October 2017 - luv-main

Interesting Open Source event in Moreland
by Ben M 01 Nov '17

01 Nov '17

Hi all, There is a fantastic looking event coming up in Moreland on Thursday the 2nd of November at 8pm: http://www.moreland.vic.gov.au/libraries/library-events-and-activities/read… ... Margaret Gordon was the reporter who visited FSM during our August meetup, and she is presenting some of the work she has been doing with the Linux Foundation, Wikipedia and VLC. Looks to be a fantastic presentation. Even more exciting we may get the opportunity to do a short presentation or lead a discussion group... get in touch if you can make the event and want to get involved and we'll keep you updated with developments (including a sneak preview of the videos being presented... Exciting!). ~~ Ben Minerds

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usermod weirdness
by Paul van den Bergen 28 Oct '17

28 Oct '17

Hi Folks, Hoping to get some clarification as to what I'm missing here... I ran the following command: sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER} Which resulted in the following entry in /etc/group docker:x:133:bulwynkl OK, all nice and as it should be. su - bulwynkl then id shows I am a member of group docker. but. when I close terminal and restart it OR when I log out and log back in again and run terminal, the group hasn't taken. running id shows no docker group membership. once again - if I run su - bulwynkl, then id, I DO get docker group... so... what am I missing - presumably something is holding onto the old session data even for a logout? N.B. rebooting solved the issue. but that isn't very satisfactory - fine on a home laptop - annoying, but fine - less so on a production machine... IIUC, openning a new terminal SHOULD re-read the .bashrc &etc config files... -- Dr Paul van den Bergen

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tor etc
by Russell Coker 16 Oct '17

16 Oct '17

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/leet11/tech/full_papers/LeBlond.pdf Here is an interesting paper about deanonymising Tor users. It covers some deficiencies in Tor (reusing circuits) as well as some problems with the way it's used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Tor_Browser Here are URLs about TorChat and TorBrowser which I mentioned in my talk. At the hands-on workshop I'll cover these things in more detail. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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dynamic IPs, remote access, poor internet
by cory seligman 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

Hi all, I'm about to deploy a small server (raspberry pi) in a remote location (outback WA). The site has satellite internet, which I believe is reliable but laggy. I'd like to set up my server so I have remote shell access, but the problem I'm struggling with is the two layers of dynamic IP. The site as a whole has some satellite modem that gets a dynamic IP, but then my server will get a NATted dynamic IP from the router. I don't have control over the router, so I can't implement port forwarding with a static IP. Does anyone know what the "correct" solution might be? I've only gotten as far as very hacky solutions such as a reverse tunnel via an ssh cron job (hourly?) to my local IP. The server is in hourly communication with an Amazon S3 service to upload its collected data, so another possibility is that it periodically checks the S3 drive for a file to execute. If i place a script there it could run it and pipe the results back to me. Nasty and not very interactive. Anyone? Cory

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Melbourne linux.conf.au in 2020?
by Andrew Pam 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Melbourne started what is now the annual linux.conf.au with CALU in 1999, then held it again in 2008. We haven't hosted one since then, though there was Ballarat in 2012 and Geelong in 2016. Megan Cockroft from the Melbourne Convention Bureau has been put in touch with us to check if there is any interest in Linux Australia and LUV hosting a joint linux.conf.au and GNOME Asia Summit in Melbourne in 2020. Are there any LUV member who would be interested in organising? Cheers, Andrew

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Sending Bulk Mail - Own SMTP mail server on VPS vs 3rd Party Mail Service
by Wen Lin 01 Oct '17

01 Oct '17

One of the associations I'm in (besides LUV) have been experiencing difficulties sending bulk emails to members on a monthly basis (for announcements, newsletters purposes). This is because when you are trying to send bulk emails via your free web mail account (in this case, GMail), there is a limit imposed by Google (or any other webmail service providers) on the number of email addresses we can mail out to, within a period of time - and this limit can get ever stricter as time goes by. So the whole mailout process becomes unmanageable after a while. While the Ctte is looking into various alternatives, including several of the 3rd party mail services / transactional mail services in the market, I am offering them another option: Setup a SMTP mail server (e.g. Postfix) on a VPS hosted by a web hosting company, and handle the whole bulk mailout ourselves. I am willing to help them setting up a VPS, hardening the Linux, installing & configuring all the mail software, etc, and then take care of the regular maintenance. For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have. For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend? For SSL Certificate - I can install one from Let's Encrypt, which will be free. Any major cost/charges that I have missed? I also intend to follow all the bulk mail best practices, SPF/DKIM settings, MX records, security measures, email etiquette, etc, to make sure that our organisation normal notification/newsletter to our members, would not be treated as SPAM. The 3rd party mail service providers that I had found so far: MailChimp, MailJet, Amazon-SES, SendGrid, MailGun (and many others). Did lots of google searches, trying to compare (Advantages & Disadvantages) between managing own SMTP mail server and using 3rd party mail services. The results were mix and varied. I myself certainly have much more faith in opting for a self-managed mail server solution over the commercial mail service ones. Some of the advantages: - Have full control over most aspect of the mailing process. More flexible. Not constraint by the ever-changing rules imposed by 3rd party mail services. - Using all free & open source software - have all the freedom, and can tap into the large FOSS Community out there for various kinds of help and support. - Cost-wise, the mail server option is generally on the lower end of the price spectrum, as compared to many of the 3rd party mail services in the market. - No doubt the own mail server option would involve more work, more time to manage the whole thing - but I'm quite happy to take up this challenge, and to learn a lot from this hands-on experience. I would be delighted if any of you who are experienced in managing a linux-based mail server can kindly share with us some more real-life examples and hands-on experiences - so that I can gather more solid evidence & cases, hopefully to strengthen my case for a self-managed mail server solution. Some points that I had read somewhere that I would like to quote below to seek your comment: "*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... * *Abuse handling, bounce handling etc are important to get right, but until you have significant experience, your reputation is going to remain zero, if not negative (which is a reasonable starting point for unknown domains in this day and age). A lot of the reputation-based stuff like SPF, DKIM etc will help only if you have a reputation to defend. On the other hand, it does send the right signals to somebody who is deciding on whether or not a sender is to be treated as reputable (or rather, their absence is not a good sign; neither, in my book, is anything to suggest you are using homegrown and/or prerelease software to send email). *..." I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think? When this whole project (if accepted by my Ctte) is done and implemented successfully, I intend to share my experience in this whole process, in one of LUV talks. In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do, and lots to learn ... Cheers, Wen

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