How Windows Handles Pathnames
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-win...>
(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, 8 months
Microsoft Windows Linux Take 2
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
From
<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/ubuntus-bash-and-li...>:
...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, 2 months
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, 2 months
Microsoft SQL Server For Linux?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
From
<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/sql-server-for-linu...>:
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, 2 months
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, 3 months
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, 3 months
