June 2013 - luv-main - example.com

iptables-save output using dotted quad netmask rather than CIDR
by Tim Connors 13 Dec '13

13 Dec '13

iptables-save on rhel5 outputs: -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 12.3.4.5/255.255.0.0 -p tcp -m tcp -j ACCEPT whereas rhel6 outputs -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 12.3.4.5/16 -p tcp -m tcp -j ACCEPT Wanting to normalise iptables-save to one form or the other (preferably using the dotted quad netmask), the best I can come up with is a line by line grep (for optimisation perhaps, since a match wont happen often) for /<number> and then extract the number, pass to cidr2mask, and replace /<number> in that line (this is part of a self contained shell script that will be executed on the fly on another host, so I'd rather not rely on anything that isn't already in RHEL, ie no writing a perl sript myself unless it's a one liner perl -e thing). What flag to iptables-save am I missing where it does this for me? -- Tim Connors

4 8

Cheap GPL router - $11 from MSY
by Andrew Worsley 15 Oct '13

15 Oct '13

Just got what looks to be a pretty good deal on what appears to have GPL version of the code made available. Got this D-Link Modem - hopes weren't high but it appears pretty reasonable 802.11bgn + 8 LAN ports switch + WAN router. I noticed that it contained a "D-LINK GPL Code Statement" with link http://tsd.dlink.com.tw/GPL.asp which turns out to be their GPL web interface which lists masses of products and a download links to source code which includes my DIR-632 (took a little time to find it amongst the massive number of items). I am downloading it now - 185Mb. See what you actually get in that. The modem itself is rather nice - it has most features you could think of (no CLI though, Web interface) and has a built in manual that explains each feature in detail! I suspect they are letting them go at that price because the new 802.11ac modems have arrived. See http://www.msy.com.au/images/ADbanner/eletter/04042013/online/html.html for the original promotion. Anyway thought others might be interested in this and perhaps an example of GPL compliance that seems pretty good... Andrew

7 8

anyone running Jessie yet?
by James Harper 28 Jul '13

28 Jul '13

Is anyone running Debian Jessie yet? Previously I was running Wheezy with a few packages from Sid and experimental, but in the past it's taken a month or two for the new testing release to reach some form of stability. Thanks James

4 4

alternate OS voids warranty
by James Harper 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

Not necessarily Linux related, but I just got off the phone with a certain large computer manufacture trying to resolve a failed harddisk on a 3 month old computer, and they claim that installing an alternate OS has voided the warranty. In this case the computer shipped with Win7 and the "alternate OS" was XP, but I find the claim ludicrous as I install Linux on all sorts of PC's and the warranty callcenter has never skipped a beat as long as I can demonstrate the fault in an obvious way. This particular computer is a different brand though... What's my best avenue to force the issue? Or are they within their rights to say that I have voided my warranty? Thanks James

19 33

Statistical spam filters
by Jason White 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

This issue arose in conversation recently, thus I thought it worth asking here. Which tools are state of the art these days in statistical spam filtering? (Free/open-source and running on Linux are both assumed.) When I last looked (some years ago), the top options appeared to be, in no particular order: Spamassassin (rules + statistical classifier). It works well for many people; the statistical classifier used to be very memory-intensive and I know people for whom SpamAssassin didn't give accurate results even after training. CRM114: this is what I am currently using for my incoming mail. It appears to be in the midst of a rewrite as a library with support for various scripting languages. My initial experiences with it weren't good, but I tried it again several years ago and, this time, it quickly surpassed SpamAssassin when trained to classify my mail. Dspam: also has a good reputation, seems to be maintained to some extent. When last I looked at it in detail, a number of years ago, there were plans to add interesting features for allowing users to share filters so that a new user wouldn't have to train it from an empty database and one user's training could affect other users' filters. There were other projects around, but the above appeared to be the most sophisticated. So it's now 2013... Any changes? Comments?

9 13

Samba 4 and LDAP
by Peter 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

Hi all, I just play around with Samba 4. At the moment, there is no official support for external LDAP (e.g. OpenLDAP). My original understanding was: We want Samba 4 "out" as fast as possible so we concentrate on "core functionality" (e.g. using internal LDAP, DNS etc.), and look at issues related to external sources later. Yesterday I found this: ---- http://us.generation-nt.com/re-samba-windows-8-pro-no-domain-logon-possible… (20th Sep 2012) We spent considerable effort over a period of years in attempting to make this possible. It is not. Even if it was, it would not involve 'simply' reading the companies LDAP server, it would be a very intrusive change no more acceptable than using our own built-in LDAP server. Andrew Bartlett ---- I wonder whether it means: Samba will not use external LDAP at all (that would rule it out for me here) "Very intrusive changes".. to Samba or LDAP? Does anybody has insight of the "roadmap", especially about the future of external LDAP sources? I know that you can make it work, somehow, now. But if it does not have support by the Samba team it will be fiddly and fragile and you have to worry about future releases all the time. I am not really keen on that. Regards Peter

3 3

Easily find all the child processes of a process?
by Chris Samuel 17 Jul '13

17 Jul '13

Hi folks, This is likely an easy one, but my brain is fading rapidly at the moment.. Is there a way to easily collect all child (and grandchild, etc) processes of a particular process? I know I can do ps --ppid $PID to get the immediate children, and I can use pstree -p $PID to see all the descendants in graphical form, but I want to get an easy to parse list. Any ideas, or is this a case of writing it myself? cheers! Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

5 7

Maildir to mbox
by Russell Coker 26 Jun '13

26 Jun '13

Is there a good program in Debian to convert a Maildir of mail to an mbox file? A quick search only turned up one that is part of the qmail package. I'd rather have something that doesn't conflict with my favourite MTA. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

5 4

changing size of partition
by Russell Coker 26 Jun '13

26 Jun '13

What's the best way to change the size of a partition? I've got an image for a 2G CF card that I need to change to fit a larger CF card while remaining bootable. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

3 2

CCISS data structure
by Russell Coker 25 Jun '13

25 Jun '13

I have just received a free HP DL-385 system, it's quite a nice server with 16G of RAM, 3*SATA and 5*SAS disks. I want to set it up to run Linux software RAID-1 with Ext4 on a pair of SATA disks for booting and ZFS RAID-Z2 on the 5*SAS disks for data storage. The problem I have is that the boot disks were wiped, the DVD drive is broken and ILO isn't licensed for remote disk access. This combined with the fact that USB booting apparently doesn't work (it doesn't boot with my usual USB boot device) means that I have to make the SATA disks bootable before connecting them. The fact that the HP system takes ages to boot and is really noisy means that I don't want to make dozens of attempts to get it by trial and error. Does anyone know what the CCISS disk format is for a single disk RAID-0 (IE a JBOD)? Presumably there is some offset where I can just put an image of a regular bootable SATA disk and have it work. Thanks. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

6 15