- luv-main - luv.asn.au

New Device Suggestions
by Piers Rowan 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

My kids school are getting Toshiba Portege Z20t so I checked them out and they look interesting. Basically it is a laptop / tablet machine. The important criteria for me include: - Runs Linux WELL - laptop / tablet / touch screen - Long battery life - Fast / Responsive - As large a screen as possible I have never used a touch screen version of Linux. Can anyone recommend similar devices? Are their any pitfalls with touch screens (GNome vs Unity)? Thanks

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Re: [luv-talk] Pre-emptive masking of browser history at ISP
by Russell Coker 08 Dec '16

08 Dec '16

On Thursday, 8 December 2016 10:51:17 AM AEDT Rohan McLeod via luv-talk wrote: > just wonder what is the established wisdom regarding: > > "Pre-emptive masking of browser history at ISP" Since Snowden blew the whistle on illegal spying the use of HTTPS has greatly increased. Your search history at Google isn't available to your local government unless Google cooperates with them. If a Google search redirects you to a major news site like the New York Times it wouldn't reveal much if they used HTTPS, but they however choose not to do that and additionally have 77 cookies from different advertising sites, Facebook, Google, and others when you view one of their pages. https://panopticlick.eff.org/ If you view web sites with Tor then their ability to track you is greatly reduced. Tor with your regular browser can still be identified, visit the above site to discover how easily it can be done. Tor with torbrowser (package torbrowser-launcher in Debian, it works in Jessie but is broken in Unstable) is very hard to track. Tor with your regular browser is adequate to stop the basic snooping as described in the article you cited. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ If you want to protect against very basic snooping while still getting good transfer speeds (Tor slows throughput and increases latency) then a VPN such as the above is a good option. They block SMTP (for obvious reasons) and would not be suitable for serious crimes such as wholesale drug dealing. But for using Bittorrent to download movies and to escape casual surveillance by your own government they are good. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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LA subcommittee
by Russell Coker 06 Dec '16

06 Dec '16

We have just had a unanimous vote in favor of becoming a subcommittee of Linux Australia. -- Sent from my Nexus 6P with K-9 Mail.

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O'Reilly Unix Humble Book Bundle, USD29 Espotek Labrador Electronics hackerboard
by Rodney Brown 02 Dec '16

02 Dec '16

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unix-book-bundle?imm_mid=0eb37f&cmp=em-p… O'Reilly Unix Humble Book Bundle supporting Code for America Unix in a Nutshell (4th). sed & awk (2nd). lex and yacc (2nd) Learning the bash shell (3rd) >=USD1 bash Cookbook. Classic Shell Script. Learning GNU Emacs (3rd). Unix Power Tools Learning the vi & vim Editors (7th) >= USD8 Bash Pocket Reference (2nd). Learning Unix for OS X (2nd) Essential Sys. Admin. (3rd). TCP/IP Network Admin. (3rd). DNS & Bind (5th). Network Troubleshooting Tools >= USD15 Espotek Labrador USD29 Electronics hackerboard http://hackerboards.com/open-source-lab-on-a-board-costs-29/ http://espotek.com/labrador/# (Monash Grad. in Melbourne, funded, OpenSource software - including Linux) USB connected Oscilloscope – 2-channel, 750ksps Arbitrary Waveform Generator – 2-channel, 1MSPS Logic Analyzer — 2-channel, 3MSPS per channel, with serial decoding Multimeter — V/I/R/C Digital outputs — 4x programmable 3.3VDC outputs Power Supply — 4.5 to 15V, 1.5W max, closed-loop

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Re: [luv-announce] Notice of resumption of adjourned Special General Meeting, Tuesday 6 Dec 2016
by Craig Sanders 01 Dec '16

01 Dec '16

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 02:32:23PM +1100, Andrew Pam wrote: > SGM BUSINESS > > The only matter of business to be considered at this meeting is: > > *That Linux Users of Victoria apply to become a subcommittee of > Linux Australia and conditional upon acceptance, wind up the present > Victorian association as per rule 76 and section 133 of the Act and > transfer all members and assets to the newly formed subcommittee of > Linux Australia.* Are there any details (or at least a reasonable summary) of this proposal available anywhere? and a rationale for why it has been proposed? what are the arguments for and against? At the moment, I have no strong opinion one way or the other (but with a slight leaning towards "why? what's the point?"), but would like to know if there's any reason why I should have such an opinion. if the LUV lists and meetings continue as before and there's no risk of losing autonomy, just easing of the administrative overhead then I can't see any reason to object. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>

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expanding Europe's Linux Presentation Day to Australia
by Hauke Laging 30 Nov '16

30 Nov '16

Hello, in May 2015 Berlin's Linux user group (BeLUG) has started a new type of event which has spread quickly all over Europe: the Linux Presentation Day (LPD) 2015.1: Berlin only 2015.2: 72 cities in three countries 2016.1: 110 cities in 10 countries 2016.2: 150+ cities in 14 countries (on October, 22nd) I contact you because we intend to expand the LPD beyond Europe next year. The aim of the LPD towards the general public is to provide biannual and comprehensive information events about Linux for private users who would like to get a first impression of Linux. The aim towards the media is to make the event so big (both nationally and internationally) that the nationwide non-IT media cover it regularly. The aim towards the Linux community is that an LPD event can be so small and easy to organize (even without costs) that really everyone can try to organize an event with good chances of success. The local organizers decide on their own what their event shall be like; we just make suggestions and offer support. You can find a longer description of the concept here: http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/idea/ Are you as an organization interested in participating in the LPD? If not: Are any of your members interested in helping us bring the LPD to Australia? This event is very useful for finding new LUG members. Best regards, (Mr.) Hauke Laging -- http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/ International phone contact for the Linux Presentation Day: tel:+49-30-55579620 (13:00–23:00, German and English) XMPP (Chat with OTR): linux-presentation-day(a)jabber.ccc.de OTR: 91626899 1C06F2BD 75EC2441 35C696CE 38F75997

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Virtualbox
by Russell Coker 30 Nov '16

30 Nov '16

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like? It seems popular, osboxes.org seems to only have VMWare and Virtualbox image files. Apparently Qemu (and presumably KVM) support both those image types, is there any benefit of one over the other? My main aim at the moment is to get a Fedora VM going to see if they solved a bug I encountered in Debian/Unstable and if so copy their fix. One of the significant benefits of free software. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Web performance
by Russell Coker 30 Nov '16

30 Nov '16

Is there a good FOSS system for monitoring web performance? I've just seen a demo of Dynatrace which is impressive and it would be good if there was a free alternative. -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with K-9 Mail.

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SP Ausnet and ZigBee devices
by Andrew Mather 24 Nov '16

24 Nov '16

Exhuming this thread: > Message: 7 > Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2016 22:08:45 +1000 > From: Chris Samuel <chris(a)csamuel.org> > To: luv-main(a)luv.asn.au > Subject: Re: SP Ausnet and ZigBee devices > Message-ID: <3111371.ZgvKCBQGVi@quad> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > On Saturday, 9 April 2016 9:41:05 PM AEST Allan Duncan via luv-main wrote: > > > Richard Keech gave a talk in August 2014 and I thought he had a kludge > > to access the data. > > I'm pretty sure Richard was on a different supply network who offered a > service so you could provide your ZigBee devices HW address & they'd > program > the smart meter to permit it to bind. > My RAVEn arrived the other day (from Fastnetworks) and it's now hooked up to a Raspberry Pi. Interestingly, the Rainforest Automation site no longer references the RAVEn at all, but I think Gordon at Fastnetworks will still have a few. I'm in a Powercor area. I was able to log in via the portal and once I'd registered the meter via the ID on a power bill, I was able to enter the Raven's MAC and another key from the device, at which point the meter and the RAVEn were paired and data began to flow. I'm using a script based on the one Ashley mentioned ( https://github.com/frankp/python-raven/blob/master/raven_script.py) I'm just getting my head around what data is produced, but it's all there and all available. Having solar panels on the roof causes out Instantaneous Demand figure to get really thrown out of whack, so I still have some hacking to do before I get a set of figures I'm happy enough to rely on. Good for exercising the very rusty Python skills ! I'll also happily receive pointers to any existing wheels so I am not re-inventing them ! Ultimately I plan to feed figures into RRDtool or similar to produce graphs. It is interesting how sensitive the readings are. I had it running and tailing the log file last night and it was quite easy to see the effects of turning lights, the TV and electric kettle on and off. Andrew -- - https://picasaweb.google.com/107747436224613508618 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Voting is a lot like going to Bunnings really: You walk in confused, you stand in line, you have a sausage on the way out and at the end, you wind up with a bunch of useless tools" Joe Rios -

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Configuration and automation query
by Peter Ross 22 Nov '16

22 Nov '16

Hi all, I have a question about merging default configurations with own changes. As an example, take an apache configuration. The default configuration may change, according to best practice(e.g. which encryption protocols are safe to use etc). so you are happy to use whatever the package provides (if it is well-maintained) However, some things you may not like, say: the "PermitRootLogin yes" line. [Okay, the example has a bit of a "design fault" because Apache configs have include statements etc. - but there are examples without, as ntp.conf, and some do not like to have two lines of the same key which are conflicting - so you really have to replace the default with yours. I just wanted to give this as an example you may familiar with] So, for the sake of this example, assume all is written in one httpd.conf (no includes) and you are not allowed to have two lines as PermitRootLogin yes PermitRootLogin no How do you keep track of the "latest changes" in default configuration while making the changes you really want? I wonder especially in the context of automation where you may run it on many instances without manual invervention. My solution at the moment is: 1st install: - backup default (copies etc/htttpd.conf to httpd.conf.defaults) - update_config (e.g. parses the defaults with awk and replaces PermitRootLogin "yes by "no"[simplified]: awk '{if $1=="PermitRootLogin") print $1" no"; else print}' Update: - backup $version (just in case..) - restore default (copies etc/htttpd.conf.default to httpd.conf so the upgrade finds a pristine config) - package upgrade - update_config (as before) The advantage of this: update_config can do a lot of things, including using system-specific variables (e.g. getting an IP address from the system so you tell the system to listen on this IP only - no localhost: "Listen IPAddress:80"). A "diff" can be used to monitor unexpected changes afterwards (the diff should oonly show the xpected lines) , to alarm me if things are not right. I wonder whether there is any better support from configuration management tools you are using. Thank you Peter

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