March 2014 - Roundtable

IBM "clicky" keyboards
by Adam Thompson 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

Enough people have wondered/asked/complained to me about this that I'm posting this now as a public service. IBM Model "M" keyboards are still available, *NEW*, today. They are expensive, but they are the original design that you can use as a melee weapon. The catch is that they don't say "IBM" or even "Lexmark" on them. They are available for purchase from the manufacturer, Unicomp, who can be found online at http://www.pckeyboard.com/. You can also find some vintage NIB units from time to time at http://www.clickykeyboards.com/. There are also a number of other manufacturers now making similar, but not quite as good, keyboards. - CVT Inc., the maker of the Avant Stellar (I own two of them), which is the direct descendant of the Northgate Omnikey, seems to have restructured and no trace of their keyboard manufacturing operation can be found online. However, Northgate keyboards are still available new-in-box from (this is a horrible site, beware) http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/. - The Happy Hacking keyboard (now owned by Fujitsu, apparently) is equally comforting to some people despite having a totally different feel. They, and many others, can be had from http://www.elitekeyboards.com/ - Das Keyboard - Anything using Cherry MX Green, Blue, or White keyswitches. The "green" switches apparently are the closest anyone's come yet to emulating the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp switches... and they can be had in MUCH cheaper keyboards, like the Rosewill RK-9000 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823201040 and http://techreport.com/review/23405/rosewill-rk-9000-series-mechanical-ke yboards-reviewed). - And there are an increasing number (yes, again, after the big die-off ca. 2009) of speciality manufacturers of "ergonomic" keyboards that are making clicky keyswitches available as an option. One of the better ones is a tiny shop in Ontario, but I can't find the name right now. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicomp http://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_MX -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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SpamAssassin false positives on DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q?
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

I mentioned this problem at the last round-table session, but didn't get a solution, so I thought I'd post it here, just in case anyone has any suggestions to offer. I'm still seeing a whole bunch of false positives in SpamAssassin, since an update was installed in mid-September on a CentOS 5.7 system, for a rule called DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, which is only supposed to be triggered when the "Date:" header has a date that is 4 days to 4 month ahead of the date in the "Received" header that has the _smallest_ difference in date. Here are the headers from the latest e-mail I've received with this false-positive. (I've stripped out irrelevant headers, for the sake of clarity and simplicity.) From topfivestories(a)messagent.itworldcanada.com Mon Nov 14 07:50:13 2011 Received: from mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com (mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com [207.112.10.80]) by palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id pAEDoAxV028594 for <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca>; Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:50:12 -0600 Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:50:13 -0500 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, HTML_MESSAGE,RP_MATCHES_RCVD autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca Note that I'm calling spamd via the spamass-milter on a system running sendmail. Note also, that in the above example, the only "Received" header was the one generated by my own server. (I've had other false positives, however, with multiple "Received" headers, all of which were within seconds of the time in the "Date" header.) Any ideas? -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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big scanner
by Trevor Cordes 27 May '15

27 May '15

Does anyone have big (like tabloid or bigger) scanner they want to sell? Even an ancient SCSI or parallel one might be ok. I just want *big*. Do they even make scanners bigger than legal or tabloid?

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Linux distro for Pentium III
by Robert Dyck 01 Jun '14

01 Jun '14

I have a customer who wants a laptop with Linux. My impression is he wants to learn Linux. I have refurbished laptops: IBM ThinkPad A21m, with Pentium III processor @ 750 MHz, 512MB RAM, and I can upgrade the hard drive to 40GB. Which distro of Linux would you recommend? I would ask Mike Pfaiffer, but he passed away earlier this year. Thanks, Rob Dyck

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Low cost Colo in WInnipeg
by Gerald Brandt 25 Mar '14

25 Mar '14

Hi, I currently have a 3U server at Joe's Data Center in Kansas City for $50.00 USD a month. I'm looking to relocate my server to Winnipeg, and am looking for a good, low cost colo facility. les.net looks good, but with the nickle and dimeing (7.50 for an ethernet port, 7.50 for a 120 volt outlet...), it adds up. Is there anyone else in Winnipeg? Gerald

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Hey security guys!
by Kevin McGregor 24 Mar '14

24 Mar '14

We have a pile of Linux servers here at work. We'd like to set up the shared keys to simplify admin via SSH. Here's the thing (quoted from an email I received): We are thinking of putting public/private ssh keys on all of our Linux servers. The purpose of this is so that our central admin server can "do stuff' on all of our servers without needing a password. We are wondering how far to go for convenience. Below are restrictions that we can place on the key pair (there may be others, but these are the ones of which I'm aware). Have a look at each restriction and consider whether we should use the restriction or not. Basically it would be most convenient to have none of the restrictions. · We can create a password on the key pair o This would defeat the whole purpose of using the key pair to avoid passwords · We can limit which user can run things on the target machine o Most likely, we would install the public key for the user root (therefore things would run as user=root) · We can limit what commands can be run on the target machine o We would like to leave this wide open so we can run anything remotely · We can limit the source machine that can initiate remote commands (ie - commands can only come from the admin machine) o It would be nice to not have this limit as we could move the private key onto other machines (eg a VM on your desktop) to be able to run things remotely o The downside is that if anybody gets the private key, they can do anything Note that firewalls should prevent people from the internet trying to connect to ssh. [Comments, anyone? - Kevin]

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glibc locking and elision
by Paul Sierks 20 Mar '14

20 Mar '14

Hey all, Is there anyone else that has a proc with HLE and is having issues with glibc? The newer Haswells have this and for a while now teamviewer has been refusing to launch on my system. Then more recently I installed pgAdmin3 and while it actually ran, there were actions that would set it off too. Turns out it was general protection fault, and a core dump seemed to show elision as the culprit. I've since rebuilt glibc x86_64 and the 32 bit libs without the enable-lock-elision flag which "fixes" the issue, but I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced this. -- Paul

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Linux analogs to FreeNAS?
by Grigory Shamov 18 Mar '14

18 Mar '14

Hi All, It was very interesting to listen to FreeNAS talk. But, is there anything similar (free, easy to use on a whitebox hardware) for Linux (I know it is not as serious system as *BSD but it is the one with Infiniband drivers). Goodling brought me Openfiler (http://www.openfiler.com/) which seems to be not that free (replication, HA, iSCSI etc. costs some thousands of euros). Is there anything else? -- Grigory Shamov HPC Analyst, Westgrid/Compute Canada E2-588 EITC Building, University of Manitoba (204) 474-9625

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Join Tim O'Reilly in a Live Q & A March 12
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

FYI, here's an O'Reilly posting about a live-streamed presentation you may enjoy... Gilbert --------------- View in browser <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1ztnee54v1b9smj8tdfne4rjokrcqjbpholu6n5t0>. Forward this announcement to a friend <http://post.oreilly.com/f2f/9z1zbvvjaj154an92t9h2on182oehjohnn79h6t0f7o> O'Reilly User Group Newsletter Hello, Building a Solid World <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zg1vnufta8citc3bd2k5siavprjelm10cn6avjq8> Hereâ??s a great opportunity to hear a conversation with Tim O'Reilly on March 12. All the details are below, and we would like you to share this with your entire community. We also opened the Solid Startup Showcase <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zndm5q8dikdf8m513ebmeugch5384dqlf50h6e28> to submissions and are looking for candidates. If you are a possible candidate, or know one, please pass this along. Cheers, ---Marsee Henon and Jon Johns ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live: Tim O'Reilly and Jim Stogdill Explore Software / Hardware / Everywhere Wed., March 12 - 11AM PT | 2PM ET Tim O'Reilly & Jim StogdillThe collision of hardware and software changes everything from products, industrial practices, and business models to appliances, automobiles, and job opportunities. Today's Internet of Everything is a classic market disruption, with immense unimagined opportunities and more than a few thorny challenges. Join *Tim O'Reilly* and *Jim Stogdill* in a free live-streamed conversation about the convergence of hardware and software, what this means beyond the Internet of Things, and a vision for the future. Register here to join this conversation. <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zsi9hpc3aerhc1fdcr2nf279lkgf89t19roajm18> If you have questions for Tim or Jim, you can submit them in advance via @OReillySolid <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z55t2sasg0bdpplm642rv07i8407u8g4q50l9548> or solid-newsletter(a)oreilly.com <mailto:solid-newsletter@oreilly.com?subject=Solid%20Newsletter%20-%20Questions%20for%20Tim%20and%20Jim>. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Buy 1 Ebook, Get 1 Free with your user group discount code: DSUG50 <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z6fdnpfcs5fqnbkl6iv3if9dl4knl4vq633pv66o> Buy 1 Ebook, Get 1 Free with your user group discount code: *DSUG50* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Looking for more? Visit oreilly.com <http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zqrh3dc900fbgtgql7hd6df2jqitour34rg141sg>. Find more at oreilly.com You are receiving this email because you are a User Group contact with O'Reilly Media. If you would like to stop receiving these newsletters or announcements from O'Reilly, send an email to: usergroups(a)oreilly.com <mailto:usergroups@oreilly.com> O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707) 827-7000

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MUUG Meeting, March 11, 7:30pm -- FreeNAS
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 04 Mar '14

04 Mar '14

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 11. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: FreeNAS FreeNAS enables users to build network-attached-storage (NAS) on nearly any hardware platform. The FreeNAS project and software were founded in 2005 on the principle that network storage be made available to the world at no cost and unencumbered by license restrictions. FreeNAS provides a solid service platform based on FreeBSD and includes such features as replication, data protection, backups, encryption, snapshots, file sharing and a plug-in architecture. Kevin McGregor will present an overview of these features and his experiences with implementing some of them. For this month's RTFM topic, Adam Thompson will talk about quoting special characters in shell input, for example in bash(1) or tcsh(1). The group holds its general meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ***************************************************************** Please note our *NEW* meeting location for this month: Room 1L08, Lockhart Hall, University of Winnipeg, entrance on Ellice Ave. between Spence St. and Balmoral St. Parking is available on the surrounding streets and in the lots on nearby streets. Look for signage once you're at the building, or ask a security guard. ***************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board: http://www.muug.mb.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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