- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

distro for old machine and non-expert users
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 01 Jan '16

01 Jan '16

Machine: old P4 with 1G of RAM an 80G HDD. Was running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I'm trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS but Unity is a real pig with the ancient Intel 865G graphics. Any desktop that tries to use 3D acceleration will be awful. I strongly suspect Fedora's Gnome would be bad. Is there an easy choice? Would Mint work? The system should be self-explanatory to casual former Windows users.

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Beginner Debian Question(s)
by Peter King 01 Jan '16

01 Jan '16

I recently acquired a Roseapple Pi board, for which a system image based on Debian 8.1 "Jessie" is provided. This system image boots into an LXDE environment, with no option to boot to the console (i.e. the CLI without all the GUI stuff). I have no idea how to get it to boot to the console -- it doesn't seem to use GRUB(2) as the bootloader, so there is no menu option at boot. I tried to use sudo to get rid of lightdm, but was told that I'm not in the sudoers group, even after changing my user privileges to "Administrator". Naturally, I don't have a root password. Searching on Google generally suggests that it's way complicated now to just boot to console in Debian. That seems ridiculous. But then again, I don't understand anything about systemd or the "new" and "improved" way of doing things. Oh, and basic tools like lsusb don't seem to be installed by default. All this is exacerbated by the fact that Debian somehow doesn't recognize my wireless dongle (it uses an RTL 8192 chip), even though it's supposed to, and I have no ethernet connection to the net. I haven't been this frustrated by a linux distro in a long time. My idea of a good time is running dwm on a gentoo system, and LXDE looks like a bad knockoff of a premodern version of Windows. Any suggestions? (Apart from, "Drop the whole thing from a tall building" which has its attractions.) -- Peter King peter.king(a)utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42

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In Memoriam: Ian Murdock | Docker Blog
by James Knott 31 Dec '15

31 Dec '15

https://blog.docker.com/2015/12/ian-murdock/

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Cross-platform encrypted partition/virtual disk?
by Giles Orr 29 Dec '15

29 Dec '15

I want to have an encrypted portion of a USB stick that's accessible on Windows, Linux, and OS X. This will include lots of files, to the point that individual file encryption would seem impractical, and a partition (or encrypted virtual disk) would be the best solution. I thought "TrueCrypt!" ... but the first word that came up when I searched for it was "discontinued:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt . According to that same Wikipedia article, its successors are VeraCrypt or CipherShed: of the two, VeraCrypt seems more practical, as it actually has several public releases behind it whereas CipherShed seems like it's more of an idea than a product right now. Has anybody tried either of these? Any other solutions that people are using or would suggest for this circumstance? Thanks. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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The Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Threatens Innovation
by Stephen 27 Dec '15

27 Dec '15

Scary stuff actually. The agreement is to benefit existing corporations and stifle new initiatives. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/trans-paci… -- Stephen

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Interesting essay on filesystem consistency
by Christopher Browne 24 Dec '15

24 Dec '15

http://danluu.com/file-consistency/ I found it interesting that ReiserFS was pointed at as having amongst the best handling of errors, passing them back sensibly to applications. Also interesting was that they pointed at using SQLite as a way of mostly hiding applications from worrying about such troubles. Also entertaining was the notion of "MBox considered harmful"; makes me like MH and Maildir all the better, as they have the merit of storing a message per file, so that there's fewer concurrency issues surrounding re-opening files and rewriting them. (Possibly I'm wrong, and the problem just shifts to directory metadata access...) -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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hobbyist web hosting recommendations?
by Daniel Villarreal 22 Dec '15

22 Dec '15

I'm looking for web hosting, for my own projects... anyone have any recommendations? Thanks! Daniel Villarreal http://www.youcanlinux.org/

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting on 12th January at 7:30pm
by Myles Braithwaite 22 Dec '15

22 Dec '15

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2016-01/> # A Journeyman's Tour of Vim with Giles Orr We won't be covering i-a-h-j-k-l:wq, but instead looking at a variety of commands and plugins you may not be familiar with that can make your editor even better. This will include a discussion of neovim, colours, dealing with your vimrc, mappings, buffers and tabs, sessions, plugins, VimScript, and possibly a couple other topics. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://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 The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. # 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 jeopardize 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 honored 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: <http://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 http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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SSH Agent Forwarding
by Giles Orr 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

A couple days ago I discovered the joys of SSH agent forwarding. But with that, I discovered this warning in the man page: "Agent forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the agent's UNIX-domain socket) can access the local agent through the forwarded connection. An attacker cannot obtain key material from the agent, however they can perform operations on the keys that enable them to authenticate using the identities loaded into the agent." I've read this about five times because as far as I can tell, all it's actually saying is "you need to trust your remote system." So please correct me if I'm wrong: it's saying that IF someone on the remote system has a privilege escalation (or is root), then they can authenticate using any keys in your agent (but not get the keys). Is that correct? And today I found this: https://heipei.github.io/2015/02/26/SSH-Agent-Forwarding-considered-harmful/ He attacks with "It is meant as an easy way to connect to a host A with your SSH key and from there connect to another host B with that same key. This obviously is only needed if you cannot connect to host B directly from your workstation." I was immediately scratching my head, because my use-case is to load my keys on my workstation, then SSH to a remote host where I do git and/or ansible stuff that needs a key. I can connect to "host B" (the git host) from "my workstation," but the work is better done on "host A." With agent forwarding, I don't have to store the private key on the remote machine, or (re)load an SSH key. So I see that agent forwarding might be unwise if you don't trust the administrator or the machine is compromised (and yes, you can never be sure a machine is secure), but if you're worried about the security of the remote host, storing private keys on it and reauthenticating seems worse. Am I missing something? -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tomorrow at 7:30pm with Christopher Browne and Scott Sullivan
by Myles Braithwaite 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2015-12/> # Terminal Multiplexers and PXE Boot ## Screen, Tmux, Byobu, the Secret Terminal Brains!!! ### Christopher Browne GNU Screen has been lurking around since the 1980s, as a kind of "tiling window manager atop curses". BSD folk spawned an analogue called tmux in 2009, offering both additions and removals of functionality. Byobu offers a harmonization, and (arguably) better user experience. We'll look at some usages, use cases, and see how frequently Byobu Hollywood crashes. ## Good Bye Boot Media! (or, don't copy that boot floopy) ### Scott Sullivan A tour of how network boot/install can save you ever having to burn a DVDs or USB drive. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://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 The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. # 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 jeopardize 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 honored 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: <http://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 http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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