Journal of a Sysadmin

iPhones and Upgrades

Had Friday and today off work as we were going dog camping on the weekend. That went well(ish) and today we had to go and do something about phones…

See, we wouldn’t have had to today really except that I had to wash Jaime’s with the HE washer. I guess it washes phones as well as it washes cloths, as it washed the good out of it. The phone is now only usable as a wedge type door stop (the razor is too small to use as a coaster).

Of course, as soon as her phone went missing my phone decided too completely croak so a good part of the day was spent digging around finding papers and deciding what phone and plan to get Jaime. We then proceeded to go to the Fido store and pickup a new Z310 for me (to replace the dead one) and an iPhone for Jaime…

All the hype I think is worth it. The phone seems solid and she’s posted to flickr, facebook, and now her journal. Mail works, we works and most importantly the phone actually works. Visual Voicemail btw is kind of cool, integrating the iPhone with voicemail so that you can navigate your voicemail from the phone menu instead of having to call it. Nice feature.

Data plans still suck here. Currently we are on the limited time offer $30 6G plan. Hopefully it goes down from that.

Tonight I upgraded all 4 installs of WP here. I’m happy to report that my diff and patch method still works!

Yay, it means 3 minutes instead of 15 per journal!.

Christmas Time is Here!

Christmas today was a blast.

Little J had so many presents I think he was overwhelmed. So much so he didn’t get to open all of them and there are still 3 wrapped and under the tree, he could be saving them for tomorrow =).

jhb loved what I got her, though I knew she would. Only problem is there’s a little hack you have to do to the iPod Touch in order to get it to work with Linux and that hack requires the use of iTunes.

Did you know, iTunes won’t work from within a xen VM? It can’t see the USB device I guess. It also won’t work from within wine (I tried both of these). It also will not work on a PowerPC Mac with Darwin, that’s too old. You need at least Tiger to run iTunes and Lepard won’t run on a 733MHz G4… It also will not work on Windows XP base install, which jhb found out about tonight before she was forced to install SP2, just to run iTunes…

Did you also know that we have a grand total of 3 copies of windows in our house. One which is for middle C’s computer, a copy of XP home. I have a copy of XP Pro which was a free (as in beer) copy distributed by M$ at a seminar I went to on storage but it is damaged to the point of being unusable at the moment. The third is for adelle, which is jhb’s old Dell Optiplex, the one she moved here with.

It’s a good thing she had that CD, but cause now (after about 15 hours) she is installing adelle and she will use that to load the 1.1.1 firmware and crack the Jail on the iPood, then upgrade it to 1.1.2 again and we’ll be able to copy data via wireless using gtkpod. Can’t wait to see that work, since it’s been all FREAKING day getting to this point…

Makes me want to *never* purchase anything running any proprietary software on it, evern. I mean why the hell can’t Jobs get them to write a Linux iTunes or at least release enough specs so that the community can flash their iPood without resorting to booting Tiger on a G4.

But jhb likes it, so I guess it’s worth it.

BTW, after the Sony root kit BS, I still haven’t bought much if anything in the way of Sony hardware. I unfortunately can’t see doing that with Mac right now even though they desperately needs their heads pulled out of their asses… Please someone at Apple, make them port some of that to Linux!

New printer, oh my it’s nice

So, we had this Dell inkjet that, really for an inkjet it isn’t too bad but there was one problem; it was still an inkjet.

I hate inkjets. You pay $40 for the cartridge and it doesn’t last very long. If you don’t print for 2 weeks ink dries in the nozzles and it screws up. Inkjet printers are for those who don’t actually ever want to print.

So, we went to Best Buy and bought a Brother HL 2040 which is an entry level laser printer. Decent enough and it just works with Linux (select the HL2060) in 600 dpi mode. It would be nice though to have it do 2400×600 which is its max res. At some point I’ll get to that.

A decent digital audio player, buy one!

This is a company we need to support.

Samsung (of all companies) is making a DMP (digital media player) that supports the open standard Ogg and is a USB mass storage device. Firmware still has to be done via a windows interface, for now…

We bought s YP-C1 for one of the kids and it seems to work really well with Linux.

Oh, and it doesn’t support the DRM stuff that other players are starting to support.

Help everyone stop spam

Want to help everyone stop spam?

I’ve started using Sender Policy Framework (was Sender Permitted From) to make who my outgoing mail servers are public knowledge. I implemented it here, and at work where it is makeing a real difference.

So, using milter-greylist and amavisd-new you can whitelist based on SPF being available (and correct) and either add or subtract from the SPAM score based on SPF. If everyone was required to use SPF you could in theory drop mail based on SPF, though at this time it’s not recommended to do.

Visit the Current SPF Protocol Specification for more information and set it up if you can!

Oh Canada, protect us from ourselves.

On November 18th Bruce Perens of Debian fame addressed the UN as a speaker at the World Summit on the information society. His speech (which is online) started my doing some reading on a few things that have gone on in this area in the past couple of weeks and, quite frankly, it pissed me off.

So, it is Bruce Perens fault (perhaps indirectly but…) that I have a rather large spouting on the main page of hardrock.org (no doubt, you would notice if you looked).

It’s going to stay there until bill C60 dies.

The legal departments of large companies want us to pay large fees for the music and software that we buy (have you actually seen how F*cking much they want for a CD lately? It’s outragous) then not allow us the rights of fair use. They have lobbied the government to change copyright laws in our country (via Bill C60) to take rights of fair use away from us.

Perhaps you need more information on what bill C60 is about first. Maybe you also need information on what DRM is, and what Sony Music is doing to take away our rights.

Microsoft, Computer Associates, and Symantec also knew about Sony’s DRM software and knew what this software would do. Still they let it happen, and possibly even gave input into how it should be done.

Credit for disclosing the Sony rootkit and its backdoor can be given to Mark Russinovich who does this for a living. When he found out how he had been compromised be naturally was angry. It’s not so much that it happened (I’ve had machines compromised before) it’s that you trust the people that work for these large companies to NOT do something stupid like this and what do they do?

They take advantage of that trust and use it against us.

And this in its self is part of the problem. From

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1880543,00.asp

Russinovich was reluctant to discuss the details of how the DRM software works, citing fear of prosecution under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Even the guy that found it was scared to actually say anything because he knows what these laws do. They take away our rights, all of them. We buy a computer (our money, our property). We buy software for it (our money, our property except for the basic copyright holders rights of course). We buy music (our money, our property again with the exception that the musician holds the copyright on the music).

Not allowing us the option of installing the software, or the option of removing this software, and hi-jacking our computers are a breech our rights and freedoms, the people who have paid for this copy of this software or music. When we buy a CD from the store the CD is ours to do with as we please. The Sony DRM solution takes that away and installs software on your computer without your permission.

And Bill C60 will give them these rights in Canada as they have them in the US. This is why we have to stop Bill C60 from passing.

So, where does Bruce Perens fit into all of this? In his UN speech he said:

The software patent holders have so far held off from attacking Open Source until they can get more nations to pass software patent laws. Moving against us now now would only raise more objections to their political campaign. But the time will come. We fought the software patent camp off successfully in Europe last year, but they’ve already started a new offensive, and now they are using ineffective patent pools to deceive legislators that the problem is solved for Open Source and that laws supporting software patenting can now go ahead. Planning to defend Open Source with a patent pool is like planning to hold off the avian flu with a box of tissues.

This exactly is the same problem. These companies have more money then the person (like me) who writes free software. They have so much money, it’s impossible to fight them off and we might as well fold and try and get away with as little beating as possible. The only things these patent and digital copyright laws are designed to do is to keep the rich rich and everyone else in chains.

And don’t get me wrong. I do write free software and give it away for free but it is MY software, I wrote it and I hold the copyright on it. Whatever you do with it is fine AS LONG AS YOU ABIDE BY THE LICENSE I PUT IT UNDER. This generaly includes re-releasing it or feeding me back the changes you’ve made.

Music, I can see as being a copyright issue. My brother writes a song, it’s his song. If you make money with it you MUST give him his credit and I believe a small fee.

My brother on the other hand, has no use for DRM software. I will guarentee that if someone downloads one of his songs from the internet via a legitimate download source and like it they will go and BUY his CD and will ATTEND his concerts and will tell OTHERS about his music.

That carries far far more power for the software developer or the musician then DRM can ever.
It also carries far more power then Bill C60 ever could for the musician.

Yes musicians and software companies need to make money, but laws like Bill C60 will not ever be able to make them money, it will ONLY ever stop innovation and our own rights.

I would also like to ask where some of the great Canadians who have stood up for our and others rights before are now and where they stand on this. Where is Bruce Cockburn, Neil Young, Getty Lee? Where is Stephen Lewis while our human rights are being trampled? I hope he was in attendance during Bruce Perens speech as the economics of free software would help even the situation in Africa. Hopefully his own country is as important as any other.

At any rate, now the time is late and I must sleep. I hope that this will help stir others into asking their friends, neighbors, and maybe family to write their MP or to sign the petition at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/billc60/.

Thanks for reading.

wow, time flies

It’s been a month since I posted last, mostly I’ve been busy but I’ve also not gone for a decent ride since Sept. 11th (ouch, that sucks). Only real reason I’m here is I was checking versions (just upgraded the kids drupal installs) and thought I’d stop and write a note.

Life has been really busy and exciting lately. jhb recieved notice on Tuesday that her AIP (Approval In Principle) and Work permit are done (this is great because she has been wanting so badly to work) and because of this, just before lunch on Tuesday I get a frantic tear filled phone call from jhb where she is so excited she’s been running around the house screaming but, alas there was no one here to share it with her . I would have loved to have rushed home right that second but I couldn’t… Sometimes how it is.

Now, she is looking for work. Frantic again but towards a solid goal and I think that has made a difference for her…

Besides that, everyone one is fine. kids are ok in school, I’m good, jhb is good. Life continues down it’s meandringly crooked path towards its next bump while we careen half out of control and as fast as possible towards some far off destination. We’ll let all of you know when we get there.

Wordpress upgrade or, why full disclosure.

It’s been so busy this is the first chance I had to write about this. I’ve been steamed about it since, oh, last Wed. or so (a week and a half ago) and now that WP 1.5.2 has been released I’m going to vent.

So, yours truely is a little pissed at a certain group of tight lipped developers and here’s why. They seem to entertain the idea that not telling anyone about problems is a solution in itself. They could not be more wrong.

A week and a half ago I had the pleasure of attending a system that had a security vulnerability in WP and this wasn’t the first time, a week before that someone had also got through another security problem in WP. Now obviously I run WP and so does jhb so you can see which system this is fairly easily.

Thing is, how much did we hear about either problem?

With the first one, 1.5.1.2 had a problem in xmlrpc.php. June 29th I see there’s an update posted but it says stuff like this:

The problem is not yet public but you should update your blog as soon as possible to 1.5.1.3. If you are unable to do upgrade in the short-term you may protect yourself by deleting the xmlrpc.php file from your WordPress directory.

Bull shit, it was completely public by the time they released 1.5.1.3.

Ok, delete xmlrpc.php but nothing earth shattering. I should have read between the lines. Remotely executable command exploit is written all over this thing… Nothing on other security mailing lists because it wasn’t an "Official Security Announcement" which minimizes the effectiveness of this information.

So shortly on the heels of the first one (don’t the developers understand this? The bad guys already KNOW about it) came a second one where a cookie can be set and is not checked correctly if register globals is set to ON in php. This is the norm for OLDER SITES WITH A LOT OF IN HOUSE WORK DONE BEFORE REGISTER GLOBALS. In addition, WTF can’t they do some variable cleansing here?

Some stupid prick^Wvolunteer who will remain nameless starts bantering on in the #wordpress channel on freenode about you need to do this and you need to do that. I went there to make sure they knew about this issue which, even though the person said they know about the problem and have a fix already (and had the fix for a few days) the update wasn’t commited for several days after this (I contacted them the morning of the 12th and the fix was commited on the 14th).

It tells me they are lying about it all.

Again, no security information about any of this… Anywhere except the original posting site on the 10th of August. There have since been a bunch of sites pick up on this one… None though that I could see on the XMLRPC issue.

The third in a string of fuck-up-able issues I found out about after the fact.

They (the wordpress developers) packaged a tarball without the proper fix in it as 1.5.2. Instead of admitting to their mistake they just uploaded a correct version 1.5.2. Now there are a bunch of vulnerable sites out there running the incorrect version of 1.5.2.

And btw, to all developers and especially the developers of wordpress:

Everyone thanks you for your contribution to opensource software but remember that you can negate all of that karma by simply ignoring the people that you provide service too. If you do make a mistake, admit it and make sure that everyone KNOWS about it so that they can take proper precautions.

Otherwise you will be eaten alive by people that would otherwise be on your side.

(Note: I started writing this on the 15th, and didn’t manage to finish it until the 27th of August… I wish I had been able to do it without delay but couldn’t. Sometimes life’s like that.)

A bloody week already and xmlrpc…

So it’s been a week already since the adventure with the temporary spare backup puppy dog Kahlua (better known as gandalf) and since my last real bike ride . My body is not happy but I’m so f’ing tired today I don’t know if I’ll go yet…

Of course, it was a busy week which is why I’m tired and it didn’t help that friday night we stayed up too late and I couldn’t drag myself out of bed before 10:30am… argh.

So today I go to check out some stats and the web server is dead… wtf? Seems another process was using port 80, what could that be?

An irc bot, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood cracker from (it turns out) just around the corner in romania of course. Some 16 year old kid that is too stupid to bother trying to figure out that what he does makes others lives a pain. Anyway, locked it down and cleaned it up. He won’t get back in that way…

Now we just wait for next time…

/me sighs

that’s life on the Intarweb.

Now I remember…

So, every once in a while I have to remind myself why it is.

I have to grab a computer (something I’m very familiar with), and subject myself to punishment after painful punishment.

Every once in a long long while…

I have to install windows,

This time I was setting up a system for my kids to use for homework and of course, games. Install, reboot, install some more reboot, finish installing, reboot, second hard drive, new video card, windows update.

Reboot, reboot, REBOOT!!

I don’t know how people that live in this world do it. And slow, painfully slow. So slow that at times I can swear I see M$ writing subliminal messages on the monitor telling me to sign up for M$N messenger and .net Pa$$port and other very $ kind of things. And each time when it’s done. I have to reboot.

Now I have to admit that with windows XP there is definately less rebooting to do. But let’s face it how many times is enough? IMHO, once is. Maybe a second time for a kernel upgrade. XP still manages to cause enough reboots to make a normal PC dizzy.

Anyway, tomorrow kids birthday parties. oh and did I mention I’m on holidays for another week? =)