jul 21) USN-940-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Kerberos. This update provides thecorresponding updates for Ubuntu 10.04. [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 961-1: Ghostscript vulnerabilities
(Jul 13) David Srbecky discovered that Ghostscript incorrectly handled debuglogging. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a craftedPDF file, an attacker could cause a denial of service or execute arbitrarycode with privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue onlyaffected Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10. The default compiler options for [More...]

30.07.10: Ubuntu: 960-1: libpng vulnerabilities
(Jul 8) It was discovered that libpng did not properly handle certain malformed PNGimages. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a craftedPNG file, an attacker could cause a denial of service or possibly executearbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program.(CVE-2010-1205) [More...]