As I’ve mentioned I’ve got an ubuntu based test system. Most of my linux experience has been from a red-hat derivitive-based background and for that, at the command line, you have chkconfig which is a good tool for checking the configuration of services to run at startup. It is a red-hat derivitive thing… However, I found this forum post where someone contributed a “chkconfig” script that does the same thing. I tried it and it’s somewhat slow compared to it’s red-hat derivitive counterpart, but…. it does the job.
Category: Linux Tech Support
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Ubuntu-server 6.06 LTS plus vmware server and other vmware server notes
What follows are some notes taken on vmware server. Most are related to an install on ubuntu-server (NO GUI INSTALLED)…. the main point of this is to have the host system take as FEW resources away from the guests as possible.
This requires a few x libraries – but not full blown X gui.
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Wine-Doors the future of Windows software installing on Linux
I just came across this article about wine-doors which sounds VERY promising. Of course, let me set the stage. Wine is a windows compatibility api for linux. The goal of wine is to allow windows applications to run on top of a linux system without modification (of the original windows version.) There are codeweavers wine (a commercial version that drives most of the development – and is known for easier installs of software.), the main open source wine and cedaga (aimed towards games 3d directx implementation.)
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Google Earth for Linux
One of the big linux news stories yesterday was the release of google earth for linux. Essentially the Google earth team has released “release 4” which is a beta version of the next release. It looks like there are greater “user contribution” capabilities with this release. I’ve tried the download for linux and can say that it installs well, the user interface looks fine (it’s not a wine-wrapper application – it’s a true linux port.) It’s not usable yet (for me…)
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VMPlayer on Mandriva 2006 finally…
As you might recall some time back I talked about the release of vmplayer which is a free virtual machine “player” from vmware. Mostly, I wrote about the problems I had running it on my main desktop which was running Mandrake 10.1 at the time. The error was basically a signal 11 in the log file, which MOST everyone says is a hardware problem (or kernel…) Well, I tested the memory, everything seemed fine. Finally, I was having other issues and an itch for an upgrade, so I upgraded to an AMD64 3000 based system with 1GB of memory and did the upgrade to Mandriva 2006 as well (first with the original kernel, now with the updated kernel.) Vmplayer still refused to run.
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Cross browser javascript vulnerability
It sounds like this vulnerability would take a great deal of user interaction, but cio-today is reporting on a browser vulnerability that affects pretty much every javascript enabled browser. According to Symantec …. “This issue is triggered by utilizing JavaScript ‘OnKeyDown’ events to capture and duplicate keystrokes from users,” and is a way that the attacker could scrape/log things that are typed in (bank information, passwords, etc.) Also, they say “In one scenario, a crafty programmer might be able to trick users into entering personal data into a seemingly secure field on an online payment form, giving the hacker access to anything typed within the field.”
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Microsoft should use a /home partition….
I saw this yesterday or day before… George Ou has said that Microsoft should move user data to it’s own volume (or partition). He is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. I think these days the default install for any modern operating system ought to assume you care enough about your data to seperate it from the main OS. I find myself slightly annoyed at linux distributions that DON’T do this by default, although most will at least let you make changes to the partitioning in the install process. I had got to just assume this was the way things were since Mandrake always defaulted to seperate home and root partitions.
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Remote tech support with anything – would I do it?
I’ve tried to ask myself if I’d trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is “it depends”. If you think about it, I do tech support for home users quite a bit and they let me come into their homes. If I were weighing someone coming into my house, or onto my computer desktop, I think I’d choose my desktop. …
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x11vnc slow internet initial-connection performance – identd timeout
So, I had the script all ready, I’ve got my x11vnc custom compiled to be as widely compatible as possible, I’ve tested thoroughly on the internal network. The next step was to test my x11vnc “one cut and paste” script over the internet. So, I visited my parents pc which dual-boots Windows XP and Mandrake 10.0…. I did the cut and paste into the “run command…” menu and waited and waited and waited. dropped to a console and started again, but checked that x11vnc was already running. I didn’t know what could be taking so long. I tried again and the FIRST connection gave the prompt.
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The security of remote tech support (ultravnc sc or x11vnc with wrapper script)
Well, I’ve got a nice way of doing “easy” one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, what security flaws are there in this process? Well, for starters, I see the biggest vulnerability for the computer running the listening vncviewer (because it HAS to be available to the outside world.) That means the tech support desk must keep on top of vncviewer updates and keep the service turned off when not expecting a client connection. The other question that comes to mind is encryption though….