Category: Computers

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More on hotel passwords

Back in 2009, I was ranting about hotel passwords and the lack of any serious consideration most gave to their wifi access,
Hotel internet access passwords — Here’s a case for Captain Obvious and Well Hallelujah! Big Brother has finally acted!

Well here I am in 2015 writing again on the subject. As you can guess, I’ve used plenty of motels and hotels in the intervening almost six years. As you can guess again, I’ve pretty much given up on my rant since then. And, as you can guess yet again, I’m currently sitting in a motel, using their WiFi.

And can you guess what comes next?

Well, when I checked in, they asked me “Would you like WiFi access?” which tipped me off to ask about whether or not the passwords are auto-generated each time someone checks in. Of course the poor lady was bewildered by the question, to which I responded, “Don’t worry, I’ll have the answer to my question when you hand me that ticket.” And whaddya know, it had a wifi access code that was obviously created on the spot after she’d clicked once or twice on her keyboard and looked at the screen before writing on the ticket. Not too too strong at only five alphanumeric characters, but it wasn’t a dictionary word. The sign in page said that the code was case-insensitive. My untrained eyes would guess it would only come up in a brute force attack, if someone were willing to try all 60,466,176 possible combinations, assuming it’s just the 26 letters in the alphabet and the 10 digits, with no special characters, and they only give out codes five alphanumeric units in length. Of course this ignores the fact that only the “currently active” codes are, well, active, that the system probably has some kind of maximum tries per period of time per mac address, and the like.

Of course, it would probably be cheaper and easier to rent a room, but then I don’t really know how easy or difficult

Of course this story’s postcript is that when I entered the code, it didn’t work — so I called to the front desk to report this and ask for a new one. Whaddya know, Big Brother not only has finally acted, he keeps records — the nice lady asked “Is it such and such?” I answered “not quite, here’s what’s written.” Turns out, the handwritten part of the code that said “U1” sure looked like a “W”.

Hallelujah, indeed.

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Having to find multiple levels of internet access — oh, fun!

Disclaimer: I am musing on the challenges I faced while trying to secure reliable internet I required during a recent set of business trips, and the process of developing various solutions to these challenges. These challenges are, in a general fashion, typical of the routine logistical challenges I face when in-the-field, and no doubt of other field technicians. In no way am I trying to reflect negatively on my employer, who for the purposes of this entry shall remain nameless.

I was recently on a couple of business trips, depending on an iPad as a critical part of the execution of the contract. This trip was to a small city of 25,656 (according to Wikipedia), big enough to have plenty of internet access points, cell phones, and cell phone data. As far as I was concerned, in fact, I was in a mini-mini version of Montreal, home for me, to those who haven’t figured it out yet.

The way the iPad is set up, wifi internet access is required to transfer building plans needed to do the work to the iPad, and transfer back files and data collected from my field work. I have made no bones mentioning to some key people heading the overall project that this is a potential Achilles’ Heel to the execution of the project, since, at least in the overall project’s fringe locations sufficiently beyond population centres, internet access would be a spotty luxury at best. My trips were at least symbolically close enough to the edges, underlining the potential problem.

One of the first challenges I found was that the iPad didn’t seem to play well with the internet supplied in the motel (DataValet); although I did manage to get it to work once, it proved a bit too frustrating to get working reliably. A colleague confirmed that he’d had similar problems getting Apple products to connect to DataValet. I had no trouble getting my personal computer running Fedora 21 Workstation to work with DataValet: In fact, besides not recalling having trouble over the years connecting to wifi that wasn’t specific to Linux or Fedora, I would actually say that the experience was even easier than in the past, since the daily leases seemed to automatically renew, although it seemed to insinuate itself by a “convenient” automatic popup window. In parallel, my work Windows-based machine also worked flawlessly throughout with DataValet, although if I remember correctly, I may have had to occasionally open up a browser in order to renew the leases.

Add to this challenge, my employer’s local office didn’t seem to have wifi, or at least, assuming that it *was* there as a hidden network, my work computer didn’t automatically connect to the corporate wifi when not plugged in to the corporate network, which it normally does at my home office.

My first solution was to fulfill a purpose of my having asked for a company smart phone in 2014: Create a hot spot using the data plan on my work phone to do data transfers when not in a wifi zone that works well for the iPad. However, it seemed, between the picture-heavy data and the fact that the iPad seems to do automatic background backups when hooked up to internet — a feature to which I initially had a (negative) knee-jerk reaction that nonetheless actually was useful at one point and since — my phone appeared to run out of my data plan for the month, as evidenced by the sudden stop of internet connection through the phone while still operating just fine as a phone. Having quickly checked the phone’s data usage logs and determining that I’d certainly gotten to the neighbourhood of the limit I believed I had (2 gigs), I assumed that the phone’s contract had a limit set by my employer to turn off the data plans until the month rolls over in order to avoid overage charges. I later learned, upon my return home and standing in front of the IT tech responsible for the corporate cell phones, that the problem was presumed to be an unusual set of settings probably set by some esoteric app (of which I have have very few, esoteric or otherwise, on my work phone), or possibly a SIM card problem, which turned on off the phone’s data capabilities, and that in any case the company has no such policy to ask the cell service provider to turn off a phone’s data access when it reaches the limit of “included data” in the plan, until the rollover date. The lack of internet on the phone is “solved” by resetting the phone to factory settings; I should get instructions on how to do it in the future should I be faced with the problem again. 🙂

This led to a second solution: I used my personal phone to create a hotspot and consumed a bit of my personal data plan, which didn’t bother me too much, at least until it were to involve overage charges. Not that I checked, but based on the little amount of time I used it, I’m sure I never got into that area.

The next solution also created another challenge due to a flub on my part: My client finally gave wifi access to the iPad at her various locations; however, I should have requested that she also enable my work computer, since I had a secondary need for internet given that I developed a need to produce or modify extra plans several times once arriving at some sites, and as such a need to transfer the plans off the computer and onto the iPad.

Finally, I realized that when I have wired access, I had yet another solution available to me: I could set up my linux laptop to create a wifi hotspot. This was rather easy, at least under the current gnome version in Fedora 21 and I believe has been for quite a while under the gnome 3.0 series, and probably before too. Unfortunately, this was wasn’t a solution at the motel since it only had wifi and no wired access, and I didn’t have an external wifi receiver with a cord to provide the wired internet and free up the wifi card.

Here are some screenshots of how easy it is to setup a wifi hotspot under Gnome 3:

step 1

step 2

step 3

step 4

step 5

Feeling a bit curious along the lines of “shouldn’t this be relatively easy under Windows, too?”, I checked on my work computer, and while it seemed possible, and indeed my brother once did it for me with his Windows computer, it was not obvious at all; in fact, I gave up after about four or five click-throughs with little end in sight.

Hence, at the local office and having set up my laptop to create a local wifi hotspot, I’d created a mildly-amusing-to-me setup on my temporary desk, plugging in my personal laptop to the corporate network, running a hotspot using its wifi card, and using my work computer normally over wifi as well as doing data transfers from the iPad.

Back at home and at my home office, I mention my difficulties in getting internet access to my supervisor (who isn’t a computer techie type), who thought that creating a hotspot under Windows couldn’t be done, or at least he didn’t realize it could be.

Further discussing this with him, I explained the situation saying “I don’t mind trying to find other solutions — that *is* my job — but after not having two A Plans (the motel internet not working for the iPad, nor having wifi at the office), then suddenly not having a plan B (the company cell phone internet not working), having to depend on my personal phone’s data plan, then having to depend on the client’s internet access but not having enough access for all devices, and finally coming up with a part-time solution to replace one of the A-plans — using a second of my personal resources in the form of my personal laptop — there’s a problem here,” to which he agreed.

Jovially, he did however suggest that “in the next leg of your travels, I happen to know that if you can go to the local library, they have free wifi”. This made me realize that if necessary and if possible, I could also try the free wifi at the local Tim Hortons (a popular Canadian chain of coffee and doughnut shops), assuming that there is one in the remote town where I’ll be visiting next.

Which has me really thinking about the problem:

– not all the field techs in the company have smart phones with data plans, and as such not able to create a needed hotspot in order to enable the execution of a project;
– not all the field techs have personal smart phones with a data plan, nor should field techs in general be required to use their personal data plans, let alone go into overage charges, in order to enable the execution of a project;
– at least at first glance, it doesn’t seem to be a quick and easy thing to turn a windows machine into a hotspot in order to enable such work — and I don’t want to hear from the peanut gallery on this one, since I *know* that it *can* be done; my point is that at first glance, even a moderately savvy user such as myself shouldn’t have to say “It’s easy under Gnome 3, why isn’t it about as easy under Windows? Boy it’s a good thing that I had my personal laptop with me!” (On a side note, usually the stereotype is that “Windows is easy, and Mac easier, but isn’t Linux hard?” 🙂 )
– and, only a limited number of computer users are using Gnome 3, where it is easy to set up a hotspot if you either have a wired connection to the internet, or two wifi cards on your computer. (I’ll have to check with my brother, who uses XFCE on one of his laptops, which is on a technical level identical to mine, to see how easy it is under that desktop; obviously, it’s technically possible; I imagine it’s just a question of how easily different desktops enable the functionality.)

Which leads me back to the above-mentioned problem of “what do you do in remote, small villages where you don’t have a corporate office with wifi, motel / B&B internet access is spotty at best, there’s no cell phone coverage, and there are few if any public wifi spots like a restaurant or a public library?”

I just hope that the library’s free wifi isn’t provided by DataValet. 🙂

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I’d say that Fedora has arrived!

Almost five years ago in March 2010, I stated “Ubuntu and Fedora LiveCDs — Ubuntu a clear winner!”

I’d burned two live CD’s — one of the current Fedora of the day, and one of the current Ubuntu of the day. I had wanted a group I belonged to to use one to reformat a virus-infected computer to use it again. Incidentally, they declined the honour, however that’s beyond my point: I didn’t want to give them (or anyone) the Fedora CD, while I thought that the Ubuntu CD was great out of the box, specifically including OpenOffice.org (now LibreOffice) and a cute little directory including a short video, a sample mortgage calculator, and two or three other little gems which really put the CD over the top for its immediate usefulness.

Well, I haven’t really used Live CD’s much since I’m not all that worried about having linux on the run, but at this point Fedora 21 seems to only be available by Live CD’s. But to wit, the experience with Fedora 21 seems to be quite the improvement in experience, according to at least two of my somewhere between the stated and implicit standards of comparison: The inclusion of (now) LibreOffice, what I considered a killer omission, and the ability to quickly and easily install many “productive” pieces of software through the new software installer. To be fair, at the time Fedora limited itself to CD’s and in its efforts to include as wide a base as possible for supposed widest mass appeal, Fedora was unable to include OpenOffice.org (or, as possible, any usable subset thereof) due to space restrictions, although it was able to include AbiWord.

Now, Fedora Workstation includes LibreOffice, and by typing into the search box in the “Activities Overview” (click on “Activities” on the upper left hand corner of the screen, or invoke it using the “hot corner” by bringing your cursor up there), the installed software that may help you, as well as a number of other pieces of software in the repositories which may help you, as indicated by a little shopping bag to the left of the proposed piece of software.

screenshot of proposed software

Well, I guess now I just need to find someone who needs to have their computer saved from viruses and spyware. 🙂

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I now have a Fedora Friend Finder!

In early 2011, I decided to go to a FudCon in Tempe, Arizona (here’s my archive). And here’s my blog summarizing my participation.

One of the things in the list of items to bring was a Fedora Friend Finder (archive, since the link disappeared), in other words an extension cord with multiple outlets / a power bar. This of course makes sense when you have a bunch of computer people gathering together, face to face: We still bring computers and as such we want to plug them in.

As you can see if you followed the link or checked my archive, the page featured a long power bar with 12 outlets, like the following:

12 outlet power strip

I of course had considered the power bar shown to be quite fanciful and even comical to the point of farce, and as such I assumed that someone had played around with The GIMP to produce the image.  However, the message was clear: I brought a four outlet power bar with a roll-up extension cord to FudCon Tempe, like the following:

cord caddy

During FudCon Tempe, I was mildly popular during the various “unconference” sessions and certainly made friends as a result of my power bar. In fact, during the “Lightning Talks” at the end of the “unconference” part, I was so popular that I had to turn people away who wanted to plug in, even after several other power bars had been plugged into mine.

Fast forward to this past week in 2014, and I’m shopping for supplies at a Canadian Tire for a job site I’m starting up, including electrical extension cords and power bars. What do I find? To my amazement, a 12 outlet power bar just like I’d seen on the Fedora Friend Finder web page. The person I was with was a bit bewildered by my fascination with it; to him, it was just a big power bar. It may have been odd, but it was just another power bar.

I wasn’t just fascinated; I was practically beside myself. Here I was in front of a real live example of the farcical prop I’d seen on a web page. Of course, I had to buy one.

Here’s a pic of it with eight personal pumps and one DryCal calibrator hooked up, charging the internal batteries:

my Fedora Friend Finder

I think it’s cool. It will probably eventually be used at home where I have my multiple computers and a big wide screen TV and PVR, where things are currently lit up like a Christmas tree, so to speak, with multiple power bars which are nonetheless underused given the multiple oversized adapters.

However, the temptation will be there to bring it out to any events at which not only would such a power bar be useful, but also to just brag on an “over the top” level and get incredulous looks along with a “may I plug in ?!?!?”

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Tux seems to be moonlighting for the CIBC

It seems that Tux, the Linux mascot, is now moonlighting for the CIBC, a Canadian bank.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, also known as “CIBC”, is currently running a campaign surrounding its travel rewards programme, with a tagline of “So good even penguins can fly(tm)”. There have been some TV commercials with penguin families humorously “talking” about their not always succesful trip planning experiences. All of the penguins in the live TV commercials appear to be close approximations of some variety of real penguins, and of course, the digital renderings / puppets / whatever are digitally or otherwise manipulated in an anthropomorphic fashion with human voice-overs in order to appear to be like regular people.

On the CIBC website, the cartoonish penguins look sufficiently different from the “live penguins” on TV and look like they’re straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. While I suppose that the “live” penguins and the cartoons may look vaguely similar, it’s in the fashion that the Flinstones or the Jetsons look like you and me.

CIBC website

But wait, folks, as the screenshot above shows, the cartoon penguins don’t resemble our hero.

So, while I was passing through the Vancouver, BC (Canada) airport, one of the kiosks trying to get people to sign up for a credit card (obviously, the CIBC) was giving out little penguin keychains as part of the promotion. Even from a bit of a distance, I could clearly tell that they were Tux the Linux mascot, albeit with a CIBC logo and the travel rewards programme logo on its belly. I got up the nerve to go to the counter and say that I wasn’t interested in the sales pitch, but that I just wished to look at the keychains since they’d attracted my attention. Immediately the lady gave me one and let me go on my merry way, hoping that the keychain would garner some of the marketing attention it was designed for. How little the nice lady knew. 🙂

Tux is moonlighting advertising for CIBC!

Once at home, I of course checked Larry Ewing’s website. I figured that there must be some kind of copyright or license infringement. However, according to Larry Ewing’s page titled Linux 2.0 Penguins at http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/ , it says “Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.”

Larry Ewing's Tux Page

So: At first glance it seems that, depending on how you interpret Mr. Ewing’s licensing condition(s), anyone can use the image for any purpose, and unless someone asks, you don’t need to credit anyone or anything or put a copyright notice or “used with permission” or whatever. Unless he’s saying “acknowledge me always, but only bother acknowledging The GIMP if someone asks.”

So, as I said, it seems that Tux is moonlighting.

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My problems / Gripes with Gnome 3

Background: Regular readers of my blog — the few of you that are out there 🙂 — know I use Fedora and CentOS. Once again, Fedora is an interesting case: As a pretty strict rule, packages appearing in Fedora are as close to the upstream product — the software as it appears on the original project’s website — as is practical; generally, the only changes are those necessary to make them work under Fedora. So generally, if you were to download the sources from www.thisismyawsomelinuxapp.com and compile them yourself, without tweaking them — while making them work, of course — then that’s what the software probably looks like and how it works under Fedora.

Generally, Gnome 3 has been a mixed bag. Some things are interesting — I won’t say improvements; but I think that there are interesting additions (G2 and mobile device devotees will call retrogrades) that I’m willing to welcome, or at least I find acceptable given a paradigm change. I particularly like the hot corner that brings up all of the open windows. Other things are six of one / half dozen of the other, such as the panel/dock on the left of the activities screen.

Here are some specific gripes I have about Gnome 3 at least as installed in Fedora 15 and 16:

This is based on my experiences with Gnome 3.0-whatever and 3.2-whatever with F15 and F16 out-of-the-box installs:

– switching between windows — the default ctrl-tab is between applications, not windows. To do so requires that I hold down the ctrl key, use the mouse to choose the application, wait for it to open another window with all of the instances of that application, then choose with the mouse which one, which sometimes may be difficult unless I were to have a 50′ screen. So it’s not important that I switch, let alone easily, between two spreadsheets, or two pdf’s, or two documents in LO writer, right?
– solved on my F16 machine by “yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab”. Needs to be activated by “gnome-tweak-tool”, listed as “Advanced settings” under the Applications menu — see below, date and time gripe
– the above solution kept on crashing my f15 machine, so I removed it.

– Opening up a new instance of an application. Linus’ well-publicized bug: You go to the activities screen, choose one and click on it — say, in Linus’ case, the terminal — and the existing instance is reopened. So in order to open up a new instance, you have to choose file/new window. Valid in and of itself, but not more efficient by removing the possibility of having many ways to do the same thing. Also, partly addressed by the fact that you can right-click on a launch icon and choose to go to the existing instance or launch a new instance; but, this works out to being the same gripe.
– the both over and under sensitive upper-left hand corner: When you move the mouse to the upper left hand corner over, you’re apparently supposed to be able to open up the Activities screen. In Fedora, it’s too sensitve when I don’t want to open it up and my mouse just happens to be in the area, such as when I am going to the File menu of a given application, and then when I want to take advantage of that cool function, boy is it slow in figuring out that it’s supposed to move to the Activities screen.
– Activities screen — closing windows. When you hover the mouse over a window, a little x in a circle appears in the upper right hand corner of that window icon, allowing you to close it. When you have enough windows, it’s real easy to accidentally click on it instead of on the icon itself (to open the window) unless I were to have a 50′ screen.
– Nautilus — when you have a file highlighted, on the bottom there is an “announcement” window stating that you have the chosen file selected — barring the easy selection of the last visible file via mouse if nautilus is maximized. Obviously you can select it by moving the highlighter down with the down key, but the only way to know what the filename is, is to read the annoying “announcement” window, and you often can’t see the the other file information (last saved, time, file size, etc.).
– notifications — lots of things get a notification, like “you just printed a file” or “the file you just opened is ready”, and they stay in the notification bar available from the lower right hand corner until you manually remove them all, individually.
– adding the date to the time at the top (Correctable by “yum install gnome-tweak-tool” F16)

really minor gripe:

– in order to turn off of the computer or reboot, you have to highlight the “suspend” option in the stats menu off the upper right hand corner, and hold down the alt key. Something I can live with, but there anyway.
– solved by “yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu”. Needs to be activated by “gnome-tweak-tool”, listed as “Advanced settings under the Applications menu — see date and time gripe

Generally, at least specifically to F15:

– When I unplug my laptop to move it to a different location, using the battery, the system goes into hibernate, and doesn’t even ask if that’s what I really want to do. (Correctable by yum install gnome-tweak-tool, F16, which allows you to decide what the computer will do when AC power is lost.)

And here’s a gripe about Evolution, going back a few years, and which has absolutely nothing to do with Gnome 3, or Gnome 2, or even Gnome at all, presumably):

– when you open up a daughter window, the basic evolution program engine is still needed. It effectively makes the main window barely “first amongst equals” instead of being “the program”, from the user perspective. As such, close the main window but not a daughter window, the program engine module is still operating. That means that in my case — because, when I use my email client, I want it to pop my email, then erase it from the server so that when I go to webmail, I don’t have, what, 100 pages of old email to wade throug — email still gets popped and removed from the server, and no longer available by web mail. This is a human-interface bug, since at the very least when closing the main window, it should ask “do you want to shut down all evolution functions, or just this window”?

Bugzilla — again, not specifically a Gnome problem:

Traditionnaly when ABRT is activated because of a crash, when I get to the point of selecting to report via Bugzilla, I get messages about the wrong settings being in place and that the reporting will likely fail. I found out a few years ago that this is generally due to the lack of the relevant backtrace program for the crashed program, hence there being a lack of sufficient “useful” information. While conceptually I understand the need for a proper backtrace so that as much detailed information is available as possible, this presents a real conundrum: I have occasionally in the past gone to the trouble of installing one or two relevant backtraces — after a crash and realizing this conundrum — and noted that it slows down the system significantly, and having all the existing backtrace programs is impractical. Hence without the appropriate backtrace, a bugzilla report will fail. Yet due to current circumstances, the average (at least desktop user) is unlikely to know which they are likely to need to install, and Fedora loses out on valuable crash information that would help solve a bunch of problems.

What do I like about G3:

Most of these are indifferences (ie. I don’t much care whether they’re along the lines of G2 or G3), but I’m willing to give them a thumbs up at least on that basis:

– nautilus does two panes, although I think that it probably did it before. A certain other system doesn’t; you can only either move things on the directory tree on the left (which you can do, sort of, in nautilus) or between two windows.
– Somehow the automounter for things like memory sticks seems a bit smoother and polished under Gnome 3 than under Gnome 2.
– I have actually always found the dock, and that it’s on the left hand column, intuitive — funny, I find the dock on the bottom in XFCE, which I have on my CentOS server (from the days a few months ago when the machine itself was a celeron 1.0 with 256megs of RAM and it found that hard to handle; G2 ran it into the ground within minutes) not anywhere near as intuitive (although I suppose it can easily be moved were I to want it to). The only drawback: more intuitive and useful than Gnome 2, but, in Gnome 2, I had already been putting launchers on the upper panel for years, as have other people. It still gets the thumbs up, though.

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How to put XFCE on CentOS 6

This post is following my having replaced the gnome desktop from my centos-6 home server with XFCE, due to:

– the machine is probably over 11 years old and only has 256megs of memory
– the machine is not really likely to be easily upgraded, nor replaced
– the change is worth it anyway given the light load I put on it
– because it was so slow, and even seemed to progressively grind to a halt in a short period of time (a week or less, it seemed)
– questions online about how to replace gnome to XFCE under centos were inconclusive regarding how to make XFCE the default desktop on CentOS.

No, I don’t know how to make them co-exist, I tried a bit and decided after a three or four commands that since I didn’t need Gnome anyway, that replacing it completely with XFCE was the best way to go in my case.

Required:

– an installed and working CentOS 6 setup on the “target machine”
– an internet connection
– an operating ssh server on the target machine — including, if you’re controlling things through the internet, appropriate settings to receive the connection through the internet (another topic)
– root priveleges on the target machine

Optional, but likely to be highly useful (as it was for me given the “cart-before the horse” approach I used):

– a second computer, “the head”, with an ssh client, able to connect to the target machine via ssh either locally on the same network, or through the internet.

This process can be dangerous, will probably require at least one reboot, and ideally should require having physical access to the machine in case of requiring a hard power-down and repowering of the machine. All critical processes should become less critical (ie. user announcement for downtime, transfer to another server, etc.) and a backup should be performed beforhand.

I am presuming that on the target machine, root login has been disabled and that you will be logging in via “mere mortal” accounts and then elevating to root. Should you be using sudo on the target machine, the account into which you will be logging should have appropriate sudo priveleges, and you should adjust the instructions accordingly (that much I won’t do for you, I don’t like sudo; “Don’t be afraid of root. Respect it, but don’t be afraid” as my brother says.) I am also presuming that you are controlling the target machine using the head.

– using the head, ssh into the target computer — make sure that you are logged into an account on the head which also exists on the target. If you are on the same network, on the target machine itself, determine the IP address using “ifconfig” at the command line, and look for the number with a “192.168.***.***” format in the second grouping after the “inet addr” tag.
– Elevate to root (“su” )
– Install the Fedora epel repository on the target computer.
– visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#How_can_I_install_the_packages_from_the_EPEL_software_repository.3F
– enter the following if you are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 / CentOS 6 / Scientific Linux 6:
“rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm”
– enter the following if you are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 / CentOS 5 / Scientific Linux 5:
“rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm”
– Uninstall the gnome desktop.
– “yum remove groupremove gnome-desktop”
– Install the xfce desktop.
– “yum –enablerepo=epel-testing groupinstall xfce-desktop”
– add a line about changing the desktop type
– “nano /etc/sysconfig/desktop”
– add the following lines:
” DESKTOP=XFCE”
” DISPLAYMANAGER=XDM”

– Reboot the target machine with “reboot now”. The head will lose its connection to the target machine. The machine should now reboot and the xfce desktop should appear on the target machine.

Problems:

In my case, I had installed the XFCE desktop environment first, and some dependencies were removed when I uninstalled the gnome environment; I figured this out after a reboot and the screen came up blank after a reboot. I therefore ssh’ed using the head into the target and reinstalled the xfce desktop as above, which installed the necessary missing dependencies. I also installed the evince reader (“yum install evince”) which has nautilus as a dependency (and as such installs it, although so far the only real difference between it and Thunar is that the latter doesn’t support dual panes.) Both seem to work nicely with XFCE because it uses the same libraries as Gnome.

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My desktop is now a doorstop, and Fedora 15

Back in July, I thought it was time to upgrade my computers to F15. So, I took two computers over to my brother’s and we did backups, and proceeded to reformat my desktop.

First, there were a couple of problems, and we had to reinstall a few times.

Then, disaster struck: as we were trying to restore the backup, the hard drive with the backups died.

In the meantime, I ended up eventually updating my laptop using another backup medium. F15 is interesting with Gnome 3: To say the least, it’s different, and changes the paradigm. There are a bunch of things I haven’t gotten around to figuring out. However, the most curious thing about it is … in its differences to Gnome 2, it’s still intuitive and generally easy to get around. It’s a curious feeling that my only real “complaint” is that it’s different. Six of one, half a dozen of the other applies here.

So when I finally got my desktop back after about five reinstalls, of course the first thing I noticed from my beloved box was that it can only use Gnome 3’s Fallback Mode. Then I started noticing a funny thing: everything would freeze when the screen saver when on. I think it may be a video card issue, or a memory stick issue; as long as the screen is active, it’s the same old computer. However, when the screen saver is activated — not the screen lock, but rather when the signal to the screen stops, everything locks up; having to reboot it every time I wanted to use it made it useless.

After months of using my laptop only, and eventually reformatting my server since CentOS 6 finally came out, I decided to take my server box and switch out the 500 gig HD and switch in the desktop HD. Funny consequence is that the server box can handle Gnome 3. However the bells are tolling for the 80 Gig HD; the system monitors are saying that there are too many errors on it. I’ll eventually have to add it to my pile of hard drives with the word “evil” written on it, and have to either find another old hard drive to put in it, or buy another one. As it is, it appears that the 1TB drive I bought as a second backup medium is an external-only device, although I’ve been known to be wrong on many occasions. 🙂

The 500 gig HD is now in an even older Celeron 1.1GHz box I found on the street; the server has been renamed to reflect where I found it. And the old desktop … I guess I’ll either have to diagnose it or just get it recycled.

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The Mac Trojan, the solution, and what I think about the millions of dollars it represents

A few weeks ago it came out that the Mac had a real trojan horse in the wild. (Here’s my archive.)

As I understand it, it was the result of a simple vulnerability, by happenstance a major beef I have with Ubuntu as well: some source — a website, a piece of software you install however you do it, or whatever, introduces a simple pop-up that says “Your machine has been compromised! Click here to remove it!” The dutiful lamb, er user, clicks “Ok”, then — and here’s the clincher — the downloaded “cleaning” software, which is actually the trojan horse, needs administrator access to install (or “root” access in unix parlance, the base of the Mac, and effectively the same thing with any linux distro), and the user obliges with their password. They do this of course understanding that it’s important to keep their machine safe from malware, and that when they’re doing certain things, they have to enter their password. “Trust me, I’m reputable computer software trying to protect you, I know what I’m doing. Professionals programmed me.” Then of course they get the user to hand out money for “licences” to keep their computer “protected” — as in, they get the “licence” money, and they send a command to the trojan to lie dormant and not do any harm to the system. (In some commercial districts, especially with small Mom & Pop style shops, it’s called “Protection” money; the cops call it “Extortion”.)

For the non-technically inclined, this works through a simple process:

– Under any Mac / unix / linux system, there is one all-powerful account called root.
– Switching to root to install software is occasionally a pain, so Macs (and Ubuntu) rely heavily on a command that is so heavily integrated into the system that it lets certain users transparently, when called upon, install any kind of software, good or bad, by simply entering their own password, on the presumption that this select group, which are listed in a special group, are trusted with system administration.

Here’s a bit more on root:

– This account literally is, within the limits of what that instance of the OS can do on the installed piece of hardware, the top god. For the purpose of this conversation, it’s Zeus, the chief god who is the most powerful god in Greek mythology, above all other gods.
– In such a system, the normal user — including the principal user of a computer with only 1 to 5 users (the typical home computer) — usually isn’t even a lesser god. They’re mere mortals, with limitations and unable to affect much beyond their own account.
– On the other hand, the root user, noticing that user X is consuming too many resources, can decide to put further limits on that user, or any other, but not vice-versa per se nor one mere mortal upon another. I have such a principal “mere mortal” account on all my computers, and I of course know the root passwords, so I can become root on those computers and do whatever I like on them; usual practice, of course, dictates that one temporarily logs into root to do whatever is necessary as root, then to log out back into the “mere mortal” account to do day-to-day stuff. Such as write this piece.
– One command in Mac / unix / linux is the “sudo” command. This allows defined “mere-mortal” users to elevate their privileges to that of the root user on a generally one-time and contextual basis which ceases when the task is complete, and which has to be re-invoked any time that they want or need to use said root privileges again. This overall makes them lesser gods: While they indeed do have Zeus’ powers, these powers are limited to the task at hand and only the moment at hand, and allows people to maintain their systems while avoiding carelessly doing damage, all in a convenient package. Therefore, the user can do necessary changes, adjustments, updates, and the like, but, since they are doing it as themselves with the necessary privileges only when the situation calls for it, they usually, under normal, routine circumstances — acting in the capacity of a mere-mortal — avoid doing system-wide damage, because, well, they aren’t root. Normally a simple command line command would either only affect their own account, but no one else’s, or, depending on the command, the system would (or should) say “you need to be root to do that”. The problem I see here is that on a Mac / Ubuntu / other similar system, as I explain below, sudo is so tightly integrated into the system that it’s normally presumed that since the user in question is typing in the command, they actually are fully aware of what the command does, and that they really want to do it, so the system automatically asks for their password, invoking Zeus’ — root’s — powers. (BTW, this is why it’s also dangerous to do day to day stuff as root — the system presumes that root knows what they’re doing. Hence why, as mentioned above, you only log into root to do rooty stuff, then you log out again to do day to day routine stuff.)
– Further, there is a certain security element to it: the system logs who invoked the privileges in this fashion, so that Zeus, er, root, can check up on his underlings. Incidentally, anyone on the system can be in a list of people with “sudo-er” privileges, and how they get it, when they get it, why they get it, for what purpose(s), and just about any other condition, can be set by root.
– Mac OSX, Ubuntu and its derivatives, and other similar systems, depend on sudo; in fact, the root user on both systems are disabled by default, and sudo is heavily integrated into the system: The principal user by default is the defacto root user, since their password is all that’s needed to do rooty things when such things are required — unless a savvy admin principal user makes another user a sudoer, which can be done quite easily, as explained above. To be fair, on any unix / linux system you can extremely limit access to the root user, and set it up such that the only way to use root privileges is by sudo; it’s just an active choice made by Ubuntu and MacOSX. Don’t despair, on an Ubuntu system, it is also trivially easy to reenable the root user, and remove the principal user’s (and other users’) sudo privileges; I have no clue regarding Mac OSX but I imagine that it can be done. And, no doubt, break your warranty and support privileges at the same time.

So, back to the subject at hand:

What happened with this trojan horse is that the wolf (the trojan’s programmer(s)), knowing that Little Red Riding Hood (the users) have been trained to protect their system from attacks and keep them updated and to trust the computer when it says “you’ve been attacked”, dressed up as Grandma and said, “Trust me. I’m trying to protect you.” Said LRRH users obliged. And, as I mentioned earlier, those who control the trojans get the “licence” money, send a command to the trojan to lie dormant, and as long as the money keeps on coming, no harm comes to the system. (In some commercial districts, especially with small Mom & Pop style shops, it’s called “Protection” money; the cops call it “Extortion”.)

Can you blame the users?

For the purpose of this piece, I am forced to say “No.” At least to the extent that the culture that the systems that they are using is blinding them. (Even under linux you’re expected to keep your system up to date to avoid such difficulties.) “Oooh, we’re easier to use. Oooh, we’re pretty. Oooh, you want to use your computer, not maintain its innards, just like you don’t need to be a mechanic to drive your car or ride your bicycle.”

Of course it’s a two way street: The fact is, computers these days are complicated, because the things we ask them to do are complicated. Which means that, when it comes to computers at least, a quote by Admiral James T. Kirk, to the young and inexperienced Lieutenant Saavik, after taking control of the bad guy’s ship by essentially using the ship’s root password (the ship’s “prefix number”), taking down defences, and causing critical damage, comes to mind: “You have to learn why things work on a starship.”

sudo is not evil, much as I might think or want you to believe it is. However, as I’ve said earlier, it likely could be — and here’s the proof of concept — the downfall of any system that depends on it. The main reasons it isn’t evil is that next year, someone will find another weakness to exploit, and it is quite convenient to use. Maybe in a fashion directly in line with my “holier than thou” approach to commoners’ computing (r).

And in other corners …

This trojan resulted in the proposition — so I’ve heard, so this is pure speculation at this point — that the App Store concept could be applied real hard, to the Mac. As it is, the App Store already exists for the Mac; I actually think that the App Store for the Mac is a good idea: It’s a repository of trusted software that will work — and knowing Apple, spectacularly well — on the Mac, instead of downloading it willy-nilly from anywhere on the internet. However, the idea here is that it would be to the exclusion of all other sources. And here I thought that Apple was pioneering in the Mac world the repository system, hopefully to be followed by others, just like in linux.

The upside:

– You can get all your software from one place, and it would be (presumably) safe.
– Apple would digitally sign each piece in a couple of ways such that you could only get usable, safe software from there.
– Presumably, Apple will run all software through thorough testing so that the chances of it being infected with a virus or it being or rendering your computer vulnerable to compromise would be remarkably low. (When was the last time you heard of an iPod Touch / iPhone / iPad virus or trojan?)

The downside:

– You won’t even be able to compile your own software to run on your own machine (oh sure, I imagine in a virtual testing platform at least conceptually similar to the platform used develop iPod Touch and iPad apps).
– Like with the iPod Touch, I imagine that you’ll never know whether you’ll ever be able to run your software — of which I imagine many apps will be important to a good number of developers, if only internally, and not just be yet another tip calculator or yet another Tetris reimplementation — until it shows up in the App Store. Apple isn’t stupid, though; I’m sure that with the current App Store money talks many languages, and that many commercially-backed apps get through a little more easily and assuredly when the developers pay a fee guaranteeing its appearance in the App Store, or a higher-than-average commission per download/sale.
– Of course, you will have to fork over the source code to Apple. And, only Apple will ever truly have full access to the source code of the final product, so you won’t know whether they’ll modified it (admittedly, sometimes no doubt for the better), how they’ve modified it, whether they’ve introduced bugs or vulnerabilities, or back doors. So far, nothing different from the way the App Store for the iPod Touch or the iPad work.

But here’s what really gets to me:

So you want to develop some internal software that will give you a competitive edge over your competitors? Say, a different, possibly revolutionary analysis scheme for the metrics in your industry? And, you use Macs because you consider them to be either superior to other platforms, or their use otherwise adds some inherent value to your operations?

I see a money stream for Apple here. No, a cash cow. “OK, you *must* submit the source code to us. We’ll compile and digitally sign it, and make sure it works properly on your machines. We’ll review the code, identify and remove bugs, and even suggest better code and functionality. And only your operation’s computers can install the software; we’ll password protect access to the software. For a fee, of course. Oh, you don’t trust us? OK, here’s a Mac server that you can have in your server room. You’ll get a control panel. Of course, the server will ultimately still be controlled by us only, the code will still have to be reviewed by our engineering team, and your “submit” button will merely inform our team to start looking at things, and we’ll still control what goes into the final, compiled code, including back doors and all sorts of unknown blobs. Possibly some critical functions of the “revolutionary analysis scheme” being disabled, removed, or massively modified, or replaced with inferior substitutions. For a massive fee, of course.

Sort of adds an ironic twist to the notion of “proprietary software”, doesn’t it?

Seems to me that the only thing that will keep Apple clean on this one is that it’s actually in Apple’s interest to be a clean and legitimate player. Apple has successfully built a business based not on being the biggest, the greatest, the cheapest or having quite the latest or greatest technology (sometimes things are slightly a step behind). Or even making the biggest profits. They’ve built a business on delivering a clearly superior user-experience and tightly integrating the software and technology; for instance, there’s actually something to the iPad’s function of closing instances of web browsers above a certain number, since allowing too many instances to remain open (sometimes as Orphan Annies or Captain Dunsels) they may not be performing any useful function to the user, yet would be consuming system resources such as memory, processor time, or battery power that could deprive other processes of necessary resources, and ultimately diminish the user experience. This idea has merit; every once in a while I have to make a point of closing down some windows simply because there are too many open and they’re slowing down my system.

Of course, such a value-added division — that of reviewing software over a diverse cross-section of industries and making them work really well on a given platform — would mean that they would develop lots of expertise. And, it would naturally make Apple quite the intellectual powerhouse. Imagine, Apple Medical Consulting Services. Apple Financial Expertise. Apple Engineering Software. Apple Human Resources Management. They actually would accumulate this expertise.

But what if the software that, in keeping with their business practices and policies, is necessarily in their care proves to be less then optimal, not because of the submitted source code, but because of Apple’s actions? Of course these are concerns that any company worries about every day; the issue here is the monopoly that they would be creating.

Now let’s not blow things out of proportion: Macs are remarkably secure. So is Ubuntu, and by and large any typical linux distro, certainly any of the mainstream distros and any other that is “properly” designed and maintained (I bet that you could take a dot-com era distro and actively administer it, and it will be relatively secure.)

But it seems that Apple has brought and will be bringing the repository model, which flourishes under linux, to a logical extreme, and will generally make billions more than Red Hat ever will or even could. And, will no doubt exploit the model for even more billions. But at what cost?

What — jumping the fence for a moment here — do only evil, maniacal control freaks have a monopoly on knowing know how to build safe, high-quality software?

Or maybe, just maybe, is it a matter of what makes the likes of Apple, MS, and Red Hat so successful the fact that they are able to command the sales revenues required to attract highly talented teams of programmers and other experts?

And — now coming back to the other side of the fence — what about the added value that volunteer programmer and other volunteer contributors bring to their software?

Realize that in a linux distro, the distributor leverages open-source software — with varying amounts of both paid-professional and volunteer (both otherwise professional) contributor content — to make their distro. The underlying OS part of OSX is based on Darwin, which is a direct derivative of FreeBSD, which again has varying amounts of both paid-professional and volunteer (both otherwise professional) contributor content. And even MS has a certain amount of BSD-derived code in it, for things such as the networking code, and probably elsewhere.

So, all this makes me wonder a bunch of things:

On trojans, malware, spyware, viruses, and social engineering:

I hate ’em all. I hate that there is an industry out there whose basis for legitimacy lies somewhere between software that is not optimal because it’s real brick-a-brack, and users who don’t use a bit of common sense. There will always be people trying to get the better of you; it’s that people fall for the charms of charlatans, who have little defence against common sense, that bugs me, be it the trojan authors or the software writers who figure that people won’t know better regarding what they buy.

On sudo:

Well, the problem there really lies somewhere between the keyboard and the chair; using sudo has its advantages and disadvantages, just like logging straight into root does. That tightly integrating sudo can arguably aggravate things by hiding things and make them “easier” for the user doesn’t change the fact that if an user just always logs in as root, they can do whatever they want, including wiping the whole directory tree. People have to understand *why* the computer works and does what it does, and why it is asking for a password, whether it’s their own (for sudo) or it’s the root password.

On repositories and safer, better software:

How is the repository system going to benefit the Mac? Organized and even better quality software (presumably). It’s about time that Apple used the repository system. It’s about time that Windows adopted it too. It’s about time that a few people set up repositories, possibly competing, for Windows; imagine the lineups for software of all kinds found in a single location that has been reviewed, works, is relatively safe and relatively virus free? You could use the iPod App Store model with prices ranging for $0.00 to $1,000,000.00 or more, or a NetFlix approach of a flat fee per month for unlimited access, or advertiser sponsorship, or some other revenue stream you dream up, or any combination of the above.

On monopolization and evil software empires:

Is Apple really all that evil? They don’t have *that* much of the desktop market share. Plenty more people buy MS — in the consumer market, either you buy a Mac, or you buy a computer, that has MS by default. A few of us, up to roughly comparable in numbers to the Mac crowd, depending on who you believe, use another OS sporting penguin stickers.

So I’m just having a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that Apple will probably become a monopoly over a really large cross-section of the economy.

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Gnome 3 in Fedora 15 Freezes up in Fallback Mode

I have been going through some reformats over the past month or so: About five times on my then F14 desktop — three times until I finally ditched the hard drive which was obviously dying, and the fourth time on the “new” hard drive, and the fifth to explore the following problem as well as remove a poor choice of keyboard selection. The French in France must really be confused when using computers in North America (I was in Paris back in 2005), their keyboard layout is so weird. You have to realize that a French Canadian keyboard is not so different from a standard US keyboard, certainly compared to the French from France keyboard.

I have what would be considered an older computer; I’ve seen a date of about 2003 on the mother board. As such, the video card on it is too old to use Gnome Shell in Fedora 15 and uses the Fallback Mode. So I figured that when the computer appeared to freeze after a couple of hourse — no response to the keyboard or mouse and the like — that I might have a memory card problem causing the freeze, something I’ve seen before. However, two things are nagging at me:

1) During the install process, the computer would be sitting around idle while I either slept or was at work all day, the computer wouldn’t freeze up, and I just picked up where I would have were I to have babysitting the computer during the install;
2) After it froze up yesterday evening at what appeared to be a normal screensaver cycle, I did a hard reboot using the power button, and on a whim I turned the “lock” (the desktop) option in the screensaver settings screen to OFF. This morning after the computer was on the whole night, all I did was turn on the screen, and what do you know, I can use the computer like normal, with no freeze up.

As a control, my laptop, sitting beside my desktop — the former of which is recent enough to take advantage of Gnome Shell — does not lock up with the “lock” option to “on”.

I wonder what the deal is? A bad video card? Bad code? An incompatibility with the code — presumably the screensaver code, but I suppose any other — and my particular hardware?

I was doing some looking around last night on the subject, before I saw the results of the little “off” switch. Now that I’ve done an experiment and have some results, I can perhaps do one or two more and determine whether a bug report is warranted.