February 2020 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

war story: power failure makes CentOS system unbootable
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Sep '22

30 Sep '22

tl;dr / spoiler: change fstab so that /boot/efi is not automatically mounted. See the recommendation at the end of this message. My gateway computer is a little PC running CentOS. It does not come back after a power failure. The reason (as best I can tell) is interesting and I think that I have a fix. My system is UEFI. It boots from a UEFI system partition, known as /boot/efi to Linux. If this gets corrupted, it won't boot. It is a VFAT partition. On my gateway (a Zotac Zbox RI321, a cute little box with two ethernet ports), the UEFI firmware apparently won't boot if the dirty bit is set in the system partition. CentOS normally runs with /boot/efi mounted. So when the system isn't shut down cleanly, the dirty bit will be on. Consequence: the system is not going to boot after a power failure. Odd observation 1: if I put a live Fedora 25 USB stick in the system and try to boot in this otherwise-unbootable state, CentOS boots from the main disk. So this really looks like a firmware bug/quirk. Odd observation 2: fsck doesn't seem to automatically fix the system partition. Once CentOS 7 booted, I dismounted /boot/efi and did an fsck on it. $ sudo fsck /dev/sda1 fsck from util-linux 2.23.2 fsck.fat 3.0.20 (12 Jun 2013) 0x25: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt. 1) Remove dirty bit 2) No action ? 1 Leaving filesystem unchanged. /dev/sda1: 16 files, 2420/51145 clusters Googling got me to <https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50917> In particular, this advice seemed quite good: ==== recommendation ==== Two other changes I recommend for UEFI systems, to each OS's /etc/fstab. - For the /boot/efi mountpoint, add the mount options x-systemd.automount,noauto - Change fs_passno (last column) to a 1 or 2; the canonical fstab instructions suggest 2, but systemd treats 1 and 2 as the same. The first change means the EFI System partition will not be automatically read-write mounted at boot time; it's a bad idea this is the default because it puts the ESP at risk especially if ther are crashes, FAT has no journal and will therefore always be marked dirty in such a case; no other UEFI OS mounts the ESP by default. Second, if anything tries to access /boot/efi (read or write), systemd will automatically mount it, and because of the fs_passno 1 or 2, it will fsck it first and that fixes and clears the dirty bit in case it's set. Right now without these changes, it's just a matter of having the right number and bad timing of crashes to render the EFI System partition corrupt.

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security threats of Open Source
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 25 Nov '20

25 Nov '20

<https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-spots-malicious-npm-package-stealin…> This article list six cases of malware contributed to npm (the repo for sharing node.js and JavaScript source). How many undetected cases exist? I've alway pretended that Linux distros vet their code. I'm not sure how true that is. Probably the greatest protection is the time delay between contribution and distribution. I wonder what can be done about this problem. I've said so at our meetings a few times too. Of course the problem is worse with closed source: it is impossible to audit the source. But closed source might have fewer contributors and more supervision. Of course much closed soure is built on top of open source and thuse all its weakness

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ot: perhaps, cell phone batteries?
by Karen Lewellen 28 Feb '20

28 Feb '20

Hi all, Has been rather a few years since I needed to buy a cell phone battery. The phone in question is from a manufacturer that I know tellus carries, although it is not with tellus. My hope is for an inexpensive avenue, refurbished for example, as I do not use the phone in a high volume fashion. Thoughts for in town locations for the buy? I doubt I could do this on line. thanks, Kare

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Re: [GTALUG] Microsoft Brings Defender Antivirus for Linux, Coming Soon for Android and iOS
by Don Tai 28 Feb '20

28 Feb '20

Do you really need AV on linux? Last time i tried to hack any linux system with hacker software such as Metasploit I found Linux extremely robust, with very few vulnerabilities and exploits, all of which I could not get to work. I don't trust MS at all, and would not trust them enough to install this AV. Am I too suspicious? Don On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 at 02:44, ac via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > On Thu, 27 Feb 2020 16:50:07 -0500 > Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 03:16:37PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote: > > > Well, they've certainly changed since Bill & Steve left. After > > > all, they're now including Linux with Windows 10. > > > > Not included. You have to enable support and then download it from > > the windows store. Almost included but not quite. > > > and... Outlook.com does not manage their abuse, they consider > themselves a "bullet proof" spammer service, more so for their > corporate clients whom frequently send out bulk email from noreply@ and > with no verification of submitted email addresses. > > Microsoft = Evil > > Even though Google revoked their policy of "do not evil" at least they > do not spam and they manage their abuse effectively. > > my 1c > > Andre > > > > --- > Post to this mailing list talk(a)gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >

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Microsoft Brings Defender Antivirus for Linux, Coming Soon for Android and iOS
by James Knott 28 Feb '20

28 Feb '20

I came across this today in another list. https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/windows-defender-atp-linux-android.html This certainly isn't your father's Microsoft!

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+ Raspberry Pi's Raspbian now supports Orca screen reader.
by Karen Lewellen 27 Feb '20

27 Feb '20

Any pi users here able to advise about this setup? My concern is what applications might not work, as a deciding factor to bother. Conversation on a list focused on adaptive technology and the pi, is not yielding much information on, so thought I might ask here instead. The Raspberry Pi team reached out to an accessibility charity known as AbilityNet to help evaluate the Raspberry Pi desktop environment for improvements. Raspbian now supports Orca screen reader. Orca is compatible with most applications that use GTK or Qt toolkits. Other toolkits aren't compatible and may or may not work. You can also find a new pixel doubling feature in the Raspberry Pi Configuration menu, improving screen visibility for visually impaired persons. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspbian-buster-gets-new-features-in-big-… thoughts? Karen

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting on Tuesday, March 10 at 07:30 PM
by hi＠gtalug.org 27 Feb '20

27 Feb '20

<https://gtalug.org/meeting/2020-03/> # Ham Radio with a side of Linux with Alan Heighway Alan Heighway will be covering the basics of Ham radio and how the Linux community has embraced it from the start. Alan will also be showing a selection of Linux applications pertaining to Ham Radio, hopefully with some demonstrations... ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <https://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23447525> ## Schedule * 6:00 pm - Please discuss on the general mailing list (i.e. <talk(a)gtalug.org>) where you want to go for dinner. * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. * 9:00 pm - After each meeting, a group of GTALUGers move to The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socialising. # Code of Conduct We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardise the participation of any person in the community. The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honoured by everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims affiliation or participates directly. It applies to activities online or offline. We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open. Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here: <https://gtalug.org/about/code-of-conduct/>. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of Conduct please contact the GTALUG Board @ <board(a)gtalug.org>. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Call for proposals for April 14, 2020
by Alex Volkov 25 Feb '20

25 Feb '20

Hello Everyone, We don't yet anything planned for Tuesday April 14, 2020 and we are looking for proposals for 15, 30 and 45 minute presentations. If you have something in mind, please send us an email at speakers(a)gtalug.org Alex.

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Adding all users to the "disk" group: bad idea, or terrible idea?
by Stewart C. Russell 22 Feb '20

22 Feb '20

So I'm working with a developer making a simple cross-platform graphical program to write Raspberry Pi OS images to SD card. This is meant for beginners to use. The developer is adamant that their program doesn't need to run under 'sudo' but that every user should be added to the disk group instead. This means that every user can write directly to system disk devices at any time. The Debian-based systems I use don't add regular users to "disk". Is it reasonable/common for regular users to be set up this way? cheers Stewart $(export HAVE_ACCIDENTALLY_OVERWRITTEN_ROOT=1) Russell

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LibrePlanet Canada Registration (keynote from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle)
by Stephen Paul Weber 21 Feb '20

21 Feb '20

Hello all! As previously mentioned, LibrePlanet is coming via satellite this year to southern Ontario. March 14th and 15th. Registration is open: https://2020.libreplanet.ca/register/ and is pay-what-you-want. We don't want finances to prevent anyone from attending. The Free Software Foundation has confirmed Brewster Kahle (founder of the Internet Archive) as a keynote speaker, with announcement of more speakers coming soon. Hope to see some of you there! Let me know if there are any questions.

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