[SLUG] linux.conf.au 2013: Call For Proposals (closes July 6)

[Mary Gardiner]

=== linux.conf.au Call For Proposals ===

We are pleased to announce that the Call for Proposals for linux.conf.au 2013
is now open!

The conference will showcase the best of open source and community-driven
software and hardware. It will be held in Canberra at the Australian National
University from Monday 28 January to Saturday 2 February, 2013, and provides a
great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to
share their ideas and further improve their projects.

=== Important Dates ===

- Call for proposals opens: 1 June 2012
- Call for proposals closes: 6 July 2012
- Email notifications from papers committee: 28 August 2012
- Early Bird registrations open: 1 October 2012
- Conference dates: Monday 28 January to Saturday 2 February 2013

=== Information on Proposals ===

The linux.conf.au 2013 papers committee is looking for a broad range of
proposals, and will consider submissions on anything from programming and
software, to desktop, userspace, community, government, and education. There is
only one rule:

_Your proposal must be related to open source_

This year, the papers committee is going to be focused on deep technical
content, and things we think are going to really matter in the future -- that
might range from freedom and privacy to open source cloud systems or to energy
efficient server farms of the future.

However, the conference is to a large extent what the speakers make it -- if we
receive many excellent submissions on a topic, then it’s sure to be represented
at the conference. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:
- Kernel and core systems: file systems, embedded devices
- Networking: peer to peer networking, or tuning a TCP/IP stack
- Desktop: office and productivity applications, peripherals, support
- Mobile: kernel, applications, programming, challenges
- Servers: clusters and supercomputers, databases and cloud computing
- Embedded systems: constraints in storage/memory, real-time aspects, open
  hardware
- Virtualisation: benefits, challenges, management, kernel and application
  support
- Systems administration: maintaining large numbers of machines, disaster
  recovery
- Security: application security, network security, cryptography, malware,
  viruses
- Programming: programming languages, software engineering practices, testing,
  continuous integration/deployment, different development methodologies
- Modern web technologies: Open source web browsers, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript,
  web apps, accessibility
- Audio and video: video editing, VoIP, WebRTC, video player development
- Free software and free culture: licensing and Free and Open approaches
  outside software
- Free software use: home, IT, education, manufacturing, research, government
  applications

LCA is known for presentations and tutorials that are strongly technical in
nature, but proposals for presentations on other aspects of free software and
open culture, such as educational and cultural applications of open source, are
welcome.

=== Code of Conduct ===

linux.conf.au welcomes first-time and seasoned speakers from all free and open
communities - people of all ages, genders, nationalities, ethnicities,
backgrounds, religions, abilities, and walks of life. We respect and encourage
diversity at our conference.

By agreeing to present at or attend the conference, you are agreeing to abide
by the terms and conditions
(http://lca2013.linux.org.au/cor/terms_and_conditions). We expect all speakers
and delegates to have read and understood our Code of Conduct
(http://lca2013.linux.org.au/cor/code_of_conduct).

=== Format ===

This year, there are three different ways that you can present your content:
* Presentations Tutorials Miniconferences

_Presentations_

Presentations are 40 minute slots that are generally presented in lecture
format. These form the bulk of the available conference slots.

_Tutorials_

Tutorials are 90 minutes that are generally presented in a classroom format.
They should be interactive or hands-on in nature. Tutorials are expected to
have a specific learning outcome for attendees.

_Miniconferences_

Miniconfs are day-long sessions on a specific topic.  A separate CFP process
will be used to propose and select miniconfs, and will be announced publicly
soon.

For more information on miniconfs, see:
http://lca2013.linux.org.au/miniconf-cfp

=== Speaker Information ===

In recognition of the value that speakers bring to our conference, once a
proposal is accepted a speaker is entitled to:
* Free registration, which holds all of the benefits of a Professional Delegate
* Ticket Exclusive tickets to the Speakers' Dinner for the speaker and their
* immediate family One free family ticket to the Partners' Programme

If your proposal includes more than one speaker, these additional speakers are
not entitled to free registration or to any extra benefits.

linux.conf.au does not and will not pay speakers to present at the conference.

linux.conf.au is able to provide limited fina

[SLUG] Oceania Women of Open Tech launches

[Mary Gardiner]

Oceania Women of Open Tech (OWOOT) is a new group for women in open technology
in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. It has recently formed from
the local chapters of LinuxChix, but with a wider scope focussing on open
technology generally.

OWOOT welcomes all women interested in open technology, including open source,
open hardware, open data and free culture. OWOOT activities will include:
 - the Haecksen miniconference at linux.conf.au, and meetups and events at
   other conferences
 - periodic local social events
 - email and IRC forums where you can meet other women from the area who work
   with, build or use open technology

OWOOT forums are open to men to join if they wish, as long as they keep in mind
that the purpose of the group is supporting women in open tech and allowing
them to meet each other.

Find out more about OWOOT at our website: http://owoot.org/
Join the OWOOT email list and chat channel: http://owoot.org/Join
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[SLUG] Re: linux.conf.au 2012: proposals due this Friday

[Mary Gardiner]

According to Twitter, the deadline is extended to Sunday August 7.

https://twitter.com/#!/linuxconfau/status/97120557824348160
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au 2012: proposals due this Friday

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
 -

From: "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
Subject: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au now accepting Papers and Presentation 
submissions for LCA2012

Dear All,

The organisers of LCA2012 are very pleased to announce that we are now
accepting paper submissions! Papers from all areas of the Free and Open
Source world are welcome and first time speaks are highly encouraged to
submit a proposal. The Call for Papers will remain open until the 29th July
2011, after which time all submissions will be reviewed and successful
speakers notified. Once confirmed, details of talks will be added to the
conference programme, available on this site in mid to late September.

"Though there are many elements needed to run a great conference, it is the
speakers that truly make linux.conf.au such an amazing event. Being an
international conference, but one with a uniquely Australian flavour, we are
working to bring a terrific mix of both local and global speakers from
different backgrounds to Ballarat in January", says Sae Ra Germaine, LCA2012
Speakers liaison. "The wealth of talent within the FOSS community is huge
and our goal is to be a platform for bringing the newest ideas, latest
talent and best speakers to the largest audience of this type in the
country."

   - Information for potential speakers is available on the LCA2012
website
   - Our speaker liaison can also be contacted for any specific queries:
   speak...@lcaunderthestars.org.au
   - Proposal submissions can be made at
   http://linux.conf.au/programme/submit_a_paper (Need to be logged in to
   view this)

Mini-Confs

Our call for mini-conferences remains open in addition to the call for
papers. Please see the announcement
here or for more detailed
information, visit the Mini-Confs
page 
About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au (lca) is a conference about Open Source Software, including
Linux. It brings together the world's community of Linux and open source
enthusiasts who make considerable contributions to open source software.

2012 marks a significant milestone for LCA as it will be the first time the
conference has been held in an Australian regional city. The 2012 Ballarat
organising committee is excited to be hosting the open source community and
would love for you to join us in January.


Kindest Regards,


Sae Ra

---
Sae Ra Germaine
Speaker & Media Liaison
Ballarat LCA2012
*Website:* http://www.lcaunderthestars.org.au
*Twitter:* @ms_mary_mac 

- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au now accepting Papers and Presentation submissions for LCA2012

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
 -

From: "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
Subject: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au now accepting Papers and Presentation 
submissions for LCA2012

Dear All,

The organisers of LCA2012 are very pleased to announce that we are now
accepting paper submissions! Papers from all areas of the Free and Open
Source world are welcome and first time speaks are highly encouraged to
submit a proposal. The Call for Papers will remain open until the 29th July
2011, after which time all submissions will be reviewed and successful
speakers notified. Once confirmed, details of talks will be added to the
conference programme, available on this site in mid to late September.

"Though there are many elements needed to run a great conference, it is the
speakers that truly make linux.conf.au such an amazing event. Being an
international conference, but one with a uniquely Australian flavour, we are
working to bring a terrific mix of both local and global speakers from
different backgrounds to Ballarat in January", says Sae Ra Germaine, LCA2012
Speakers liaison. "The wealth of talent within the FOSS community is huge
and our goal is to be a platform for bringing the newest ideas, latest
talent and best speakers to the largest audience of this type in the
country."

   - Information for potential speakers is available on the LCA2012
website
   - Our speaker liaison can also be contacted for any specific queries:
   speak...@lcaunderthestars.org.au
   - Proposal submissions can be made at
   http://linux.conf.au/programme/submit_a_paper (Need to be logged in to
   view this)

Mini-Confs

Our call for mini-conferences remains open in addition to the call for
papers. Please see the announcement
here or for more detailed
information, visit the Mini-Confs
page 
About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au (lca) is a conference about Open Source Software, including
Linux. It brings together the world's community of Linux and open source
enthusiasts who make considerable contributions to open source software.

2012 marks a significant milestone for LCA as it will be the first time the
conference has been held in an Australian regional city. The 2012 Ballarat
organising committee is excited to be hosting the open source community and
would love for you to join us in January.


Kindest Regards,


Sae Ra

---
Sae Ra Germaine
Speaker & Media Liaison
Ballarat LCA2012
*Website:* http://www.lcaunderthestars.org.au
*Twitter:* @ms_mary_mac 

- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] 'Bridging the Gap' think tank: NGOs, government groups and the open source volunteer community

[Mary Gardiner]

Saw this on Twitter, and thought that there might be some open source
volunteers among the SLUG membership interested:

'Bridging the Gap' think tank
Saturday, May 21, 2011 from 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM (GMT+1000)

The aim of this event is to 'bridge the gap' between NGOs, government groups
and the open source volunteer community.

The intention is for members of groups such as Ushahidi, Open Street Map and
CrisisCommons to meet and connect with members of the Red Cross, State
Emergency Services and Police and Fire Services, so that in a time of crisis
the open source community can connect quickly with these crisis responders to
assist in delivering tools that they can use; as an example, to help run
information/call centres.

Location is UNSW.

More details at http://bridgingthegapthinktank.eventbrite.com/
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[SLUG] PyCon Australia (Sydney, 26–27 June) Call For Proposals

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from Richard Jones  -

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce that on the 26th and 27th of June we are running PyCon
Australia in Sydney!

  http://pycon-au.org/

We are looking for proposals for Talks on all aspects of Python programming
from novice to advanced levels; applications and frameworks, or how you
have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation.

We welcome first-time speakers; we are a community conference and we are
eager to hear about your experience. If you have friends or colleagues
who have something valuable to contribute, twist their arms to tell us
about it! Please also forward this Call for Proposals to anyone that you
feel may be interested.

To find out more go to the official Call for Proposals page here:

   http://pycon-au.org/2010/conference/proposals/

The deadline for proposal submission is the 29th of April. Proposal
acceptance will be announced on the 12th of May.


See you in Sydney in June!

 Richard Jones
 PyCon AU Program Chair

- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] International LCA speaker in Sydney for dinner Friday night

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

Mark Smith, one of the founders of the dreamwidth.org project, who is
giving a talk with co-founder Denise Paolucci at LCA[1], is in Sydney on
Friday night and looking to meet up, just in case anyone's interested.

He's got details at http://mark.dreamwidth.org/18446.html

-Mary

[1] http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/schedule/view_talk/50329
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[SLUG] Sending XOs to Wellington

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

Some people may remember that a lot of OLPC XOs were handed out at
linux.conf.au 2008 with the idea being that if we didn't build something
awesome on them we'd pass them on.

I suspect my household are not the only people who have one sitting
around in their house and not hacking on it and feeling a bit guilty
whenever we look at it.

The enthusiastic OLPC Wellington Testers (in NZ) don't have enough XOs
over there and are interested in getting more. We've decided to send our
XO to join them.

If anyone else in Sydney would like to ship more XOs in the same
package, please let me know (off-list) by October 9th and we'll see if
we can't get them together and save on shipping. (If you're elsewhere in
Australia and also want to send yours, I can pass on an NZ address to
send to or you could take it to LCA if you're going.)

NOTE: there are periodic OLPC Friends hackfests in Sydney too, so before
deciding to send your own XO kiwi-wards, consider joining their announce
list at
http://lists.olpcfriends.org/mailman/listinfo/olpcfriends-announce or
asking on http://lists.olpcfriends.org/mailman/listinfo/olpcfriends if
someone has a use for yours. Ours is heading to NZ because they asked so
nicely.

-Mary

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[SLUG] Internet Censorship forum in Sydney tomorrow night (8th Sept)

[Mary Gardiner]

Saw this on the Electronic Frontiers Australia blog and thought a few
people here might be interested:



EFA Board Member Geordie Guy will be taking part in a forum on Internet
Censorship entitled “Cyberhate? Censorship on the Internet” at NSW
Parliament House tomorrow, Tuesday the 8th September at 6pm. The event
is hosted by Fellowship of the Round Table:

Our next Forum will be held Tuesday September 8th. again in the Jubilee
Room Parliament House, at 6pm -8.30pm. The Topic – ‘Cyberhate?
Censorship on the Internet‘.

Each speaker will talk for maximum 20 minutes and treat the topic as
he/she chooses.
Entry: $20 – Students $10 – includes light Supper before Speakers begin
Your questions from the floor will be welcome when all four guest
Speakers have concluded.

Our 4 provocative guest Speakers for this evening will be:
Mr. Geordie Guy – Spokesperson Electronic Frontiers Australia
Mr. Jim Wallace – Managing Director The Australian Christian Lobby
Ms. Fiona Patton – Convenor of the Australian Sex Party
Dr. John Kaye MLC – Member of The Greens

Enquiries: Phone: 0404 457453
Email: edi...@youthmatrix.com
Ring/Email to reserve your seat – Payment available at the door but
seats are limited.

http://www.efa.org.au/2009/09/07/tuesday-forum-on-internet-censorship-in-sydney/
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au 2010: extension of CFP deadline to 31 July

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi everyone:

The linux.conf.au deadline is now on the 31 July at 0500 UTC (1700 New
Zealand time). Other times around the world can be found at
http://tinyurl.com/lca10cfp

---

Announcement from http://www.lca2010.org.nz/media/news/65

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Friday 24 July 2009 – The LCA2010 Organising
Committee have been overwhelmed by the numbers and quality of the papers
submitted to linux.conf.au so far!

The success of the papers so far has put us in a generous mood. So we've
decided to give all you slackers out there an extension on the Call for
Papers by one week!

Call for Papers Now Closing: Friday 31 July 2009 at 17:00 NZST

Remember, to increase your chances of acceptance, check out the Papers
Info[1] page on our website before submitting your paper.

[1] http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/papers_info
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[SLUG] Re: White noise at the end of a WAV file that only Audacity can't see

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2009-07-21, Erik de Castro Lopo  wrote:
> It you post the output of:
>
> sndfile-info 
>
> I can confirm this.


[From the WAV file produced by ffmpeg]

$ /usr/bin/sndfile-info 01\ Burned.wav 

Version : libsndfile-1.0.17


File : 01 Burned.wav
Length : 74382044
RIFF : 74382036
WAVE
fmt  : 16
  Format: 0x1 => WAVE_FORMAT_PCM
  Channels  : 2
  Sample Rate   : 44100
  Block Align   : 4
  Bit Width : 16
  Bytes/sec : 176400
data : 74382000
End


Sample Rate : 44100
Frames  : 18595500
Channels: 2
Format  : 0x00010002
Sections: 1
Seekable: TRUE
Duration: 00:07:01.666
Signal Max  : 32717 (-0.01 dB)

> Recent versions of sndfile-convert (>= 1.0.18 I think) will correctly
> read the WAV file and create a flac file by doing:
>
>sndfile-convert a.wav a.flac.

I backported 1.0.20 to Ubuntu Jaunty (from the Ubuntu Karmic source
packages) and unfortunately there is still a brief burst of noise at the
end of the resulting flac file.

So it looks like the problem is that there really *is* white-noise at
the end of the WAV file (Audacity does show it, finally, when I zoom in
enough), rather than that some metadata is being misinterpreted. That
would mean the problem is in the Open implementations of ALAC decoders.

-Mary

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[SLUG] Reminder: linux.conf.au 2010 Call For Papers closing soon!

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from "linux.conf.au Announcements"
 -

From: "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:07:36 +1200
To: lca-annou...@lists.linux.org.au
Subject: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au Call for Papers are now open!

=== linux.conf.au Call For Papers ===

linux.conf.au ( http://www.lca2010.org.nz ) is pleased to announce the
opening of its Call for Papers for the coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010! 

LCA2010 will be held from Monday 18 January 2010 to Saturday 23 January
2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.

linux.conf.au isn't just a Linux conference. It is a technical
conference about Free and Open Source Software, held annually in
Australasia since 2001 - covering everything from the Linux Kernel and
the BSDs to OpenOffice.org, from networking to audio-visual magic, from
hardware hacks to Creative Commons.


=== Important Dates ===

 Call for Papers opens: Monday 29 June 2009
 Call for Papers closes: Friday 24 July 2009
 Email Notifications from Papers Committee: Early September 2009
 Registrations open: Mid September 2009
 Conference Dates: Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January 2010


=== Information on Papers ===

The LCA2010 Papers Committee is looking for a broad range of papers
spanning everything from programming and software to desktop and
userspace to community, government and education but there is one
essential:

  The core of your paper must relate to open source in some way,
  i.e., if it's a paper about software then the software has to
  be licensed under an Open Source license.

The LCA2010 Papers Committee welcome proposals for Papers on the
following topics:
* Kernel and system topics such as filesystems and embedded devices
* Networking topics such as peer to peer networking, or tuning a
  TCP/IP stack
* Desktop topics such as office and productivity applications,
  mobile devices, peripherals, crypto & security and viruses and
  other malware
* Server topics such as clusters and other supercomputers,
  databases and grid computing
* Systems administration topics such as maintaining large numbers
  of machines and disaster recovery
* Programming topics such as software engineering practices and
  test driven development
* Free Software and Free Culture topics, including licencing and
  Free and Open approaches outside software
* Free Software usage topics, including home, IT, education,
  manufacturing, research and government usage.

Most presentations and tutorials will be technical in nature, but
proposals for presentations on other aspects of Free Software and Free
Culture, such as educational and cultural aspects are welcome.

LCA2010 is pleased to invite proposals for three types of papers:
* Presentation -  45 minutes
* Tutorials - 1 hour and 45 minutes (short)
* Tutorials - 3 hours and 30 minutes (long)

Presentations are 45 minute slots (including questions) that are
typically a one-way lecture from you to the audience - the typical
conference presentation.  These form the bulk of the available
conference slots.

Tutorials are either 1 hour and 45 minutes, or 3 hours and 30 minutes
in length, and work best when they are interactive or hands-on in
nature.  Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for
attendees.

To increase the number of people that can view your talk, LCA2010 may
video the talks and make them publicly available after LCA2010. When
submitting your proposal you will be asked whether materials relating
to your paper can be released under a Creative Commons ShareALike
License.

For more information, see:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/papers_info

=== About linux.conf.au ===

linux.conf.au is one of the world's best conferences for free and open
source software! The coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010, will be held at the
Wellington Convention Centre in Wellington, New Zealand from Monday 18
January to Saturday 23 January 2010. LCA2010 is fun, informal and
seriously technical, bringing together Free and Open Source developers,
users and community champions from around the world. LCA2010 is the
second time linux.conf.au has been held in New Zealand, with the first
being Dunedin in 2006.

For more information see: http://www.lca2010.org.nz/


=== About Linux Australia ===

Linux Australia is the peak body for Linux User Groups around
Australia, and as such represents approximately 5000 Australian Linux
users and developers. Linux Australia facilitates the organisation of
this international Free Software conference in a different Australasian
city each year.

For more information see: http://www.linux.org.au/


=== Emperor Penguin Sponsors ===

LCA2010 is proud to acknowledge the support of our Emperor Penguin
Sponsor, InternetNZ.

For more information see: http://www.internetnz.org.nz/


=== Papers Enquiries ===

 LCA2010 Papers Committee
 Email: pap...@lca2010.org.nz

-- 
Andrew Ruthven
LCA2010 - Director

PO Box 11-682|  linux.conf.au 20

[SLUG] Re: White noise at the end of a WAV file that only Audacity can't see

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> 3. Think "oh well, I guess I can edit the white noise off with
>Audacity!"
> 
>Open WAV file in Audacity, discover that the white noise is not there
>in Audacity (not in the waveform, not present when I use Audacity itself
>to play it back)

Ah, it is there, but it's extremely short, much shorter than played by
the other players. So presumably this is a problem with the ALAC
decoders.

-Mary
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[SLUG] White noise at the end of a WAV file that only Audacity can't see

[Mary Gardiner]

I am trying to re-encode some music files from Apple Lossless to FLAC[1]
and there is a very short burst of white noise at the end of the file
that every music player *except* Audacity can see.

Here's what I am doing.

1. Convert the ALAC music files to WAV (I was originally going straight
   to FLAC, but tried to cut some steps out in order to figure out which
   step in the chain was producing the white noise).

   Either of these tools produce the same effect:

   alac-decoder -f output.wav input.m4a
   ffmpeg -i input.m4a output.wav

2. Listen to the WAV files using any of the following tools:
   - totem
   - Squeezebox/Squeezecenter
   - Rhythmbox

   All of them render about 1/4 second or so of white noise at the very
   end of the playback. Further, this is preserved by "flac" when I
   convert the WAV file to FLAC.

3. Think "oh well, I guess I can edit the white noise off with
   Audacity!"

   Open WAV file in Audacity, discover that the white noise is not there
   in Audacity (not in the waveform, not present when I use Audacity itself
   to play it back)

4. Think "oh well, it's the least automatable setup ever, but if
   Audacity doesn't render the white noise, I can at least use it to
   export to FLAC!"

   Do so, and discover that the resulting FLAC files still have the
   white noise at the end when played in totem/Squeezecenter/Rhythmbox.

I've also had a friend with Apple hardware (an iPod) play the original
ALAC files and he reports that they do not contain a burst of white
noise at the end.

So I am out of ideas: does anyone know what the white noise is, why
Audacity can't see it and thus let me edit it off but still renders it,
or any tools that will allow me to produce FLAC files without a very
annoying burst of static at the end? 

-Mary

[1] I have Apple Lossless files because that's the only lossless format
that The Dandy Warhols are selling The Dandy Warhols Are Sound in.
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[SLUG] NZ PyCon (Python conference) call for proposals now open

[Mary Gardiner]

Kiwi PyCon 2009 http://nz.pycon.org/ is an independent, community-run,
community-controlled and not-for-profit conference dedicated to the Python
programming language, Python applications, toolkits and frameworks. It also
features social events and a chance to meet fellow Python users. It is
organised by the New Zealand Python User Group.

Kiwi PyCon 2009 will be taking place at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator in
Christchurch on the week end from the 7th through 8th November 2009. We are
looking for Talks, Tutorials, Lightning Talks, Demos, Open Spaces and lots of
hall way interaction. To submit a talk, please visit our submissions page at
http://nz.pycon.org/submit-talk

Important Dates

* Submission deadline of proposals:
  SUN, 2 August 2009
  (But the sooner the better!)

* Acceptance notification:
  SUN, 20 September 2009

* Deadline for handouts and camera ready paper:
  SUN, 11 October 2009

* The Event:
  7-8 November 2009 

http://nzpug.org/KiwiPyCon/CallForProposals
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au Call for Papers is now open!

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
 -

From: "linux.conf.au Announcements" 
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:07:36 +1200
To: lca-annou...@lists.linux.org.au
Subject: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au Call for Papers are now open!

=== linux.conf.au Call For Papers ===

linux.conf.au ( http://www.lca2010.org.nz ) is pleased to announce the
opening of its Call for Papers for the coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010! 

LCA2010 will be held from Monday 18 January 2010 to Saturday 23 January
2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.

linux.conf.au isn't just a Linux conference. It is a technical
conference about Free and Open Source Software, held annually in
Australasia since 2001 - covering everything from the Linux Kernel and
the BSDs to OpenOffice.org, from networking to audio-visual magic, from
hardware hacks to Creative Commons.


=== Important Dates ===

 Call for Papers opens: Monday 29 June 2009
 Call for Papers closes: Friday 24 July 2009
 Email Notifications from Papers Committee: Early September 2009
 Registrations open: Mid September 2009
 Conference Dates: Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January 2001


=== Information on Papers ===

The LCA2010 Papers Committee is looking for a broad range of papers
spanning everything from programming and software to desktop and
userspace to community, government and education but there is one
essential:

  The core of your paper must relate to open source in some way,
  i.e., if it's a paper about software then the software has to
  be licensed under an Open Source license.

The LCA2010 Papers Committee welcome proposals for Papers on the
following topics:
* Kernel and system topics such as filesystems and embedded devices
* Networking topics such as peer to peer networking, or tuning a
  TCP/IP stack
* Desktop topics such as office and productivity applications,
  mobile devices, peripherals, crypto & security and viruses and
  other malware
* Server topics such as clusters and other supercomputers,
  databases and grid computing
* Systems administration topics such as maintaining large numbers
  of machines and disaster recovery
* Programming topics such as software engineering practices and
  test driven development
* Free Software and Free Culture topics, including licencing and
  Free and Open approaches outside software
* Free Software usage topics, including home, IT, education,
  manufacturing, research and government usage.

Most presentations and tutorials will be technical in nature, but
proposals for presentations on other aspects of Free Software and Free
Culture, such as educational and cultural aspects are welcome.

LCA2010 is pleased to invite proposals for three types of papers:
* Presentation -  45 minutes
* Tutorials - 1 hour and 45 minutes (short)
* Tutorials - 3 hours and 30 minutes (long)

Presentations are 45 minute slots (including questions) that are
typically a one-way lecture from you to the audience - the typical
conference presentation.  These form the bulk of the available
conference slots.

Tutorials are either 1 hour and 45 minutes, or 3 hours and 30 minutes
in length, and work best when they are interactive or hands-on in
nature.  Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for
attendees.

To increase the number of people that can view your talk, LCA2010 may
video the talks and make them publicly available after LCA2010. When
submitting your proposal you will be asked whether materials relating
to your paper can be released under a Creative Commons ShareALike
License.

For more information, see:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/papers_info

=== About linux.conf.au ===

linux.conf.au is one of the world's best conferences for free and open
source software! The coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010, will be held at the
Wellington Convention Centre in Wellington, New Zealand from Monday 18
January to Saturday 23 January 2010. LCA2010 is fun, informal and
seriously technical, bringing together Free and Open Source developers,
users and community champions from around the world. LCA2010 is the
second time linux.conf.au has been held in New Zealand, with the first
being Dunedin in 2006.

For more information see: http://www.lca2010.org.nz/


=== About Linux Australia ===

Linux Australia is the peak body for Linux User Groups around
Australia, and as such represents approximately 5000 Australian Linux
users and developers. Linux Australia facilitates the organisation of
this international Free Software conference in a different Australasian
city each year.

For more information see: http://www.linux.org.au/


=== Emperor Penguin Sponsors ===

LCA2010 is proud to acknowledge the support of our Emperor Penguin
Sponsor, InternetNZ.

For more information see: http://www.internetnz.org.nz/


=== Papers Enquiries ===

 LCA2010 Papers Committee
 Email: pap...@lca2010.org.nz

-- 
Andrew Ruthven
LCA2010 - Director

PO Box 11-682|  linux.conf.au 2

[SLUG] Reminder: OSDC 2009 (Brisbane, November) Call for Papers (closing Tue 30)

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from Stephen Thorne  -

From: Stephen Thorne 
Subject: OSDC 2009 Call for Papers

G'day,

I'm please to announce that the call for papers for OSDC 2009 is
officially opened. I would like to invite you to submit a paper and do
a talk at our conference.

This conference is a grassroots style conference designed by developers
for developers.  We're planning to cover Perl, Python, Ruby PHP and Open
Source operating systems.  If you'd like us to cover something else as
well that is Open Source themed, please feel free.
 
The Call for Papers can be found at:
 http://2009.osdc.com.au/call-for-papers

The important dates are:
Call for Papers Closes  30 June, 2009
Proposal acceptance 20 July, 2009
Accepted paper submissions  14 September, 2009
OSDC 2009 Main Conference!  25th to 27th November, 2009 

OSDC 2009 will be held at the Bardon Conference Center in Brisbane this
year. This is a fantastic venue a short drive from the Brisbane CBD,
totally surrounded by lush greenery.

-- 
Regards,
Stephen Thorne

- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] Australian Internet filtering talk at CSIRO (Macquarie campus)

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

I thought this might potentially be of interest to SLUG members. Bjorn
Landfeldt, the speaker, was part of the team that conducted the feasibility
study into Internet filtering for the Howard government.

It will be streamed on the web.

- Forwarded message from Andrew Lampert  -

From: Andrew Lampert 
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 17:34:07 +1000 (EST)
To: Hail Seminars 
Subject: HAIL Seminar (16th June): Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt,
University of Sydney

  H.A.I.L. Seminar series
  CSIRO ICT Centre
   http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/


Title:  Do we simply accept the Australian Internet filtering scheme
or do we need to ask hard questions?


Speaker:Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt
School of Information Technologies
University of Sydney

Date:   Tuesday 16th June 2009 at 11am

Location:   CSIRO ICT Centre,
Building E6B, Macquarie University.

See  for details.

Video:  We usually stream live video of seminars.

At the seminar time (see above), point your browser at:
  

Slides: http://www.ict.csiro.au/hail/Abstracts/2009/BjornLandfeldt.htm

Where possible, we make slides available prior to the seminar at the
above URL.

Abstract

The Australian government is currently planning to introduce mandatory Internet
content filtering. The move would clearly set Australia aside from all other
democratic nations in the world. The initial purpose of this scheme was to
protect Australian children from accessing unsuitable material such as child
pornography.

Even though there is widespread consensus in society that such material is
undesirable and potentially harmful, the issue of filtering is extremely
complicated and it is far from evident that the proposed scheme will achieve
its goal. In addition, over the past few months evidence has been presented
indicating that the side effects of such filtering could have severe negative
impact on society.

Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt was part of a team that studied the
feasibility of implementation of Internet filtering at the ISPs. The report was
commissioned by the Howard government and handed to the current minister in
charge of this issue, Senator Stephen Conroy.

In this talk, Professor Landfeldt will detail some of the major difficulties
associated with ISP level content filtering, some of the possible side effects
and discuss why such filtering may not be effective. He will also give examples
of the many difficult moral questions such filtering inevitably raises and
demonstrate the need for a comprehensive public debate an the issue before
legislation and implementation takes place.


Short resume

Professor Landfeldt was born and raised in Sweden where he studied electrical
engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In parallel with
his studies he also ran a communication systems consulting company. After
moving to Australia he completed a PhD in telecommunications at UNSW, before
moving back to Europe and working for Ericsson Research, Networks and Systems,
for 2 years. During his time with Ericsson, Professor Landfeldt worked on
system aspects of content adaptation and filtering, mainly in cellular
networks. He returned to Australia in 2001 as a CISCO Senior Lecturer in
Networking at University of Sydney. He has been with the University of Sydney
since then and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008.

Professor Landfeldt has published over 80 publications in international
journals and conferences on different issues in computer networks and he also
holds over 10 patents in this area. He is also an associate editor for two
international journals, a frequent guest editor, technical program chair or
technical program member for international IEEE and ACM conferences and
symposia. He is also a frequently invited speaker to industry events.



The CSIRO HAIL Seminar Series
http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/

Contacts:   Andrew Lampert
Address:CSIRO HAIL Seminars,
c/o Andrew Lampert,
PO Box 76
Epping NSW 1710

Phone:  (02) 9372 4702
Email:  andrew.lamp...@csiro.au


- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] Re: Web hosting recommendations

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2009-05-12, Mary Gardiner  wrote:
> For a price: say ballpark AU$40 a year at most.

Thinko alert: should be per MONTH.

Hopefully that will improve the recommendations, and apologies for the
confusion.

-Mary

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[SLUG] Re: Web hosting recommendations

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2009-05-12, Ashley Glenday  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've looked through the archives but haven't found a lot of relevant stuff:
>> most people are looking for VPSes and/or hosting within Australia only.
>>
>> I'm after a web host for a work project. What I need:
>>
>>   - 3+GB disk space (this rules out the bulk of Australian hosts)
>>   - shared/managed hosting (I admin enough LAMP servers as it is, thanks,
>> please no more VPSs)
>>   - Linux/PHP/MySQL (I guess that likely implies Apache)
> 
> I wish you luck with all of that...

This seems an odd comment to make: the core 3 requirements listed above are
very easy to find, albeit from US hosting companies (AU companies don't provide
that much disk space). My main problem is the paradox of choice, not the
impossibility of finding anything at all. So which of the optional requirements
are too hard: technical stability, business stability, or stability for my
stated price?

-Mary

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[SLUG] Web hosting recommendations

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

I've looked through the archives but haven't found a lot of relevant stuff:
most people are looking for VPSes and/or hosting within Australia only.

I'm after a web host for a work project. What I need:

 - 3+GB disk space (this rules out the bulk of Australian hosts)
 - shared/managed hosting (I admin enough LAMP servers as it is, thanks, please
   no more VPSs)
 - Linux/PHP/MySQL (I guess that likely implies Apache)

Preferences:
 - prefer good uptime, good service and good performance to cheap-as-chips
   prices
 - prefer a reasonable history of business in some form

For a price: say ballpark AU$40 a year at most.

-Mary
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[SLUG] OSDC 2009 (Brisbane, November) Call for Papers

[Mary Gardiner]

- Forwarded message from Stephen Thorne  -

From: Stephen Thorne 
Subject: OSDC 2009 Call for Papers

G'day,

I'm please to announce that the call for papers for OSDC 2009 is
officially opened. I would like to invite you to submit a paper and do
a talk at our conference.

This conference is a grassroots style conference designed by developers
for developers.  We're planning to cover Perl, Python, Ruby PHP and Open
Source operating systems.  If you'd like us to cover something else as
well that is Open Source themed, please feel free.
 
The Call for Papers can be found at:
 http://2009.osdc.com.au/call-for-papers

The important dates are:
Call for Papers Closes  30 June, 2009
Proposal acceptance 20 July, 2009
Accepted paper submissions  14 September, 2009
OSDC 2009 Main Conference!  25th to 27th November, 2009 

OSDC 2009 will be held at the Bardon Conference Center in Brisbane this
year. This is a fantastic venue a short drive from the Brisbane CBD,
totally surrounded by lush greenery.

-- 
Regards,
Stephen Thorne

- End forwarded message -
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[SLUG] Re: Suppress "unable to enumerate USB device" messages?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> Is it possible to suppress this message? Because of the fsck thing, such
> supression would ideally happen early in the boot process, ie before I
> have a prompt.

Or at the very least, is it possible to either:

 - configure syslog to only write these messages out say, once an hour,
   rather than once a second (preferred)

   or

 - configure syslog to write them out to a custom file (which would be
   /dev/null in this case, I'd like my disk to have some hope of
   spinning down one day)

-Mary
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[SLUG] Suppress "unable to enumerate USB device" messages?

[Mary Gardiner]

One of my machines has a card reader (CF, SD and so on). This device
causes a message like this to be constantly logged to dmesg and the
console:
  "hub 5-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 6"

Apparently this is a known bug, or perhaps not a bug but an interaction
between the way these devices work and what the kernel expects:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/4/26/217

However, the messages themselves are seriously annoying. For example, if
a drive fscks on boot, I can't watch its progress or see any questions
or warnings because "hub 5-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port
6" appears on the console several times a second.

Is it possible to suppress this message? Because of the fsck thing, such
supression would ideally happen early in the boot process, ie before I
have a prompt.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: Backup notes from Mary's talk (28 Nov)

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2008-11-29, Mary Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Keep reading the notes and the talk that its aim isn't so much "here is

sb "Keep in mind when reading the notes..."

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[SLUG] Re: Backup notes from Mary's talk (28 Nov)

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2008-11-29, jam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Only new files are added, old files are kept until manually deleted,
> and the only possible flaw I perceive is that ImportantFile is backed
> up, trashed and tomorrow the trashed version is saved blotting out the
> original.  The daily backup is quick.
>
> Having pondered the doco I cannot see any benefit other than saving
> ImportantFile at the cost of quite a lot more complexity. What have I
> missed?

Keep reading the notes and the talk that its aim isn't so much "here is
the backup solution that should replace your existing one" as "here is
the backup solution that should replace your non-existent one". (In the
audience for the talk, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of attendees didn't
have backups of at least one machine with irreplacable data on it.) This
is why it doesn't do a lot of compare and contrast of local backup
tools: the more decisions between this-and-that backup systems with
this-and-that tradeoffs I present someone with, the less likely that
someone is to grab a drive and back something up. (People in this
scenario: stop reading the thread and umming-and-erring and go use
rdiff-backup and backup your stuff!)

Given this, it might be that you haven't missed anything: if you have a
backup solution that covers all the data loss risks you want to cover,
you're done.

The main reasons I use rdiff-backup over a hand-rolled rsync solution
is:

 (a) it was quicker to set up, I'm trusting the many eyeballs in this
 scenario and since I have successfully recovered files using it 

 (b) your ImportantFile scenario above: I do like being able to complete
 recover a snapshot of the filesystem exacly as it was at the time of any
 existing backup increment, including not only deleted but changed
 files. That said, I don't actually do it very often.

-Mary

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[SLUG] Re: Backup notes from Mary's talk (28 Nov)

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2008-11-29, Gonzalo Servat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just wondering: while I was running rdiff-backup, I noticed a lot of
> files were backed up that I could either delete or exclude from the
> next backup. Can I just simply go into my /media/disk and delete them?
> I guess I should get rid of any incremental files, if they exist.

Don't ever edit rdiff-backup's backups directly. Either:

 (a) exclude those files from your *next* backup, rdiff-backup will for
 its purposes treat them as files you deleted in the interim,
 and eventually as you delete old increments (via
 --remove-older-than) they'll disappear. As a one-off you
 could run --remove-older-than with a really short time period to
 get rid of them quickly

 (b) if you really want those files gone from your backups, empty the
 drive and backup from scratch again, excluding them this time

-Mary

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[SLUG] Re: Backup notes from Mary's talk (28 Nov)

[Mary Gardiner]

On 2008-11-28, Michael Chesterton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very minor nitpick, rsync can save older data, and put them in
> whatever dir you want.
>
> before rdiff-backup i used to use rsync --backup --backup-dir=$date-
> based-dir

Thanks for that: I am guessing from the rsync man page though that it
isn't particularly careful to only store the differences and therefore
may take up more space?

There are some alternative rsync-based backup solutions that try and
make the *entire* series of backups available as a file structure,
wasting as little space as possible by hard-linking:
http://www.rsnapshot.org/ is the one I've heard of most,
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/related.html under "rsync-based
scripts" has others. For me I've generally found that I pretty much
always want the most recent or next-to-most-recent backup, so I haven't
needed this feature.

-Mary

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[SLUG] Backup notes from Mary's talk (28 Nov)

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

As promised here are the backup notes from my talk at SLUG on 28 Nov.

Materials related to this talk are at
http://users.puzzling.org/users/mary/Presentations/SLUG2008/ (including
a version of these notes).

A note about style: this is a set of recommendations purely based on the
fact that I have both backed my home data up AND recovered it. And
having some working backup regime is better than none. I don't claim
this is the One Best Way, merely One of the Adequate Ways That Isn't
Entirely Maddening.

A note about me: I am sadly short of time at the moment and will not
participate in the thread following this post (should there be one), and
I can't give one-on-one help to design your personal backup regime.
Sorry about that: hopefully slug@slug.org.au can help you out.

The talk was on backups for home users. It doesn't cover
mission-critical or business-grade backups.

--- The magical 10 second version ---

If you don't have backups, you should.

Here's how:

 1. Go out, right now, and buy an external hard drive as big as, or
bigger than your main hard drive. Yep, there is no free lunch.

 2. Install the program called rdiff-backup.

 3. Plug in the drive and run:

sudo rdiff-backup --exclude-other-filesystems ::/ ::/media/disk

(/media/disk being the place your external drive mounted, under
Ubuntu, substitute as needed)

  4. Run that as often as you can.

(Every so often, run "sudo rdiff-backup --force --remove-older-than 60D
::/media/disk" or similar to delete very old backups.)

See http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html for someting similar (and the
partial inspiration for the talk), although rsync doesn't save older
data, which I definitely recommend.

--- More about rdiff-backup ---

Do check out the webpage and "man rdiff-backup" for full details.
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

In summary, it's 'reverse' increments, if you will. That is, you can get
the most recent backup just by looking at the filesystem under
/media/disk. Older versions are recovered by rdiff-backup applying older
and older chnages incrementally to the files, and are recovered like so:

sudo rdiff-backup -r 1D /media/disk/path-to-file [destination you'd like to 
restore to]

--- Why you need backups ---

You may not want to protect against all of these things: some of them
are expensive or time-consuming to protect against. But consider these
risks when deciding on your backup regime.

1. Accidental deletion: very common. An on-site backup is good enough to
   recover from this.

2. Media failure (dead hard drive). This will happen to you, sooner or
   later. You may or may not get any warning. An on-site backup *on a
   different disk* is good enough to recover from this. Not a different
   partition, a different *disk*.

   This is the only one RAID helps with too provided that (a) you have a
   full mirror on the other disk(s) in the array and (b) you don't stuff
   it up somehow and set the new empty disk as the master. RAID is not a
   substitute for backups. *Not* a substitute for backups. It won't help
   with 1, 3, 4 or 5.

3. Software failure. Say some bit of code, from the drive firmware to the
   filesystem to the end user software (eg GIMP) has a bug in it and
   writes out your data incorrectly. In most cases this is rather like
   accidental deletion, but if the bug is very low level (kernel) it may
   affect the backup too.

   At the very least, have your backup drive be not the same
   manufacturer and model as your main drive. This makes them less
   likely to share the same bugs and less likely to fail at the same time.

4. Provider failure. You have uploaded your valuble data to Flickr,
   LiveJournal, WordPress.com etc etc. They go bust, and their creditors
   swoop in, turn their machines off and sell them for scrap parts. This
   really happens, see http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalcameras/?p=362 for
   an example.

   Smaller examples are the occasional data loss that a lot of web
   services, up to and including those run by Google, have.

5. Massive local failure. Flood, fire, surge: we had victims of two of
   these at the meeting. And someone who had had all their computer
   equipment stolen in one go. To recover from these you need an(other)
   backup, as far away from your main data store as you can. At least in
   a different suburb. Another country is entirely possible these days,
   if you have broadband.

--- Media recommendations ---

For home users, get another hard drive and backup to that.

Optical media: no. CDs and DVDs are too small for most people now. You
will have to insert at least 5 of the things for a full backup cycle. So
that's boring and dull, so you'll never do it. Also, they have a
short-ish lifespan and testing their backup goodness is even *more*
boring and dull, so you definitely won't ever do that.

Solid state media: no. Consumer grade SSDs are really really unreliable
right now. You need to back them up, not use them *for* your backups!
See h

[SLUG] BarCamp Sydney: Saturday November 15

[Mary Gardiner]

Hello all barcamper’s

The BCS unorganisers are really excited to inform you that BarCampSydney
v4 is currently being (un)organised.

Quick details:

Date: 15 November 2008
Venue: UNSW Roundhouse (http://www.unswroundhouse.com/)
Time: 9am - 5pm (8:30 registrations)

Register yourself on the wiki here: http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney

More info to follow.

Be there!!



What is a BarCamp?

A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to
share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with
discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. Here is a quote
from the wikipedia description:

'BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open,
participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants
— focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source
technologies and social protocols.'

BarCampSydney is a gathering of creative tech brains for learning,
sharing and collaboration.

For the Sydney BarCamp we're making topics open to those beyond
technology to include entertainment, art, marketing, other technologies
and content such as podcasts and so on.
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Re: [SLUG] Search engine traffic dominates

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> You might want to look into the Crawl-delay extension to the robots.txt 
> standard, which can limit by robot:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt#Crawl-delay_directive

There's also the Sitemaps protocol, in which you can suggest how
frequently content changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
It doesn't seem to come with any guarentees that the robots will respect
that as a refresh frequency though.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Search engine traffic dominates

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008, Tony Sceats wrote:
> Can't you use robots.txt (or the modern equiv, is there anything newer
> actually?) to stop mass indexing, perhaps point it to pages you want indexed
> and also tell it to exclude images etc etc?

As I understand it, robots.txt is still the way to do this. Slurp also
has a specific extension by which you should be able to suggest it
crawls less often:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/webcrawler/slurp-03.html

Double-check also that your pages are cacheable, have an appropriately
long Expires header (although I don't know how much the Expires header
influences crawling rates) and have ETag and/or Last-Modified set, since
all the major robots, finally, seem to do conditional GETs.

All this is still pretty annoying, ideally "you should be using an order
of magnitude LESS traffic than you refer to me" should be something of a
given for search engine robots.

Of hits on my own website over the five days, the figures are:
 - Googlebot: 9% of total traffic
 - MSNBot: 4% of total traffic
 - Yahoo! Slurp: 19% of total traffic

They aren't the only crawlers either. Pretty outrageous.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Fortress .... err Firewall Australia

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008, Kyle wrote:
> Is this possibly for real?

The government has certainly been planning to require that ISPs
filter-by-default. The exact status of:

 - whether complete opt-out is possible

 - the extent of filtering of, eg, encrypted traffic (I have been told
   by a sysadmin, although without a source, that there are rumours that
   they will require ISPs to do Man In The Middle on HTTPS)

 - whether this is a serious plan, or some kind of stunt along the lines
   of:

   - "oh we tried to filter your Internet we really did but it turns out
 the trial was a failure, the tech just isn't there yet!" or

   - an aggressive starting position they intend to back away from so
 that something still problematic is perceived as 'reasonable': "as
 a noble compromise, we agree to take your second born rather than first
 born children, isn't compromise great?"

I wrote about this in my blog, but in short I suspect the best response
is to send a letter to Senator Conroy and the shadow minister Senator
Nick Minchin expressing your disapproval of the plan and calling on them
to drop the plan/oppose the plan, as appropriate
http://puzzling.org/logs/thoughts/2008/October/14/internet-filtering

-Mary
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au 2009: programme announced and registrations open

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

linux.conf.au 2009 (Hobart, January) has announced their programme and
ticket registrations are open. Hobbyist and Professional registration
levels have early bird prices until 3 November or until the earlybird
limit of 200 tickets is reached, whichever happens *sooner*.

Programme: http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule/
Registration: http://linux.conf.au/register/prices_ticket_types

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] ssh certificate logins

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008, jam wrote:
> On a non-standard port I've had ZERO login attempts over the last 3+ years, 
> compared (like you) to 10s and 100s per day. This is trivial to implement 
> even has the advantage of multiple servers/virtual servers behind a DSL 
> router (different non standard for each)

There is one potential disadvantage of non-standard ports: there are a
few networks with a default-deny outgoing connection policy who open
port 22, but do not open most ports. (I find 443 the most useful
alternative port to run SSH on, outgoing to 443/HTTPS is very often
open!)

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Comp TIA+ / CLP

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2008, Ken Wilson wrote:
> http://www.gonzo.edu.au/moodle/
> has information.

That website is a full year out of date (it's about the 2007 courses).
Anyone know what's up in 2008 and 2009?

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Requesting IPv6 address space

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2008, Jeremy Visser wrote:
> $3,169 is $3,169 too much to just play around with IPv6. What I want
> is to find some kind of program that provides students with small
> chunks of addresses, but I don't really know where to start looking.

You could check with the tunnel brokers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IPv6_tunnel_brokers

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Resetting Ubuntu Gnome to default

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sat, Oct 04, 2008, Amos Shapira wrote:
> Can anyone point me to the magic  button to just get back to the
> default as it comes "out of the box"? 

It should be a question of System -> Preferences -> Appearances -> Theme
tab and select "Human".

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: [coders] A newbie/ish question about portage

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi sister0,

You addressed your question to the Sydney Linux User Group's programming
list. SLUG is a good place to ask questions about Linux in Australia
even if you don't happen to live in Sydney, but you want to send
questions about Linux to the main list, slug@slug.org.au, rather than
[EMAIL PROTECTED] which is specifically for programming discussion.

I've copied slug@slug.org.au on this mail and included your question
below, so that you can get help on that list.

(slug subscribers, please Cc sister0, as she is possibly not
subscribed.)

On Wed, Oct 01, 2008, sister0 wrote:
> Hello
> im sorry if this is the wrong place but please direct me to the right
> Linux user group in australia to as but :here goes:
> 
> I run gentoo and am trying to do my regular emerge from behind tasmanian
> university  fire wall/ auto proxy.
> 
> Obviously i needed to change my mirrors as my machine was set to
> Netherlands Mirrors as I have just moved to tasmania.
> 
> SO>
> 
> #I changed my /etc/make.conf
> 
> #and myusr/portage/distfiles/ntlmaps/server.cfg
> with the 'correct autoproxy info with usr and pwd'
> [also have same file /etc/ntlmaps]
> #i did all of this :
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=6#doc_chap2
> 
> and still no joy. i get errors: [below]
> 
> i've been here for a week trying with this please any advice would be much
> appreciated. my system has 50 packages to update and i don't want to break
> it and its driving me crazy.yes im a newbie of sorts but still... trying
> hard.sister0
> 
> > >> Emerging (1 of 54) app-text/scrollkeeper-dtd-1.0 to /
> 
> > >> Downloading
> 'http://ftp.swin.edu.au/gentoo/distfiles/scrollkeeper-omf.dtd'
> 
> --2008-10-01 03:36:56-- 
> http://ftp.swin.edu.au/gentoo/distfiles/scrollkeeper-omf.dtd
> 
> Resolving proxy.utas.edu.au... 131.217.6.8, 131.217.6.9, 131.217.6.6, ...
> 
> Connecting to proxy.utas.edu.au|131.217.6.8|:8080... connected.
> 
> Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 407 Proxy Authentication Required
> 
> 2008-10-01 03:36:56 ERROR 407: Proxy Authentication Required.
> 
> 
> 
> > >> Downloading
> 'http://scrollkeeper.sourceforge.net/dtds/scrollkeeper-omf-1.0/scrollkeeper-omf.dtd'
> 
> --2008-10-01 03:36:56-- 
> http://scrollkeeper.sourceforge.net/dtds/scrollkeeper-omf-1.0/scrollkeeper-omf.dtd
> 
> Resolving proxy.utas.edu.au... 131.217.6.7, 131.217.6.8, 131.217.6.9, ...
> 
> Connecting to proxy.utas.edu.au|131.217.6.7|:8080... connected.
> 
> Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 407 Proxy Authentication Required
> 
> 2008-10-01 03:36:57 ERROR 407: Proxy Authentication Required.
> 
> 
> 
> !!! Couldn't download 'scrollkeeper-omf.dtd'. Aborting.
> 
>  * Fetch failed for 'app-text/scrollkeeper-dtd-1.0'
> 
> !!! can't process invalid log file: merge.ERROR
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> coders mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/coders
> 
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[SLUG] Alternative outgoing mail relays

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2008, SMITH GARETH wrote:
> Does anyone know of any good mail relays for sending emails more
> quickly.

You will have to have a login account on such services and will often
have to pay (anyone who allows easy free signup for a service that
includes a mail relay will find themselves relaying spam).

The first place to check is with any web hosting plan you may have: do
they include *outgoing* email? Some do. If so, that's the first one to
test.

Otherwise:
 - http://freeshell.org/ offers password authenticated outgoing SMTP
   relaying to VPM (US$20/year) and VHOST (US$10/month) customers
 - http://www.smtp-server.com/ offers outgoing mail relaying from US$5
   per month http://www.smtp-server.com/service-plans.htm
 - lots of hits at
   http://www.google.com.au/search?q=mail+relay+outgoing

Double-check that the service allows mails to be sent to them on ports
other than 25, I believe Bigpond blocks 25 outgoing.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Comp TIA+ / CLP

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008, Blindraven wrote:
> I did take a peek at the LPI site the other day and found no indication of
> how it works, where I can sit the exam and what material I'd need to be
> studying in order to prepare myself. The site is very vague on this.

http://www.lpi.org/about_lpi/upcoming_events seems to have the upcoming
exams, although it doesn't currently list any for Australia.

If you click through to each level at
http://www.lpi.org/eng/certification/the_lpic_program you will find
syllabuses. http://www.happy-monkey.net/LPI/html/ seems to have some
self-study materials too.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Mail server to mail server authentication (postfix)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> -o smtpd_enforce_tls=yes

Posting this for the benefit of search engines rather than the benefit
of Erik, since I just ran into this making some changes to my own mail
server...

If you have a server enforcing TLS, Postfix as a client is normally good
with this setting:

smtp_use_tls = yes

However, if you have transport maps configured (usually in
/etc/postfix/transport), you may get errors like this in your logs:

530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first

In this case, you need to set up a /etc/postfix/tls_per_site file to
match your transport file, see "Mandatory TLS encryption" at
http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html#client_tls_encrypt

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Mail server to mail server authentication (postfix)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> I use TLS rather than SASL

That said, if you want the config for doing this with SASL, I have set
this up for some users, and can send it.

Also, you don't need to use Postfix on the clients as well (as one would
hope!), but since I currently do, that was the config I sent.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Mail server to mail server authentication (postfix)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> How do I set up each end so only my authorized hosts can relay
> through my main server. Postfix seems to have TLS and SASL, but
> from my reading so far I can't really tell it these are a solution
> to my problem.

They're both a possible solution. The postconf(5) variables you're looking
for are permit_tls_clientcerts and/or permit_sasl_authenticated.

This is the basic idea:

  smtpd_recipient_restrictions=
# permit mail from the machine itself and any other network or IP
# you've configured through mynetworks
permit_mynetworks,
# possibly
# permit_mx_backup,
permit_tls_clientcerts,
permit_sasl_authenticated,
# reject anything else not for a domain that Postfix knows about
# as either local or as an MX
reject_unauth_destination

You probably want to get this to happen on submission, 587, rather than 25, so
you can require that TLS be used. (You'd want that for SASL too, so that the
password is never sent in the clear.) This is done in /etc/postfix/master.cf on
the server:

  submission inet n   -   n   -   -   smtpd
-o smtpd_etrn_restrictions=reject # not supposed to happen on the 
submission port per standards
-o smtpd_enforce_tls=yes
-o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes # if you want to use SASL
-o 
smtpd_client_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,permit_tls_clientcerts,permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
-o 
smtpd_sender_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,permit_tls_clientcerts,permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
-o 
smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,permit_tls_clientcerts,permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
-o content_filter= # I don't do virus filtering on mail coming in on this 
port, unlike for port 25 mail
   # depends on how much you trust your users!

Since outside mail destined to end up at that server ought to come in on 25, I
just have a flat out reject rather than reject_unauth_destination.

I use TLS rather than SASL (because it means that I don't have to put a
password on the client side, but rather a certificate that I don't happen to
use for anything else except authenticating to mail servers, and you're going
to have to set up TLS anyway to encrypt the SASL).

On the server side this means adding to master.cf:

  relay_clientcerts = hash:/etc/postfix/tls/relay_certs
  smtpd_tls_fingerprint_digest = sha1 # it uses MD5 by default

and then having /etc/postfix/tls/relay_certs something like this:
  AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA myclientname

(Where AA:... is the SHA1 fingerprint of the client's SSL cert.) Then run
"postmap /etc/postfix/tls/relay_certs" to update it with new clients or new
certificates.

On the client side this looks like:

  relayhost = myserver.example.com:submission

On both client and server you want this in /etc/postfix/main.cf to tell it 
where your keys and certificates are:

  smtp_use_tls = yes
  smtpd_tls_ask_ccert = yes
  
  smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
  smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
  
  smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/tls/key.pem
  smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/tls/cert.pem
  smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/tls/cacert.pem
  smtp_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/tls/key.pem
  smtp_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/tls/cert.pem
  smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/tls/cacert.pem

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] ADSL2 modems that just simply work with linux -- existed for adsl1

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008, R.G.Salisbury wrote:
> I have tried Netcomms NB5 which I could not get to work. ( i hope it 
> wasn't a fault with the modem)
> The NB5 supposedly works with adsl1 & adsl2  & supposedly works with 
> MacOS & linux ... but no support documentation that I can find.

I use the Netcomm NB1 ok.

It has the mode that (pretty much?) all modems have now where it can do
the authentication and NAT setup etc itself. In this case, you plug your
Linux box into it via ethernet, pick up an address via DHCP and log into
its web interface to set it up.

If you want to have Linux do all the authentication etc you need to go
to the modem's web interface as above, put it in Bridge Mode, which is a
bit of a pain. But at least you only have to do it once. The best
directions I've found for setting bridge mode on the NB5 are
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=566074&r=8724589#r8724589

I use pppoeconf (the Ubuntu package) to configure authentication and
such from there, and it hasn't gone wrong on ADSL 1 or 2.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Choosing a sensible host

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008, Jim Donovan wrote:
> Can anyone suggest a better host which also allows SSH logins?

http://www.anchor.com.au/ is a SLUG-friendly Aussie company that has SSH
logins.

Dreamhost is a widely used US company and costs
US$6 per month. They have had 'incidents' in the past with uptime, but
most people seem quite happy. http://www.dreamhost.com/

If you'd actually prefer something more server-like, then
http://www.linode.com/ has US-based virtual servers for US$20/month.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Web Interface for slug mail?

[Mary Gardiner]

The thread has already pointed out that SLUG is mirrored on gmane, in
fact all the SLUG lists are. I posted about it in 2006:
http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2006/05/msg00843.html

The lists are also mirrored on Google Groups:
http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2006/05/msg00790.html

Finally there are of course the archives:
http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] dns test tools ?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> can anyone recommended free dns online test tools ?

http://www.checkdns.net/ (the top Google hit for "dns test") seems all
right, although not quite as comprehensive as I recall dnsreport.com
was and I don't agree with it that my "main website" must be on the www
subdomain.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Email Domains --- handling of invalid email addresses

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008, R.G.Salisbury wrote:
> Do the RFCs suggest a recommended policy?

RFC 2821: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

It includes the following:

"... a formal handoff of responsibility for the message occurs: the
protocol requires that a server accept responsibility for either
delivering a message or properly reporting the failure to do so."

"If an SMTP server has accepted the task of relaying the mail and later
finds that the destination is incorrect or that the mail cannot be
delivered for some other reason, then it MUST construct an
"undeliverable mail" notification message and send it to the originator
of the undeliverable mail (as indicated by the reverse- path). Formats
specified for non-delivery reports by other standards (see, for example,
[24, 25]) SHOULD be used if possible."

That said, many mail server administrators accept and eat viruses and
sometimes spam without ever sending an error. (Spam may or may not be
stored somewhere where the addressee can optionally retrieve it, viruses
not so much.) It's far less common to accept and eat mail to entirely
non-valid addresses. The standard practice as far as I know is to reject
them immediately whereever possible (ie not to accept them, go check
with the list of valid users, and then generate a bounce and send it out
separately).

-Mary
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au CFP closes tomorrow

[Mary Gardiner]

You know the drill, or you soon will: Australia's biggest and brightest
Free Source technical conference. More information at
http://linux.conf.au/programme/presenter_faq and submissions close
tomorrow.



http://linux.conf.au/media/news/6

Linux.conf.au - Hobart Conference 2009 Opens Call for Papers

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on
Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open source software community the
chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008)  The call for papers will
remain open for a month, after which the best papers will be selected
by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the
10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected to attract influential speakers
from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source
communities.

"This is the first time that the conference has been held in Hobart
and given the unique location, and that it is celebrating its 10th
anniversary this year, we expect to see significant interest from
local and international speakers and delegates," said Mr Powell.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the
Hobart conference from a large pool of international and local
submissions.

"The conference provides a unique opportunity for Tasmanians to
discuss their ideas on an international stage, and for business to
support IT innovation," said Mr Powell.

“This year's Linux conference is expected to bring 700 delegates to
the Tasmania to enjoy one of Australia's premiere technical
conferences, with presentations by many of the leading experts in free
and open source software.

"The conference also provides an opportunity to showcase Tasmania to
the world's technical community, with many delegates keen to take in
Tasmania's famous food, wine and beautiful scenery during their stay.

"Previous years' conferences have seen up to 100 influential
international and national speakers from major IT companies and
projects, with submissions for the opportunity to speak at Australia's
internationally renowned event growing every year," said Mr Powell.

The conference will also present the best of open source software with
presentations, displays and hands-on demonstrations at the conference
free public Open Day for the Tasmanian technical industry and general
community.

"We expect to see a number of our own local speakers feature in the
lineup, so this will be a great opportunity for our own IT community
to really shine on the international stage," said Mr Powell.

Linux.conf.au, the National Linux Conference, will be held January
19-24 in Hobart at the University of Tasmania. More information about
the paper submission process can be found at http://www.linux.conf.au.

Businesses can support Linux.conf.au by visiting the website
http://linux.conf.au/become_a_sponsor

Media enquiries: Linux.conf.au on +61 432 996 932 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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All messages being moderated (Re: [SLUG] inbound email checking)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008, Phil Scarratt wrote:
> Can we try changing the subject of this thread? All messages are being
> moderated.

The thread Voytek started is to do with a specific error he got sending
a mail from a particular address to a particular mail server. It doesn't
have anything to do with message moderation, or SLUG.

If you're talking about this list being moderated (and I'm guessing you
are, there's not a lot of context in your mail) then:

 1. different issue; and

 2. not sure what's up with that, maybe the moderators can fill us in?

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] individual sender email verification on inbound

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008, Peter Hardy wrote:
> I for one think it's perfectly cromulent. If the sender MX utilises
> greylisting then it'll send back a transient failure message as distinct
> from a permanent 550 failure. At that point, the receiving MX can either
> assume a transient failure means it's normally a valid address and
> accept the mail, or give back its own transient failure - an eye for an
> eye if you like.

Yeah, apparently the misbehaviour is when the verifying server receives
a 4xx due to the greylisting, and is configured to treat 4xx as a
permanent failure. THAT would count as a misconfiguration, good and
proper.

I think it all gets amazingly awful when BOTH sides are implementing
sender address verification AND greylisting. Aside from that there's the
general bothersomeness of delayed mail (especially when it gets into the
problem greylisting has with usually wanting to match the IP on
subsequent requests) but greylisting is doing the heavy delaying in both
this and its usual scenario.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Non Acceptance

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008, David Liell wrote:
>Would the Mediator of this group please explain why none of my requests
>are accepted. Am I doing something wrong?

This mail came through with a bunch of others, which suggests that the
list moderators were behind on approving mail.

As for why they needed to be approved in the first place, best to
contact the list moderators directly (I am not one of them, by the way)
at [EMAIL PROTECTED] (which will get through even if you are
moderated on the main list).

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] individual sender email verification on inbound

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> is there any req on me having an 'apache@' address if I'm sending
> emails as such ?
> 
> (i.e., who misconfigured their server ?)

Sender address verification is a fairly common anti-spam technique.
RFC 2821 allows for mail to be rejected based on local policy, and the
remote end has chosen to implement a policy whereby the return address
must verifiably exist (in the sense of being able to receive the first
part of an SMTP transaction) before accepting mail. So it's not a
configuration that violates the protocol, that I can see.

Whether it's a totally sensible configuration is another question: it
tends to interact badly if the sender address in turn greylists incoming
mail, for example. But it's unlikely to be accidental on their part.

In general, send those mails out with a valid envelope-from address if
you don't want them to fall foul of people's spam filters or otherwise
annoy them, if, for example, one of the addresses is invalid and you
never find out about it because you keep handing it off to a relay and
letting the relay eat the bounce messages.

-Mary
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[SLUG] One and a half weeks left for linux.conf.au 2009 CFP

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,



I know the originally CFP didn't clearly specify a closing date, the
organisers have since provided more CFP information at:
http://linux.conf.au/programme/presenter_faq and the closing date is
Friday 8th August. One and a half weeks left...



http://linux.conf.au/media/news/6

Linux.conf.au - Hobart Conference 2009 Opens Call for Papers

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on
Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open source software community the
chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008)  The call for papers will
remain open for a month, after which the best papers will be selected
by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the
10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected to attract influential speakers
from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source
communities.

"This is the first time that the conference has been held in Hobart
and given the unique location, and that it is celebrating its 10th
anniversary this year, we expect to see significant interest from
local and international speakers and delegates," said Mr Powell.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the
Hobart conference from a large pool of international and local
submissions.

"The conference provides a unique opportunity for Tasmanians to
discuss their ideas on an international stage, and for business to
support IT innovation," said Mr Powell.

“This year's Linux conference is expected to bring 700 delegates to
the Tasmania to enjoy one of Australia's premiere technical
conferences, with presentations by many of the leading experts in free
and open source software.

"The conference also provides an opportunity to showcase Tasmania to
the world's technical community, with many delegates keen to take in
Tasmania's famous food, wine and beautiful scenery during their stay.

"Previous years' conferences have seen up to 100 influential
international and national speakers from major IT companies and
projects, with submissions for the opportunity to speak at Australia's
internationally renowned event growing every year," said Mr Powell.

The conference will also present the best of open source software with
presentations, displays and hands-on demonstrations at the conference
free public Open Day for the Tasmanian technical industry and general
community.

"We expect to see a number of our own local speakers feature in the
lineup, so this will be a great opportunity for our own IT community
to really shine on the international stage," said Mr Powell.

Linux.conf.au, the National Linux Conference, will be held January
19-24 in Hobart at the University of Tasmania. More information about
the paper submission process can be found at http://www.linux.conf.au.

Businesses can support Linux.conf.au by visiting the website
http://linux.conf.au/become_a_sponsor

Media enquiries: Linux.conf.au on +61 432 996 932 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

- End forwarded message -
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Re: [SLUG] disk partitioning for lamp: tmp on it's own?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> how do I make it non executable ?

Mount it with the 'noexec' option. It goes in the same column of
/etc/fstab as other options like 'auto' and 'noauto'.

"man mount" has the details of various filesystem mount options, under
the -o flag section.

-Mary
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Re: OT climate change and cars ....Re: [SLUG] submissions to National Innovation System Review

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
>> Don't know if you saw TopGear on SBS last night... it was a cracker  
>> episode...
>>
>> What they did was to compare the Australian built (but American owned)  
>> SV8 (commodore) now sold in britain to a selection of German cars at 
>> the same price.
> 
>
> While I appreciate that Top Gear has a very particular ethos

Hi Marghanita, David,

SLUG has a separate list for non-Linux/software-y/Free-y posts: in fact
I think it was originally created in response to posts about cars.
http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug-chat

There are a couple of discussions on SLUG the last few days that really
should (at the very least) move to the chat list.

As should any replies to this mail...

-Mary

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Re: [SLUG] mutt procmail and mailing lists

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008, Alex Samad wrote:
> I was wondering if somebody would share their
> 
> procmail recipe and mutt config
> 
> for handling lots of mailing lists such that I don't have to go in there
> and update .procmail and .mutt all the time, is it possible ?

Jeff Waugh's configs are widely used by muttering SLUGers:

http://bethesignal.org/dotfiles/muttrc.html
http://bethesignal.org/dotfiles/procmailrc.html

They include recipes for automatically sorting mail based on List-Id
headers, although you will, I think, still have to restart mutt to pick
up any new folders, as it only rescans the folder list on startup.

(Also try and avoid actually copying his From address wholesale, as
someone once accidently did by lifting the configs without editing... :)
)

-Mary
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[SLUG] linux.conf.au 2009 Call for presentations

[Mary Gardiner]

Feel free to forward, please delete my email info



Linux.conf.au - Hobart Conference 2009 Opens Call for Papers

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on
Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open source software community the
chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008)  The call for papers will
remain open for a month, after which the best papers will be selected
by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the
10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected to attract influential speakers
from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source
communities.

"This is the first time that the conference has been held in Hobart
and given the unique location, and that it is celebrating its 10th
anniversary this year, we expect to see significant interest from
local and international speakers and delegates," said Mr Powell.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the
Hobart conference from a large pool of international and local
submissions.

"The conference provides a unique opportunity for Tasmanians to
discuss their ideas on an international stage, and for business to
support IT innovation," said Mr Powell.

“This year's Linux conference is expected to bring 700 delegates to
the Tasmania to enjoy one of Australia's premiere technical
conferences, with presentations by many of the leading experts in free
and open source software.

"The conference also provides an opportunity to showcase Tasmania to
the world's technical community, with many delegates keen to take in
Tasmania's famous food, wine and beautiful scenery during their stay.

"Previous years' conferences have seen up to 100 influential
international and national speakers from major IT companies and
projects, with submissions for the opportunity to speak at Australia's
internationally renowned event growing every year," said Mr Powell.

The conference will also present the best of open source software with
presentations, displays and hands-on demonstrations at the conference
free public Open Day for the Tasmanian technical industry and general
community.

"We expect to see a number of our own local speakers feature in the
lineup, so this will be a great opportunity for our own IT community
to really shine on the international stage," said Mr Powell.

Linux.conf.au, the National Linux Conference, will be held January
19-24 in Hobart at the University of Tasmania. More information about
the paper submission process can be found at http://www.linux.conf.au.

Businesses can support Linux.conf.au by visiting the website
http://linux.conf.au/become_a_sponsor

Media enquiries: Linux.conf.au on +61 432 996 932 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [SLUG] Recent SPAM on SLUG

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> (If people have further or future requests of the moderators, best to
> copy [EMAIL PROTECTED] as well.)

I posted this without seeing Lindsay's mail. What he said goes, so
[EMAIL PROTECTED] is the right address.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Recent SPAM on SLUG

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008, James Dumay wrote:
> Hey guys,
> Im a little concerned with all the recent "Work from Home"/"Get Rich Quick"
> spam thats appearing on the ML.
> 
> Could someone responsible for the mailinglist spam filter have a look?

I have added the address that "Sonia Sajjid" has sent several mails
from to the "automatically discard" filter. I'll send details to the
list moderators in a sec.

(If people have further or future requests of the moderators, best to
copy [EMAIL PROTECTED] as well.)

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] {Spam?} Anti spam software?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008, Sean Murphy wrote:
> All,
> 
> I am after a good Anti spam software program for Linux which is shell
> based.  I am aware of Spam assassign.  But I would like to know if
> there is anything else which is better?

Better could mean a few things in the context of spam filtering, could
you clarify which of these features is more important to you:

 1. overall accuracy (false negatives and false positives)
 2. fewest number of false negatives (spam that gets through to your
inbox)
 3. fewest number of false positives (good mail that ends up marked as
spam)
 4. good accuracy when in the default configuration, no twiddling
required
 5. good for processing large volumes of mail without insane resources

I use SpamAssassin and find it does really well, but it falls down at #4
and #5. I have to train the Bayesian[1] classifiers on all my mail in order
to get good-to-me accuracy, so I am certainly not relying on the default
configuration. (I suspect I'd do just as well switching entirely to a
Bayesian system, but since SpamAssassin is now doing fine I have not
done so).

And it's a resource hog, it sometimes takes 8 seconds to scan a mail on
my OK-standard desktop system. So if you were receiving more than an
email about every 8 seconds you'd be looking at performance tuning and
additional less hoggy measures, or at alternatives. (Everything that
processes the full body of an email is somewhat resource intensive, but
I understand that SA is not great.)

-Mary

[1] Automatically trained and dynamic rules, rather than fixed rules.
Has the downside that you need to fairly regularly show it current
examples of good and bad mail so it can continue to learn to
discriminate between them. The Bayesian machine learning techniques are
not exactly cutting edge machine learning, but they only have to
discriminate between two categories for this use.
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Re: [SLUG] Firefox 3.0 Download Day

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> Crikies I must keep up. I'm only using Linux in serverland,
> sans an X or GUI, so I am out of that loop.
>
> Why iceweasel over FF?

Short version: Debian does not want to distribute proprietary (not
modifiable) artwork and branding such as the FF logos in their Free
Software section. Mozilla does not want Debian to use the name "Firefox"
without using the artwork.

There are or were also some issues around Debian changing the source
code, or rather, changing the source code while still using the name
Firefox (you can change the source code of Free Software and
redistribute, but you're not always granted the right to use the same
name for it).

An article from the time: http://www.linux.com/feature/57675

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranding

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Firefox 3.0 Download Day

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008, Martin Visser wrote:
> Please don't misconstrue this as a troll or attempt to start a
> flame-war, but what licence is Opera released under? After spending 5
> minutes vainly looking for some sort of indicative statement, only by
> searching on their site for "license" (sic), you get a few hits that
> all seem to indicate restrictions depending on the market/device you
> fall under.

Wikipedia characterises it as freeware, not Free Software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_%28web_browser%29

I just downloaded a .deb file from
http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?opsys=Linux%20i386&lng=en&ver=9.50b2&platform=Linux%20i386&local=y
in order to have a peek. It contains a file
/usr/share/opera/locale/en/license.txt contains these statements among
others[1]:

"You are entitled to use the Software on all personal computers
(laptops/desktops). "Use" means loaded in temporary memory or permanent
storage on the computer."

"You may not use the Software on non-PC products, devices, or embedded
in any other product, including, but not limited to, mobile devices,
internet appliances, set top boxes (STB), handhelds, PDAs, phones, web
pads, tablets, game consoles, TVs, gaming machines, home automation
systems, or any other consumer electronics devices or
mobile/cable/satellite/television or closed system based service."

"You may not sell, rent, lease or sublicense the Software, without the
explicit written consent of Opera Software ASA."

-Mary

[1] Obviously review the full text yourself in order to use this
software in a legal fashion!
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Re: [SLUG] : Increasing filesystem reliability (was : Filesystem which allows online fsck?)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> Invest in small UPSes and cleanly shut the server down on shutdown?
> 
> Can you enable entire journalling, rather than just metadata journalling?
> 
> Can you disable write-caching on the disks, so the disks aren't lying
> when they say they've committed some stuff to disk? I seem to recall there
> are brands of disks which will go to great lengths to lie to you that
> the data is on the disk when its still in cache, all in the name of
> (windows) performance.

One more option is enabling barriers with -o barrier=1 (for a
performance hit of perhaps 30%). The LWN article at
http://lwn.net/Articles/283161/ (which is where my knowledge of the
subject comes from) does not link to real use-cases where this has
corrupted file systems but apparently not having them has been shown to
cause corruption fairly regularly in torture tests.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] allowing controlled access from dynamic IP

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> but, 'http://localhost:' opens the 'real' host's default 'this is
> apache' page, (and, '/cacti/' won't work from there); howe can I get to
> vhost page where '/cacti/' is setup ?
> 
> I've tried using real.host: and v.host: so far with no siccess

The web server wants the browser to send a request for the correct host
name. One way to get it to do this is to alter your steps:

 1. set up an SSH tunnel with the -D flag instead of -L, in order to set
up a SOCKS proxy

 2. instead of connecting directly to localhost:port, you set your
browser to find a SOCKS proxy there (Firefox has settings for this
among the standard proxy settings)

 3. connect to the normal URL of the website

This is starting to get to be quite an annoying set of steps though and
you need to remember to turn the proxy back off unless you want all your
web traffic going that way.

Info from
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/

With regard to the original problem with Apache, you may be falling foul
of Allow wanting forward and reverse lookups on your IP address to
match: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_access.html#allow (that
is, doing a lookup on your IP address does not return your dyndns.org
address, nor is there any way to configure it to via most ISPs,
especially those assigning dynamic addresses).

A couple of alternative solutions to think about:

 1. depending on the security of the relevant site, allow a partial
match which will match every client of your ISP, eg
.(nsw.)bigpond.net.au will match BigPond customers and .exetel.com.au
will match Exetel customers. Do a reverse lookup on your IP to find
out what this string is likely to be.

 2. switch to opening the site to the world but restricting access with
HTTP Auth: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_auth.html

SSL may then be a good idea too.

-Mary

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] MX problem ?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008, Voytek Eymont wrote:
> one of my users received a reject from an attempted inbound mail as below,
> I'm a bit perplexed as to where from is remote mail server looking for
> host "autopack.com.au" ?
> 
> domain's mx is 'bilby.sbt.net.au', and, there is no probs that I can see,
> any thoughts ?

Likely a spammer forging your user's address in the Envelope-From. The
sequence goes something like this:

 - spamming server connects to recipient server and claims to be sending
   mail from your user[1]
 - recipient server realises that the recipient address doesn't exist
   and rejects it
 - if this rejection cannot be passed live back to the sending server, a
   bounce mail is generated and sent to the *claimed* sender

This is particularly common with qmail, I understand, because (at least
when I last used it) it does not reject mail during a live SMTP
transaction with the sending server, but rather accepts mail and then
sends out bounces in a second transaction.

It's possible with other mail programs if there were several servers in
the sending sequence, the last of them gets the live reject but does not
still have a connection to the server that sent to it, so it generates a
bounce.

Anyway, there's not a lot you can do about it as neither the spamming
server nor the recipient server are under your control, except subject
bounce messages to spam filtering.

-Mary

[1] By default, this is totally acceptable in SMTP, any server can
send mail claiming to be from any person.
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Re: [SLUG] Spider a website

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jun 03, 2008, Ycros wrote:
> It's not always perfect however, as it can sometimes mess the URLs up,  
> but it's worth a try anyway.

The -k option to convert any absolute paths to relative ones can be
helpful with this (depending on what you meant by "mess the URLs up").

-Mary
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Re: Compromised Linux box stories (Re: [SLUG] upgrading complicated installs

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Jun 03, 2008, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> jam wrote:
>> First thanks to everyone who contributed to this interesting thread :-)
>
> Isn't it about time this  boring thread went onto  
> slug-chat?

There's probably additional boredom to be had in saying which bits of
it, but in terms of on-topicness:

 - details of how to compromise a Linux machine, how not to, and whether
   we know of it being done are probably on topic here, regardless of
   whether they're particularly interesting

 - the accreditation discussion is off-topic according to
   http://www.slug.org.au/mailinglists.html except for the minor
   side-thread about how it would affect FOSS development: "The main
   discussion list, slug@slug.org.au, is where all the discussion goes
   on.  Everything related to installing, maintaining, developing on
   Linux or Free/Open Source Software is on topic for this list..."

-Mary
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Re: Compromised Linux box stories (Re: [SLUG] upgrading complicated installs)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2008, Peter Miller wrote:
> Will the parallel be: you get malpractice insurance, or you can have
> your future wages garnished forever if you get sued.  Doctors have to
> pay their malpractice insurance to have their pro-bono work covered.  I
> expect software folks will too.

If the analogy holds too closely, the inability of people to start their
careers in Free Software is the same: the insurance would only possible
to get if you happen to be trained and accredited in the approved manner
and could well depend on having prior supervised professional
experience. If a world that looks anything like the medical litigation
landscape happens in software, Free Software will look awfully
different, that's for sure, and it likely won't have the appeal of being
a good place to learn without a heavy cash investment.

I think I'm on the opposite side of the fence from most people here: if
the world was likely to demand that kind of quality assurance from the
industry, I suspect it would have already done so in a manner impossible
to ignore. I suppose a demonstration that that kind of quality is
achievable for a suitable price would change things.

-Mary
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Compromised Linux box stories (Re: [SLUG] upgrading complicated installs)

[Mary Gardiner]

I suspect a bunch of people are going to jump into this thread, but to
get in early, some stories:

 - a Red Hat 5 box left to rot (this was some time ago now!), became a
   host for warez and ended up comprising something like half of its
   very substantial network's total traffic.

 - a sendmail install which was either set up as an open relay or
   compromised and turned into one, noticed almost immediately because
   of massive network usage

 - an up-to-date machine run by a competant hobbyist sysadmin of a skill
   level comprable to many people posting here, turned out to be an
   compromise through a WordPress install that wasn't up to date, took a
   while to track down apparently, it was participating in DDoS attacks

And of course, in November 2003, debian.org itself was the victim of an
attack by, I think, a still unknown vector:
http://www.debian.org/News/2003/20031121 but that might not meet your
criteria of having been used for a nefarious purpose as opposed to
'just' having been broken into.

The (few) security consultants I know seem to have universally had their
personal machines compromised at some point, this seems to partly be a
result of being more likely to notice, and partly due to attending
security conferences, where the networks are extremely hostile.

I suspect attacks through web apps like WordPress are pretty common
causes of comprise of machines run by essentially knowledgable people at
the moment, because there doesn't seem yet to be a good set of best
practices for packaging and updating them (upstream tends to aims their
instructions at people who might not even have shell access, let alone
root access, and there's the whole plugin universe too).

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Partitions

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, May 28, 2008, Amos Shapira wrote:
> If I remember the beginning of the thread correctly then it was an
> upgrade - maybe he installed the "upgrade" on his /home partition
> instead of his "/"?

I'm hoping the kernel versions and lsb-release files on each partition
will tell us which has Hardy on it.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Partitions

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, May 28, 2008, Amos Shapira wrote:
> Or mounted what was intended to be the root partition under /home.

His / looked similar though, so they both have an install on them.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Partitions

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, May 28, 2008, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> In Linux you can have multiple partitions on a hard drive, and they  
> appear as "folders" underneath the top of the tree / - a cleaner system  
> than Windows.

However, the reported contents of his /home is rather odd.

>From his original mail:

 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home$ ls
 bindev initrd.img  media  root  tmp  vmlinuz.old
 boot   etc initrd.img.old  mntsbin  usr
 cdrom  homelib optsrv   var
 david  initrd  lost+found  proc   sys   vmlinuz

That does rather look like somehow things that should be in / have been copied
to or installed in /home.

David, can you provide the output (including any errors) of the following
commands?

ls /boot
ls /home/boot
cat /etc/lsb-release
cat /home/etc/lsb-release

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Problem with an upgrade to Hardy.

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sat, May 24, 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> So what's gone wrong? I'd appreciate any advice.

What is the output of "xrandr" when disconnected from the docking
station, and when placed in the docking station?

-Mary
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[SLUG] Ubuntu drive designations (Re: update to Hardy)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, May 23, 2008, bill wrote:
> As I often swap drives around this is a real pain.

Ideally the system should be using drive UUIDs to identify partitions
now rather than the dsXX and hdXX identifiers although I think in some
circumstances one might not be able to. Does /etc/fstab look like this:

UUID=b6c863a3-f68c-4b7f-a7b7-07e19d671903 /home ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 
0   1

or like this:

/dev/sda3 /home ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0   1

Does /boot/grub/menu.1st have a line like this:

kopt=root=UUID=b6c863a3-f68c-4b7f-a7b7-07e19d671903 
resume=UUID=0d6f4ee5-c312-42b1-a543-5f0f9f040eff ro

or does it use /dev/[hs]dXX? (Or do you not use grub?)

The idea of the UUID= identifiers for partitions rather than the dsXX
and hdXX identifiers is that they should only change after a reformat,
not when the kernel the way it addresses them.

You can find out a partition's UUID with the "vol_id -u [partition]"
command, eg:

$ sudo vol_id -u /dev/sda3
b6c863a3-f68c-4b7f-a7b7-07e19d671903

There is more info at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingUUID

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Further to the deadly authentication.

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, May 22, 2008, Martin Visser wrote:
> My guess is that the mirror process works alphabettically through the
> tree, hence .../ubuntu/dists/ /main/ /Packages.* gets
> mirrored before .../ubuntu/pool/main/ /*.deb does. Hence there is
> a pretty good chance you will be trying to update packages that aren't
> available yet.

Ubuntu advises mirrors to sync twice: first the packages and then second
the package listing:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/mirror/3

-Mary
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[SLUG] Women's meetup before SLUG, Lindt Cafe, Darling Harbour, Fri May 30, 5:30pm

[Mary Gardiner]

*** We are looking for a new organiser for these meetings. Please see
http://au.linuxchix.org/node/133 for details ***

Aussie(Linux)Chix and AussieDevChix will have their regular joint
meeting in Sydney before the Sydney Linux User Group meeting this month.
Feel free to forward this message to any women you think might be
interested in coming.

 Date: Friday 30th May 2008

 Time: 5:30-6:15pm

 Location: Lindt Chocolat Cafe, Shop 104–105, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling
   Harbour

 Directions: The Lindt Cafe is on the ground floor of the Cockle Bay
 Wharf building, between the two halves. Look for the
 fountain, or alternatively look right under the Blackbird
 Cafe.

 Map: http://tinyurl.com/2vdgch

 RSVP: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Can men come? Men may come as the guest of a woman attendee. Note that
   this is not a LinuxChix-wide policy, it is specific to
   these pre-SLUG meetups.

If you RSVP, we can send you a mobile number to call if you can't find
us.

Afterwards we will go to the SLUG meeting together. See
 for more details about the SLUG
meeting.

The Chix meetings in Sydney are organised by Sydney members of
AussieChix, the Australian LinuxChix chapter. See
 for more about AussieChix.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Anyone else having problems with Ubuntu's latest openvpn?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, May 15, 2008, Sonia Hamilton wrote:
> Out of interest, what source are you using for your security advisories?

Same as John, I subscribe at
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce and to
similar lists for other distros when I'm using them.

http://lwn.net/ has regular roundups of all distribution security
updates too but I've generally updated by the time I see them.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Anyone else having problems with Ubuntu's latest openvpn?

[Mary Gardiner]

I haven't tried OpenVPN yet, but a new security advisory came out this
morning saying "A regression was introduced in OpenVPN when using TLS
and multi-client/server which caused OpenVPN to not start when using
valid SSL certificates... It was also found that openssl-vulnkey from
openssl-blacklist would fail when stderr was not available. This caused
OpenVPN to fail to start when used with applications such as
NetworkManager."

So sounds like they're on top of at least some bugs now and you should
upgrade:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/2008-May/000710.html

-Mary
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[SLUG] Wiki software

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

I am considering hosting a wiki for some folks, it is currently hosted
on PBWiki. If anyone knows PBWiki at all, can you recommend Free wiki
software that is closest in syntax and look-and-feel to the PBWiki
software?

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Deleting a mailman list

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, May 08, 2008, Peter Chubb wrote:
> basically three steps:
>  -- copy the list of subscribers somewhere safe (in case you screw up)
>  -- Unsubscribe everyone except yourself
>  -- in the Privacy Options screen, say to discard messages from
> non-members.  (you could use `bounce' but the main reason I want to
> shut the lists down is the amount of spam v. real traffic)

The fourth thing is to make it so that people can't subscribe themselves
if they stumble across the list infrastructure:
 - add a warning to the listinfo page (or use your webserver to make it
   impossible to access)
 - set all subscriptions to "must be confirmed and approved" (and then
   don't approve any)

-Mary
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[SLUG] Open Source Developers Conference (Sydney): Call for papers

[Mary Gardiner]

*** Please forward to interested groups. Please strip my sending
information if you do forward, I am not a contact person for the
conference. ***

Call for Papers
Open Source Developers' Conference 2008
1st - 5th December 2008, Sydney, Australia

The Open Source Developers' Conference 2008 is a conference run by
open source developers, for developers and business people. It
covers numerous programming languages across a range of operating
systems, and related topics such as business processes, licensing,
and strategy. Talks vary from introductory pieces through to the
deeply technical. It is a great opportunity to meet, share, and
learn with like-minded individuals.

This year, the conference will be held in Sydney, Australia during
the first week of December (1st - 5th). If you are an Open Source
maintainer, developer or user, the organising committee would
encourage you to submit a talk proposal on open source tools,
solutions, languages or technologies you are working with.

For more details and to submit your proposal(s), goto:
http://osdc.com.au/2008/papers/cfp.html

If you have any questions or require assistance with your
submission, please don't hesitate to ask!

We recognise the importance of Open Source
in providing a medium for collaboration between individuals,
researchers, business and government. In recognition of this and
ensure a high standard of presentations, we intend to peer-review
all submitted papers.

OSDC 2008 Sydney (Australia) - Key Program Dates:

30 Jun - Initial proposals (short abstract) due
21 Jul - Proposal acceptance
15 Sep - Accepted paper submissions
13 Oct - Reviews completed
27 Oct - Final paper submission cutoff

For all information, contacts and updates, see the OSDC conference
web site at http://osdc.com.au/2008/

Also if you are interested in sponsoring, please see:
http://www.osdc.com.au/2008/sponsors/opportunities.html
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[SLUG] SyPy meetup tonight

[Mary Gardiner]

FYI: apparently they are having one, it's just disorganised.

http://groups.google.com/group/sydneypython/browse_thread/thread/4dc848216c6df829#

"According to our schedule this Thursday, the 1st of May is the time for
our monthly get together? Does anyone fancy joining me for a cold
beverage or two at the Grace Hotel from, say, 6pm?"

-Mary
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[SLUG] Postfix, SASL, old-skool

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> Well, how about using multiple parameters in the postfix relayhost setting?
> 
>   relayhost =
> [usual.server.on.normal.port]:25
> [usual.server.on.submission.port]:587
> [fascist.university.server]:25
> 
> Then set up multiple entries in /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd like so:
> 
>   usual.server.on.normal.port  p4ssw0rd
>   fascist.university.serverp4ssw0rd

In case anyone finds this useful, what I actually had to do:

First, the relevant fascist server does not support the modern STARTTLS
way of doing secure SMTP, they use the old wrapper mode on port 465
which Postfix DOESN'T support in client mode. (Before anyone mails, no,
they don't support STARTTLS on port 587 either, that seems to be wrapper
mode too.)

In order to get Postfix to do this, I used stunnel to forward a local
port per http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#client_sasl and
http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html#client_smtps

stunnel is an absolute pain in the neck on Ubuntu: it refuses to log
errors in any meaningful way and will often claim to start without
actually having done so. To debug it, I suggest running it on the
command line "sudo stunnel4 /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf" so you can see
what it really thinks it is doing. In addition, don't forget to set
ENABLED=1 in /etc/default/stunnel4 so that the init scripts will at
least try and work.

This is what my /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf ended up looking like:

"""
#; very simple config from 
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2007-03/1350.html

pid = /var/run/stunnel.pid
key = /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem

[smtp-tls-wrapper]
accept = 11125
client = yes
connect = fascist.university.server:465
"""

I generated /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem with "openssl req -new -x509 -days
3650 -nodes -out stunnel.pem -keyout stunnel.pem" per
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=679779

According to most guides to Postfix and stunnel around, the key
shouldn't be required, but I didn't get stunnel to work without it.

Then in /etc/postfix/main.cf:

"""
relayhost = [127.0.0.1]:11125
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = 
"""

The last line is required because the server in question ALSO isn't
strict enough in terms of password transmission for our good friend
Postfix, so I needed to turn off the security checking. You can tell
from the Postfix logs, you will get messages like "warning: SASL
authentication failure: No worthy mechs found"

Finally, make sure that /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd has the relay host and
not the fascist.university.server:465 value:

"""
[127.0.0.1]:11125   USERNAME:PASSWORD
"""

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008, Glen Turner wrote:
> Networks *should* block outgoing SMTP from anything but authorised
> mail servers.  They should, however, allow IMAPS (993) and
> Authenticated SMTP (587 to allow users to exchange mail with third-party
> servers.

Indeed, but in this case they've blocked everything except HTTP(S) and
THAT is also increasingly common: block all ports and wait for users to
scream. Screaming sometimes gets outgoing SSH back, but hasn't in this
case. So, really, that's the scenario I was talking about being fairly
common now: pretty much everything blocked. I know of at least two
universities now who do this for their wireless networks.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008, Mick Pollard wrote:
> To automate this 'script' you could build a simple smtp profile system.
> Grub allows you to pass extra info to it and this is made available to
> the init process in shell variable $CMDLINE. 

People who suspend to RAM regularly won't find this as useful since most
of the time they will be bypassing their bootloader. Search paths from
/etc/resolv.conf and wireless ESSIDs are the closest I've come to
establishing definitive locations, and you put the scripts in your
equivalent of the if-up.d directories.

-Mary
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Re: [SLUG] Re: Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008, Jeff Waugh wrote:
>   relayhost =
> [usual.server.on.normal.port]:25
> [usual.server.on.submission.port]:587
> [fascist.university.server]:25

Huh, I didn't actually know it was possible to specify more than one
server there (I thought it had to be done with an MX record or not at
all, and thus you get one choice of port). That should be a workable
solution, as long as I don't end up visiting too many networks of evil.

Everyone's solutions have been pretty interesting[1]. I'm surprised
(although, yes, I knew) that there aren't less sysadmin-y solutions:
blocking outgoing SMTP is getting pretty common. I feel bad users who
just want to send their mail already and not carry around a SMTP setup
cheatsheet for Outlook/Evo/something.

-Mary

[1] Don Marti also has a fun setup with an automatically created SSH
tunnel firing up from inittab[2], I could also try that as my last relay host.
http://www.linuxworld.com/community/?q=node/134

[2] Hrm, I guess this means learning upstart.
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Re: [SLUG] Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008, Peter Chubb wrote:
> I use exim on my laptop.  I modified the router driver to look at my
> `from' address.  If it's at Uni, I use an MX at the uni.  If at
> home, I use my own server.

How are you setting your from address to depend on location? (For me
it's all the same laptop, so same envelope sender, and I send both
personal and university mail from it whether at university or not.)

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

I wasn't clear in my original mail: I'm more interested in how people
get their laptop to switch mail settings between "inside horrible
network" and "normal operation" than I am in specifically what their
inside-horrible-network settings are, because in this particular case I
can use the university's mail server to get mail out (and I also have an
SSH server on my own machine listening on 443, so if I couldn't I could
do various SSH tunneling). It's just annoying to have to remember to
re-configure my mail client (in this case, actually Postfix, but similar
problems apply to any client, whether full MTA or not) when I am located
at uni, and again when I leave.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Sending mail from within a highly locked down network

[Mary Gardiner]

Background: my normal mail setup uses Postfix on my laptop to send
outgoing mail. My university has blocked all outgoing ports except 80
(and they may have a transparent proxy in front of that) and 443 on
their wireless network. My laptop cannot contact its normal mail servers
on any port. (I happen to run those servers, but I already have
processes listening on 80 and 443 on the relevant servers!)

In the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn't have to edit
/etc/postfix/main.cf whenever I happen to be in this network. (Of
course, I could script that.) Does anyone have alternative setups?

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: DVD slideshow creation

[Mary Gardiner]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008, elliott-brennan wrote:
> Hi Mary,
>
> Another app you can try is ManDVD
>
> http://www.getdeb.net/app/ManDVD

Thanks. It unfortunately depends on dvd-slideshow as most other
graphical apps do, and therefore is broken in Ubuntu hardy (and when
not broken would produce the ugliest text imaginable, as far as I can
tell).

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: DVD slideshow creation

[Mary Gardiner]

Looks like the way to do it is to drop down a level and use dvdauthor
directly, which has the nice side effect that if the menus are awful
looking it's all my fault.

How to do it involves interleaving information from
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6953 (older, but handy) and
http://en.dahnielson.com/2003/12/dvd-author-primer.html

Once I fix all the woeful anti-aliasing in dvd-slideshow, it's probably
OK for producing a MPEG file for each chapter, which can then be
combined using a custom menu with dvdauthor.

-Mary
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[SLUG] DVD slideshow creation

[Mary Gardiner]

Hi all,

Is there any mature-ish DVD creation software for Linux that does not
depend on dvd-slideshow?

Problems with dvd-slideshow:
 1. it needs to be patched on Ubuntu to actually work with current
versions of ffmpeg and sox (oh for the benefit of people coming in
from Google it's got a missing dependency on at least libsox-fmt-sndfile
and possibly other libsox-fmt-* files)

 2. it has some hard-coded use of imagemagick that produces rotton
looking files, in particular, it invokes convert in such a
way as to prevent imagemagick anti-aliasing any text it produces

 3. it's an 8000 line shell script with significant bugs, bugs I've
spent about six hours fixing in my local copy only to find behind
them... more bugs. The pattern of bugs indicates it's one of those
pieces of software that the author tests by running it over his pet
project, which does not exercise all available features of the
software and that those features it does not exercise quickly rot

 4. it's an 8000 line shell script written in such a way as to be
difficult to debug: simple stuff like containing functions that go
on for 1000 lines, if statements and elifs that are separated by
three pages, etc.

It's a pity really, because it's controlled by text file input, which
would be very convienient to produce with scripts.

There's some very slick looking stuff for Linux, like ManDVD, but it's
all built on top of dvd-slideshow, and I've given a fair chunk of time
to debugging it already, and now I'd just like to make a pretty looking
DVD to give to some people.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Drupal Asia Pacific to be held in Sydney, May 2008

[Mary Gardiner]

I only just found out about this and haven't seen any mention here:
http://drupalapc.org/ May 18th - 22nd 2008. It seems to be a development
and community conference for Drupal, held in conjunction with Open
CeBIT.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Results of special motion vote on constitutional changes for SLUG

[Mary Gardiner]

Last night was the SLUG AGM. Matt Moor took the minutes and hopefully
the minutes and the results of the committee election will be posted
shortly.

In the meantime...

At last night's AGM one agenda item was voting on two proposed
constitutional changes, both drafted by James Polley.

As one of the two motions passed, the SLUG committee needs to notify the
NSW Office of Fair Trading of the change within a month:
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/business/associations/rules.html#How%20are%20the%20rules%20of%20an%20association%20changed?

=== First motion: to accept the changes in the process of becoming a
member ===

James's summary:
> * changes to the process of becoming a member (in line with changes of LA).
> 
> Patchset for this is at [3]. In short, it's allowing the Secretary or
> Treasurer to approve applications for membership directly. According
> the constitution, applications are to be made in writing to the
> secretary, who will forward them to the committee, who accept or
> reject the application. In practice, Ken has been accepting any
> applicant who can fill out the form and cough up the required amount
> of cash - this change formalises that process.
> [3]http://wiki.slug.org.au/changes_to_the_process_of_becoming_a_member?rev=1178537827&do=diff

The motion to make this change to the constitution PASSED unanimously.

=== Second motion: to accept a constitution amendment creating a
corporate membership ===

James's summary 
> * the creation of a corporate membership
> 
> I've put a revised draft of the constitution on the wiki; you can see
> my proposed patchset at [4]. This allows for other organizations or
> groups to become members at a cost of $250.
> 
> There was some discussion on the mailing list[5] about whether there's
> any point to this change. The main argument for the change is outlined
> by Ken Wilson[6], the main arguments against were put by Del[7][8].
> 
> The patchset at [4] will accomplish this, should enough people think
> it worth voting for.
> [4]http://wiki.slug.org.au/creation_of_a_corporate_membership?rev=1178621580&do=diff
> [5]http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/activities/2007/05/index.html#00012
> [6]http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/activities/2007/05/msg00028.html
> [7]http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/activities/2007/05/msg00023.html
> [8]http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/activities/2007/05/msg00045.html

This motion FAILED.

-Mary Gardiner,
Returning Officer
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[SLUG] Re: Wireless problems: what does "RX too short data frame payload" mean?

[Mary Gardiner]

Looks like it might be their problem, right now. I'd still like to find
out what causes the RX message, as my disk has to wake up all the time
to write it out to the logs.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Wireless problems: what does "RX too short data frame payload" mean?

[Mary Gardiner]

I upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy on Monday and have spent my time since
largely filing bugs against the iwl3945 wireless support (some
behaviour, like very buggy support for the physical wireless-off
switches that you're meant to use when flying, is a considerable
regression over ipw3945 at this time).

Before I file another one, I need some help with possible causes,
specifically an "is this me or them?" problem.

Symptoms:

I am trying to connect to an unencrypted wireless network at university.
Assocating and obtaining a DHCP lease works. I can ping other machines
in my local network (a /24). I cannot easily connect to anything outside
the local network, including the web interface where I am meant to go
and authenticate myself for full Internet access. Every so often a
packet comes through, but the rate is probably about 2%. (ping doesn't
work at all, so I can't give a number for sure.)

Other people seem to be connecting to everything fine. (Using Windows
laptops, mostly.)

The only obvious error in my logs, aside from the irrelevant one filed
at https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/131835 is:

"wlan0_rename: RX too short data frame payload"

Does this mean anything? Is there any other way I can test the extent to
which this is my problem, rather than the University's problem? If it is
their problem, is there some way to make it occur on Windows so that
their tech support will agree to look at it?

For reference, I can connect to my home wireless network (WPA encrypted)
with no apparent problems.

-Mary
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[SLUG] Re: Women's pre-SLUG meetup, Lindt Cafe, Darling Harbour, Fri Feb 29, 5:30pm

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008, Mary Gardiner wrote:
>  Date: Friday 29th February 2007

2008 of course!
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