Re: Linux conceptual configuration problems
by Avi Alkalay
On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 02:37:56 -0800, Kenneth Porter
<shiva(a)sewingwitch.com> wrote:
> --On Saturday, November 06, 2004 7:25 AM -0300 Avi Alkalay
> <avibrazil(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I see Linux today as many separated programs
> > that were forced to work together, but not designed to do so. So the
> > system as a whole is not integrated.
>
> Don't forget that Linux is not Fedora. There are many flavors of Linux at
> many scales, from tiny embedded systems to massive clusters. Configuration
> machinery for one deployment may be inappropriate for another.
Of course.
But currently no massive cluster and no tiny deployment provides a way
to apps integrate themselves automatically through their
configurations. They allways have to ask users to manualy edit
configuration files.
Regards,
Avi
19 years, 5 months
Re: linux registry (no, not that again!)
by Peter Åstrand
>Yes, here's the linux registry topic again. This project looks
>interesting. Any comments?
>
>http://registry.sourceforge.net/
If you are interested in "configuration frameworks" but feels that Elektra
just isn't the right way to go, I suggest that you take a look at my own
project Hiveconf: http://freshmeat.net/projects/hiveconf/
In my opinion, the design makes it much less intrusive than Elektra. For
example, I don't expect that we can convince projects like Apache,
Sendmail, Postfix, Samba etc to change configuration file formats.
Instead, the configuration system should support different file formats by
"plugins" or "backends".
My thoughs on the Elektra project can be found at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=5087023&forum_id=4...
A Python implementation of Hiveconf exists. The next step is to write a C
implementation and plugins.
/Peter Åstrand <astrand(a)lysator.liu.se>
19 years, 5 months
802.11 Shared Key Authentication is bad [was NetworkManager Issues]
by Chuck Anderson
On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 11:30:26AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-11-05 at 11:08 -0500, Charles R. Anderson wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 05:02:40PM +0100, Ziga Mahkovec wrote:
> > > As for the ipw2100 driver -- versions 0.57+ now actually default to
> > > OPEN. But NM overrides this so no harm done. It does make life harder
> > > if you're using ifup scripts with shared key authentication though. I
> > > had to patch ifup-wireless to force restricted mode.
> >
> > Shared Key auth is worse than no authentication/encryption at all.
> > Anyone with a clue will be using Open System. I don't think we should
> > put too much effort into making Shared Key easy to use.
>
> Charles,
>
> Why is it so much worse?
By doing Shared Key Authentication, you are providing potential
crackers with both the Plaintext and the Ciphertext for the same data.
This makes is much much easier for a third party to basically figure
out what the WEP key is.
Here is an excerpt from Jon Edney and William A. Arbaugh's book, Real
802.11 Security, pp. 91-92:
"During [shared key] authentication the access point sends a random
string of 128 bytes. The way in which this "random" string is
generated is not defined, but one would hope at least that it was
different for each authentication attempt. The mobile station
encrypts the string and sends it back. Sounds good, but hang on a
moment--WEP encryption involves generating a sequence of pseudorandom
bytes called the key stream and XORing it with the plaintext. So any
one watching this transaction now has the plaintext challenge and the
encrypted response. Therefore, simply by XORing the two together, the
enemy has a copy of the RC4 random bytes.
[...]
The attacker is "authenticated" without ever knowing the secret key.
Hopless!
[...]
So not only does this approach not authenticate, it actually assists
the enemy to attack the encryption keys"
> Also, did you read my explanation of how its much much harder with Open
> System to figure out if the WEP key is wrong? That's the big sticking
> point here. If we can't automatically detect whether the WEP key is
> wrong or not (and waiting 30s for a failed DHCP certainly isn't
> "automatic"), then we might as well not even try to improve on the
> current system-config-network.
I agree that that is a problem. However, there is no good way to fix
it without compromising the security of the entire system.
19 years, 5 months
Problem with Fedora Core 2 remote kdesktop
by Bruce Satow
Dear Folks,
At work, on my WinXP Pro computer, I start Exceed (x server), then run
my SSH client to connect to my home linux server. I have set up my SSH
client to tunnel all X11 connections. I can run all my X applications
this way.
When my server at home was running under RH9.0, I could SSH in (as
described above) to my home server from work, and at the linux prompt
typed the command 'kdesktop'. Then the entire KDE desktop would appear
on my remote computer. All the default desktop icons, the taskbar at
the bottom of the screen, all appear normally. No need for VNC
services this way. And it is secure since I am tunneling my X11
connection through SSH.
However there is a bug that I found.under FC2.
Under Fedora Core 2, using the same method (as described above), only
the desktop wallpaper appears. None of the desktop icons appear, no
taskbar. The submenu from the mouse buttons work. This is a bummer for
me since I upgraded from RH9 to FC2.
I don't really know how to fix this problem and I don't wish to run VNC
server
Any ideas?
19 years, 5 months
Using RAID-1 with FC3rcN?
by Elliot Lee
Cristian ran into bug #138100 last night while upgrading his workstation.
Since we don't know quite yet what the impact is on users (what situations
the bug occurs in, and thus how common those situations are among users),
In the interest of getting it right we may have to delay FC3 until this
bug becomes clearer.
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=138100
If anyone has done FC3rcN installs/upgrades that use RAID-1, please let me
know the results, whether you were using LVM, and whether you had SELinux
enabled.
Thanks!
-- Elliot
19 years, 5 months
File System Search
by Jeff Pitman
In connection with the Google Desktop Search frenzy and a small
contingent asking for a Linux port, I began a small search of already
available stuff on Linux and bumped into an interesting project that
hasn't been discussed here, yet. (Not to be confused with this:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-August/msg00100.html )
URL: fsdb.sf.net (No longer active; just wanted to discuss
possibilities).
The gist of it is to create a fresher slocate database by using a hook
in the kernel to get fs updates and store them in an intermediate
format. Then, instead of a daily update, you can setup fsdb to run
hourly and it uses a lot less CPU to boot. And the updates only take
seconds, instead of the long annoyingly slow "updatedb".
I know this only provides name searching not the full gambit that GDS
provides. But, it could be a start to improve things a bit more.
For example, Konqueror has "Use files index", although it's pretty
buggy, which would be more useful if the DB was more up-to-date. It'd
be nice to bring a standard DB (with content search) in under the
umbrella of freedesktop.org, but that's off-topic here.
What other tools have you seen out there?
Discuss away!
--
-jeff
19 years, 5 months
FC3 PPC development tree / installing FC3 on ibook2001 + B&W PowerMacG3
by Markus Nicolussi
Hello!
i sucked the ppc-devel-tree to my hd, set up a NFS server for the downloaded
files and burned boot.iso from the dir "mac". The boot cd booted but it
found no network device, and i don't know how to set up the
module-parameters which it's maybe requesting...
all i know i took from the HOWTO at
http://www.bytebot.net/geekdocs/ibook/fedorappc.html
I couldn't by all efforts find more about this topic in the net...
in this HOWTO it says that one schould use the "sungem" driver for the
internal network device, but this doesn't help (maybe this tip applies only
for ibookG4s?)
Does anybody have experience with this topic and could give me a hint?
Thanks in advance
caio, nico.
--
NEU +++ DSL Komplett von GMX +++ http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
GMX DSL-Netzanschluss + Tarif zum superg�nstigen Komplett-Preis!
19 years, 5 months
gnome 2.9
by Patricio Bruna V
would gnome 2.9 be available for fc3 or fedora devel?
--
Patricio Bruna http://www.linuxcenterla.com
Ingeniero de Proyectos Canada # 239 Piso 5
Red Hat Certified Engineer Providencia, Santiago - CHILE
Linux Center Latinoamerica Fono: +56 2 2745000, Fax : +56 22747075
19 years, 5 months