- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

odd connector for parallel printer port
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Sep '20

10 Sep '20

I just noticed that the latest printer that we bought (Brother HO-L5000D) came with an odd cable (matching an odd connector on the printer). On one end, there was the conventional-since-the-IBM-PC DB25M connector. On the other end, there was a 3-row, 26-pin mail D connector. I don't remember seeing this connector before. When did this get invented? I don't think that I've noticed it before. (Parallel ports for printers are pretty much replaced by USB these days. I do have antique computers that are pre-USB but I don't print from them.) Why did this get invented? Was this to prevent serial/parallel confusion? I do remember being annoyed at IBM selecting the DB25 instead of using the industry-standard "Centronics" connector because serial and parallel could so easily get mixed up. I will probably save the cable forever. I'll probably never use it. If I need to, I'll probably be unable to find where I've stored it.

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Meeting tonight
by Alex Volkov 08 Sep '20

08 Sep '20

Sorry everyone, I forgot about the meeting. Jitsi server is now working the meeting room is here -- https://jitsi.flamy.ca/GTALUG

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Meeting should be on, but not yet :-(
by Christopher Browne 08 Sep '20

08 Sep '20

Due to confusion, our Jitsi server isn't up right now, and our Usual Suspects for Zoom addresses haven't responded yet... However, hopefully the following zoom address https://zoom.us/j/6476576575 may function enough to get us going... -- 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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Seeding of some September discussion ideas
by Christopher Browne 08 Sep '20

08 Sep '20

The September "etherpad" has been seeded with things that I saw this month that struck me as interesting... https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/gtalug-september Please, by all means, add more -- 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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colocation downtown. Shared rack, non-profit price. Toronto Free-Net.
by Scott Sullivan 02 Sep '20

02 Sep '20

Passing this along for my friends at the Toronto Freenet. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: colocation downtown. Shared rack, non-profit price. Toronto Free-Net. Toronto Free-Net is moving its servers to bigger digs and can offer colocation in a *shared* rack, at the premier carrier hotel, downtown. TFN is a non-profit, so price is *extremely* reasonable. Starting at: 1 rack unit = $100 setup + $100/month +HST Contact Iain: * voice: 416 665 6259 * email: tfna-colo at the Toronto Free-Net (torfree.net) EOF -- Scott Sullivan

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Updating my mailserver
by William Witteman 01 Sep '20

01 Sep '20

I have run a mailserver for my domains for a long time. I have not thought about its ability to send outbound mail for a while though, and my logs tell me what my experience already suggested - it cannot send email to Gmail (and probably lots of other places). Can anyone recommend a tutorial for setting up my mailserver (I'm using postfix on Debian) so that Gmail and others will accept my mails? I am pretty sure there is reverse DNS that I don't have set up, but there are probably other details I don't know about too. Thanks!

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Generic SSH question.
by Alvin Starr 31 Aug '20

31 Aug '20

Does anybody know of a software package or service that does for SSH the kind of thing that teamviewer does? I run into linux systems that are behind firewalls and trying to bounce through some windows box using teamviewer or other screen sharing app is getting real old. -- Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin(a)netvel.net ||

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for multi-hop ssh/scp: option "ProxyJump"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 31 Aug '20

31 Aug '20

I'm away from home, regularly accessing my computers at home. Easy: ssh into a gateway machine and ssh from there into the internal machine of my choice. Nested ssh sessions. It gets a little more annoying when I want to transfer a file. The new-to-me ssh/scp option "ProxyJump" handles this conveniently. Consider the example of transferring a file "f" from machine "home" through machine "gw" to machine "away", all done from an xterm on "away". Note: because "away" is behind NAT, "gw" cannot scp to it. Note: -A enables ssh-agent to avoid some manual authentication Note: things become more complicated if f has slashes. [away] $ ssh -A gw [gw] $ scp -p home:f . [gw] $ exit [away] $ scp -p gw:f . [away] $ ssh -A gw [gw] $ rm f [gw] $ exit This can be simplified because the ssh command allows shell commands as arguments. That's not a habit I've developed. [away] $ ssh -A gw scp -p home:f . [away] $ scp -p gw:f . [away] $ ssh -A gw rm f The ProxyJump option makes this a lot simpler: [away] $ scp -p -o 'ProxyJump gw' home:f . I have no need for more than one intermediate hop so I haven't figured out how that would work.

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Dice Keys
by Christopher Browne 30 Aug '20

30 Aug '20

Here's a cool thing I saw recently... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/08/dicekeys.html The intention of this parallels the various Bitcoin "Solid Steel Passphrase Wallet" items that were popular a year or so ago (See https://www.toughgadget.com/bitcoin-crypto-metal-recovery-seed-wallets/, https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/wallets/steel/ ) It's a case for a set of 25 dice that looks like a Boggle game set; it will generate and "record" what ought to be a Sooper Seekrut key as would be used for things like: - master key for password manager - U2F key for 2 Factor Authentication - Secret key for cryptocurrency wallet By being a set of dice with a nice plastic box to hold them securely, this is not vulnerable to various threats common to electronic devices: - EMP (for those highly worried about nuclear devices) - Water damage Of course, if all your disk drives get toasted, there might not be any data left to decrypt or systems to connect to. And plastic will melt away or burn when exposed to fire... But it's pretty cool, I'm tempted to grab a set. There's a web app: https://dicekeys.app/ It appears that this application, embedded in a single JavaScript file, runs locally, inside your browser, so that usual criticisms about it being a giant security vulnerability of sharing your key with their web site seems like it mightn't apply. How to confirm in an authoritative way that nothing is *actually* shared seems like the fun security question. -- 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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[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG Membership In These COVID-19 Times
by Christopher Browne 28 Aug '20

28 Aug '20

In most years, membership has been handled via comparatively informal in-person processes, and those that wish to support GTALUG via membership would (broadly) follow the following steps: - Grab a membership form (that Chris passed out) - Try to pass Chris a $20 bill, whereupon Chris would say "take it back, and give it to me once you fill in the form" - Fill in the form, and hand it to Chris along with payment - Chris returns a few minutes later with a membership card As GTALUG is meeting virtually, these days, this process cannot occur as described. For those wishing to support GTALUG via membership, two routes are suggested: - The Cheque is In The Mail :: Send a payment via Canada Post. - Interac eTransfer :: Send funds from your bank to ours To ensure that membership has been addressed for voting at the 2020 AGM on October 13th, it is imperative to handle this earlier than that, as mail can take several days for delivery. Alas, either way, this imposes more bureaucracy and some more cost than we have been accustomed to. - Payment via check using Canada Post :: In this case, please send a cheque, made out to "GTALUG", in the amount of $20, along with the identification information indicated below, and please send to the following address: GTALUG 914-10 Carabob Court Toronto, ON M1T 3N5 - Interac eTransfer :: In this case, three pieces of information are critical, and must be shared both with your bank as well as with GTALUG. - Recipient :: The recipient email address is membership(a)gtalug.org - Security Question :: The content of this is not too important; "Random Value" or "Sooper Sekrut Data" are fine values. - Security Answer :: It is suggested that a random value be used. For instance, 215db45eb7f54e1e5907de3b50ac50ee is a value I got from passing 1K of data from /dev/random through md5sum, and that is a decent mechanism to get a relatively unguessable password. (Of course, since many people have seen that specific value, 215db45eb7f54e1e5907de3b50ac50ee, it would not be a good choice.) This security answer also needs to be emailed to the membership(a)gtalug.org address in order for us to receive the payment. - Common information :: Whichever of the above mechanisms is used for payment, please email the following membership information to membership(a)gtalug.org. Note that by longstanding policy, we do not pass your information on to outside organizations. - Name :: Your preferred name - Email :: Your preferred email address (if using Interac eTransfer, it's best to use the same address, so we know which email address to associate each security answer with) - Address :: If you are comfortable providing such - Security Answer :: If eTransfer is used, we need the Security Answer in order to actually receive funds *** Generating a random value, the Linux way Here is a script that repeatedly takes 1K of random data from /dev/random, and turns it into an md5 checksum to ensure that the value is human readable and not too long. #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do dd if=/dev/random bs=1k count=2 status=none | md5sum; done 215db45eb7f54e1e5907de3b50ac50ee - 4f8f0e3a2944c857ebc3a7a776659134 - 1a52010a29ef3b2446d532ba389f65cb - 84e6b072e2661fc88b3a7b1ed1ce5873 - ef3f10a8b634760691e2ae53a0952707 - #+END_EXAMPLE --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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