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Network config for a 3/4G raio broadband wifi modem
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 10 Nov '15

10 Nov '15

I purchased a TPlink M7350 3/4g radio broadband wifi modem in my quest to get a Bendigo Telco (Optus) mobile broadband to work. The sim supplied worked OK in this and connected to the internet OK. There are a number of reports on the net of this modem working OK with Linux. All reports were with Ubuntu and stated it worked out of the box, ie connecting the unit up via its usb cable resulted a connection to the internet. I run Debian with FVWM as window manager none of debians Network managment tools are installed as far as I know. There are two ways of working with the device one is via radio, I assume wifi, the second is via its usb port. For network communication via the usb cable the kernels rndis_host module is used. With it installed pluging the TPlinks in produces the kernel network interface usb0. What config is required for this, I added a usb0 entry to the /etc/network/interface file but this did not work. the command "ifup usb0" produced the error............ root@wolfcor650d# ifup usb0 RTNETLINK answers: File exists Failed to bring up usb0. root@wolfcor650d# ifdown usb0 ifdown: interface usb0 not configured Unfortunately I know little about network configuration under Linux can any one help here. Lindsay

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Possible major advance in spammer techhiques: Bayesian classifiers
by Rick Moen 04 Nov '15

04 Nov '15

On September 26, 2015, I saw the first pair of examples of what appeared to be much smarter SMTP spam. Both the envelope 'From ' sender and the internal 'From: ' sender were credibly forged to impersonate two personal friends, Michael Siladi and Alison Stern. That wasn't new: Forging of the envelope sender has been a well-tested art since the infamous revenge-spam attack against Joe Doll in 1997 that gave the world the term 'Joe-job'.[1] What was new was the personalised tailoring of some of the body text _and_ most especially the use of recipients in the To: and Cc: headers who were among Michael and Alison's frequent contact addresses -- other people in the science fiction convention-running community and private mailing lists for convention-running. Not that it matters, but the injection point of those mails, back in September, was IP address 212.40.185.205 in Germany, with the prior-hop Received header (before the one for the German mail provider) claiming that it had originated at an ISP POP in Bogota, Colombia. Both Michael and Alison are in Mountain View, California. Back then in September, I sent Michael and Alison a detailed header analysis, pointing out the probable significance of the highly personalised recipient list: I inferred that the spammers had not only harvested detailed traffic information from malware on the MS-Windows box of someone in Michael & Alison's social circle, but also was now using traffic analysis -- turning loose Bayesian classifier software on harvested data concerning who corresponds with whom -- to programmatically compose _more-credible_ spam targeted at the forged sender's known associates, with some message-text contents likewise personalised to the sender. Today, another blast of forged mail arrived on about six diverse mailing lists for science-fiction convention-running plus the "basfa' discussion mailing list of the Bay Area Science Fiction Society -- purporting to be from Michael Siladi, as before. Each of the targeted mailing lists duly transmitted the forgeries to all recipients. The targeted mailing lists + other CC'd/To'd recipients were picked from ones Michael corresponds with. The phrase 'artshow15' in the body text is a name of a private mailing list operated for the 2015 BayCon, a local science fiction convention in the San Francisco Bay Area of which Michael is convention chair. I have posted full data on the BASFA copy of the forgery, plus my personal analysis, here: http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2015-November/008205.html http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2015-November/008206.html Notice my point that Michael's ISP, Netcom, is still in 2015 failing to publish any MX-authentication data (SPF, DKIM, or variants thereof) in its DNS, so it's no wonder that forgeries of Michael's address could not be detected. In my second post, I concluded: I expect a lot of mailing lists will soon have forged-mail spam problems -- not a problem until now. This is a wake-up call. Anyone else seeing this? Other thoughts? [1] See the 'Joe-job' entries on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Mail/ , if you don't know this story. (I was among the many recipients of the flamebait attempt to lure anti-spam people to attack Joe Doll, probably because I was a regular poster to net.admin.net-abuse.email at the time.)

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KVM vs Xen
by Russell Coker 04 Nov '15

04 Nov '15

Xen has been widely regarded as the best performance VM for Linux for a long time. Oracle has been one of the advocates of Xen claiming very close to native hardware performance. # 300% improvement in UnixBench score, with a KVM Linode vs a Xen Linode # 28% faster at compiling a Linux kernel with a KVM Linode vs a Xen Linode # Boot and shutdown times are greatly improved Now Linode (one of the largest Xen sites) is moving to KVM, they list the above as benefits of KVM which surprises me. My experience of Xen is that the only way anything could be 300% faster is if it's an issue of disk IO scheduling on hard drives (as multiple virtual machines on the same spinning media causes contention and/or fragmentation issues depending on how you do it. But given that Linode was already using SSD for all storage that's obviously not what they are doing. The last time I tried KVM on my laptop the performance was a lot slower than native performance as opposed to Xen which was near enough to native hardware performance that the difference didn't matter. I've never even tested KVM on a server because the performance on my laptop (admittedly a couple of years ago) was very disappointing. Last time I tested KVM performance was not only noticably worse (EG compiles of selinux-policy-default taking about 50% longer) but the increase in CPU use was an issue of cooling. Has KVM improved a lot recently? How can anything be so much better than Xen when Xen has been so close to native performance for so long? I've just chosen KVM for a new Linode instance. They allow me to choose Xen but say that KVM is the way of the future - presumably I would be forced to use KVM sooner or later so it seemed easier to use it now. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Help fixing grub install
by Toby Corkindale 04 Nov '15

04 Nov '15

Hi, After re-installing Kubuntu on my (EFI, GPT) laptop (which also has Windows 10), I've ended up with a broken grub. It used to work fine. The problem is that now it boots into grub, with no configuration, just the grub> prompt. I can continue by typing: grub> configfile (hd0,gpt6)/boot/grub/grub.cfg which then brings up the usual menu. But I'd like to know how to configure grub so that it finds it automatically! Needless to say, I have already tried running grub-install /dev/sda after booting. (Which succeeds without error) Any suggestions? PS. I don't want to totally blank the drive, as it shares with a Windows 10 install that I'd like to keep. Thanks Toby

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Cheap Android phones
by Russell Coker 04 Nov '15

04 Nov '15

https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/kogan-agora-3g-lite/ $99 for a Kogan phone running Android 5. As you would guess from the price it's got low hardware specs, less than a Samsung Galaxy S3. But it should do the basics. A friend has been using the cheapest Kogan phones for a while and found that the build quality is a bit lacking. They can't be expected to work as well as an old S3. But if you want a new phone for $99 I think it's a good deal! -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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SSHFS - suddenly no write
by Piers Rowan 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

Hi there, I have been using sshfs for years on a server without incident. Now when I connect I can't write to / save the PHP files I am editing. The server shows the following error: sftp-server[34002]: error: process_write: write failed I have checked the disk for space (there is plenty and I have even deleted files). The permissions have not changed and I have tested and reset them on various directories. Geany: Error saving file. Nautilus: Error creating directory: Operation not permitted Any ideas how to debug? I think it is specific to this server. Thanks Piers

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Simple outgoing mail setup
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

I run a small network of 4 machines, it is not really a network, this connection being basicly a handy way of getting data between machines. Because of this there is no name server or mail server running on any machines For out going mail I have always ssh'ed to the machine with the internet connection and used pine, which has inbuilt support for outgoing mail. Unfortuantely this no longer works as I now do not have direct access to my ISP's mail server and access via the internet requires authentication and pine does not support that. How is outgoing mail set up done on a standard desktop system, a text based email client on the internet access machine is the only one that will be used. Hopefull something simple. Although I have been running linux now for well over twenty years, network connections between my machines has always just worked and I have always used pine, as a consequency I have learned little of this side of Linux configuration. Kernel and X server config are different stories though Lindsay

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remote screen sharing
by Michael Schams 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

Hi there, I wonder which cross-platform software or services you are using for remote screen sharing sessions, if any? Commercial vendors with proprietary software make it (more or less) easy for Windows and Mac users to share their screens remotely, fool-proof even for non-tech-savvies (e.g. Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting, zoom.us or browser-based such as Google Hangouts, etc.). A typical situation would be: I use Debian 8 and I want to share my screen with a client or partner running Windows or Mac to demonstrate something. My experience so far: Skype works well under Debian, but I always have issues with the screen sharing feature. I have used TeamViewer from time to time (works very well). WebEx, GoToMeeting, zoom.us and most of the other services don't support Linux. Remote Desktop (RDP) predominantly aims to remote administration. Browser-based solutions I have not tested yet. I would prefer open source solutions of course (even paid). Must haves: very easy to use for the "other side" and cross-platform capability (Linux, Windows, Mac). Optional: audio (voice) support would be nice but could also be achieved via VoIP/Skype/phone via an extra channel. One-to-many (someone shares his/her screen to multiple receivers) would be also nice, but an exception. Does anyone have any experience, suggestions, advices in this regards? Thanks Michael

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No need for YACS in Mint?
by Carl Turney 26 Oct '15

26 Oct '15

Hi All, Many years ago, I needed to install YACS (yet another clock synchronizer) into my Red Hat (?) system, to keep my hardware clock from "drifting" over time. No mention of it, or anything on clock synchronizers, that I can find for my Linux Mint 17 Qiana. Not needed? Handled elsewhere as a standard feature? Thanks, Carl Turney Bayswater, Vic

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Re: Problem with a new 3G moble broadband set up
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 26 Oct '15

26 Oct '15

On Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:02:12 Craig Sanders said, > do you know someone who has a mobile phone that will let you borrow it > for 10 minutes? > perhaps they have an old phone buried at the bottom of a drawer? > craig On thinking the current situation over I do not regard it as serious enough to bother any one with something I know so little about (I have never had or used a current mobile phone). As mentioned I currently have broadband access to Virgin with the modem, a Huawei E220, Now I do have a Huawei E160 (Note 1) as a spare. I have currently put it away and cannot find it, but but will surface soon as I am cleaning up my computor room today. Another option probably worth pursuing is an external router that can use a 3/4G modem such as the Netcom Wireless 4GM3W with a Netcom N600, the latter does not have linux suppport but the I assume the 4GM3W does. Further research is required. Of course a real good solution is to find a couple of Belkin micro N300's (one as a spare) Belkin Australia claim these are readily availible. Note 1: The Huawei E160 is a slightly cut down version of the E220. Note 2: I did a lot of web searching and ringing around yesterday and was offered 3 different mobile broadband dongles, none of which had in built linux kernel support, _______________VERY_______________ frustrating I may say. Lindsay

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