March 2016 - wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

A Google engineer has published a detailed exposé on how Microsoft Windows handles file and directory pathnames (as opposed to how it is documented to handle them) <http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-definitive-guide-on-win32…> (found from <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/01/windows_path_hacks/>). Most of it, it could be argued, makes some sort of sense from a backward-compatibility rationale. Except for the reserved device names (PRN, NUL, CON etc): Now if just specifying these paths explicitly was all that this process handled it would be annoying but not the end of the world. However it’s much worse. The conversion process actively tries to convert any path with the device name last, even if the path is a Drive Absolute path. To make matters even worse the device name can have arbitrary trailing characters as long the trailing characters are separated from the device by a dot or a colon. The name can then also have trailing spaces. ... Why it does the check is beyond me as it seems to serve no actual purpose. Also note the removal of trailing suffixes, which can come in handy if something is actively trying to guard against this behavior. For example, if an application was mindful and was checking for a filename that matched one of the reserved names you can just bypass that check by appending an arbitrary suffix.

3 years, 11 months

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Microsoft Windows Linux Take 2

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

From <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/ubuntus-bash-and-linu…>: ...we've known for several months now is that the company has developed some Windows kernel components (lxcore.sys, lxss.sys, presumably standing for "Linux core" and "Linux subsystem," respectively) that support the major Linux kernel APIs. ... Microsoft is calling this the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL). ... Canonical has provided a system image containing the Ubuntu versions of the various command-line tools that are typically found in a Linux distribution. Our understanding is that these are not recompiled or ported versions of the programs (as are used in tools aiming to provide a Unix-like environment on Windows such as Cygwin) but instead unmodified programs. Microsoft is describing this in terms of providing a Linux-like command-line environment at the moment, but from what we can gather, there's little fundamental restriction to this, potentially opening the door to running a wide range of Linux programs natively on Windows. Absolutely nothing to do with the fact that tomorrow is April 1...

4 years, 4 months

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meeting on Monday

by Peter Reutemann

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting on Monday. Unfortunately, there won't be a demonstration of the Raspberry Pi 3 and I'm not sure about the Pine 64 either. http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/229051656/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

4 years, 4 months

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Red Hat Achieves 2 Billion USD In Annual Revenue

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Red Hat has taken just 2 years to double its annual takings <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Red-Hat-Two-Billion>. I remember a senior executive saying some years ago that for every dollar of revenue they get, they take $10 away from their proprietary rivals. So their overall effect on the market is massively deflationary.

4 years, 4 months

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Oracle Versus PostgresQL

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Looks like Russia’s Government departments are looking to move to PostgresQL instead of Oracle. In response, Oracle has released a document trying to point out all the problems with PostgresQL <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/21/oracle_fights_russian_software_poli…>. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you...

4 years, 4 months

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How to maintain my connection to squeeze

by Chris O'Halloran

Hi all, I have a server at work that is hacked and customized to bits to keep a wiki going using mediawiki [1] software including node.js [1a] binaries. It was a turneky [2] appliance based on Debian 6 or squeeze. It's work very well these past 6 or 7 years. It also runs a ruby on rails app clockingit.[3] I've installed the anaconda python distribution [4] on it and that is running fine. It was the only way to get python 3.4 running nicely with notebooks. A thing I've been tinkering with lately is the latex circuit package circuitikz [5] for my making nice circuit diagrams and another bit of ipython magics [6] allows you to insert these into your ipython notebooks. I know this keeps putting off the inevitable but I'd rather procrastinate further than rebuild the server. It seems squeeze has experienced some sort of migration to an LTS release even though officially it's not longer supported. The point is, I'd like to sudo apt-get install texlive-science but say it will have problems chris@wiki apt/sources.list.d$ sudo apt-get install texlive-science Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: texlive-science : Depends: python2.7 but it is not going to be installed Depends: texlive-base (>= 2015) but it is not going to be installed Depends: texlive-latex-base (>= 2015) but it is not going to be installed Depends: tex-common (>= 6) but 2.08.1 is to be installed Depends: texlive-latex-recommended (>= 2015) but it is not going to be installed Depends: texlive-binaries (>= 2015.20160222.37495-1) but 2009-8 is to be installed E: Broken packages when I do sudo apt-get update Err http://cdn.debian.net squeeze/main amd64 Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 180.214.94.18 80] Err http://cdn.debian.net squeeze/contrib amd64 Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 180.214.94.18 80] Err http://cdn.debian.net squeeze/non-free amd64 Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.61.240.89 80] Fetched 39.3 kB in 7s (5257 B/s) W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs: 7638D0442B90D010 W: Failed to fetch http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found [IP: 180.214.94.18 80] W: Failed to fetch http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found [IP: 180.214.94.18 80] W: Failed to fetch http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/non-free/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found [IP: 128.61.240.89 80] So is seems I need to update the squeeze sources to still access the old repos. I'm nervous about upgrading because of all the customisations and don't wish to break things. Any clues on how I have have my server still able to download old packages. Cheers Chris [1] http://mediawiki.org/ [1a] https://nodejs.org/en/download/ [2] http://www.turnkeylinux.org/ [3] http://www.clockingit.com/ [4] https://www.continuum.io/downloads [5] http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/circuitikz/ [6] https://github.com/mkrphys/ipython-tikzmagic

4 years, 5 months

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Former Microsoft CEO No Longer Negatively Attacks Linux

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Interview with Steve Ballmer linked from <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ballmer-Linux-Cancer-Free>: Fifteen years after calling the open-source operating system Linux a "cancer," former Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has softened his position. Speaking on Wednesday night at a dinner hosted by Fortune magazine, Ballmer said the position was right for the time, but the threat from Linux was now "in the rearview mirror." Which is why Microsoft is spending more effort than ever on Linux, no doubt...

4 years, 5 months

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Microsoft SQL Server For Linux?

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

From <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/sql-server-for-linux-…>: The announcement implies [one of] two things. Either there is a large number of Linux-using corporations out there that are desperate for SQL Server's feature set (as opposed to open source databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MaxDB, or the proprietary ones such as IBM's DB2 and, of course, Oracle's Oracle), or there is a large number of SQL Server-using organizations out there that are keen to ditch the cost of their Windows licenses but happy to continue to pay for their SQL Server licenses. Neither seems obvious to us. Nor to me...

4 years, 5 months

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Raspberry Pi 3

by William Mckee

Hello, Raspberry Pi 3 was just released. The highlights of the model: Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B Technical Specification Broadcom BCM2387 chipset 1.2GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A53 802.11 bgn Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1 (Bluetooth Classic and LE) 1GB RAM 64 Bit CPU I think I am most excited about the 64 Bit CPU. What's also amazing is they have kept the same price as the Raspberry Pi 2 - 35 pounds. I'm happy with my Raspberry Pi 2 setup but keen to pick one of these up (still can't get a zero). Blog post: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-3-on-sale/ cheers, William.

4 years, 5 months

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LibreSSL Unaffected By DROWN

by Peter Reutemann

"The OpenBSD people forked and heavily cleaned up OpenSSL to create LibreSSL due to dissatisfaction with the maintainance of OpenSSL, culminating in the heartbleed bug. The emphasis has been on cleaning up the code and improving security, which includes removing things such as SSL2 which has fundamental security flaws. As a result, LibreSSL is not affected by the DROWN bug. LibreSSL is largely compatible with OpenSSL. The main exceptions are in the cases where programs use insecure functions removed from libreSSL, or require bug compatiblity with OpenSSL." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/16/03/02/1620221 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

4 years, 5 months

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wlug March 2016