August 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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multi-platform encryption
by Dan Martin 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

I am in need of encryption software that would keep files encrypted on the cloud as well as local on all machines. Here is what I'm looking for: Downloaded files saved to a particular folder on a Windows 7 or 8 machine would automatically be encrypted (after a prompt for passphrase). Ideally, this folder would be in a Dropbox or Google Drive folder, or on a thumb drive. No record of the unencrypted file would remain on the local PC (I am not worried about pieces of it on swap). I would prefer that the files are individually encrypted with the same passphrase, rather than added to one large file which is encrypted. I don't want the cloud storage to have to recreate the whole folder, and I don't want a bit error to trash all of my files. The file names do not need to be encrypted. Since I will be the only user in the foreseeable future, a symmetric encryption scheme would be fine. >From the cloud (preferably) or thumb drive folder, my ruby program running on Mac OS X would edit the files. I would also want to be able to decrypt the files to view in a text editor or other software, after which I would secure erase copies of decrypted files - again, no unencrypted files on the local machine other than in swap. This is the ideal. An alternative would be to send the files via https to a web server on the Mac (which could handle encryption in a local Mac environment) and the secure erase the files on the PC. If I did this, could I send the files unencrypted (since https will encrypt them while they are on the internet)? True Crypt appears to be close to what I want, but it is discontinued. I don't know if I could use something like gpg, since I don't have admin privileges on the PC. -Dan -- Dan Martin, MD GP Hospital Practitioner Computer Scientist ummar143(a)shaw.ca (204) 831-1746 answering machine always on

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32->64
by Trevor Cordes 27 Aug '14

27 Aug '14

OK, screw 32-bit PAE, I'm going to switch to 64-bit Linux. (For reasons left as a teaser to read the upcoming newsletter...) I'm going to attempt an in-place upgrade F19 to F20, similar to what is outlined here: http://archive09.linux.com/feature/123800 It sounds do-able. I'm more than used to doing wacky pseudo-supported upgrade procedures; I'm running many boxes that have been upgraded from Fedora 3 all the way through to F19 via yum (headless, via network) only; and those boxes have also been hw upgraded a few times each! Try that with Windows (and the end result is clean and trim, not bloated)! I do have a couple of questions I can't seem to find answers to: 1. Will /usr/local/bin stuff I've compiled myself (not too much), which are obviously 32-bit binaries, run on my new 64 system? 2. If #1 requires 32-bit libraries, can Fedora 64-bit have both 32 and 64 libraries installed? 3. Will I lose flash? 4. How many programs am I running that (as per link above) use binary arch-dependent data files? The article mentions db files (I use only MySQL/Maria), but I don't mind doing a full text dump/restore. But what else might use them? I'm a bit scared that systemd's new journal logs might also cause problems. What else? (Good thing UNIX is so text-based.) Why do I not want to do a wipe/reinstall? a) I'm good at getting the wacky option to work, generally. b) I've configured the !*%@@ out of my box and to resetup everything to the way I have it would take way more than the 1 day I am guessing the upgrade method will take. c) #b includes the bazillion daemons I run (and would require reconfig / data file migration) Thanks guys.

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Networking Workshop Questionnaire.
by Sean Cody 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

Hey folks, an idea a ways back that it would be neat to put on a workshop on networking design and techniques. In order to gauge interest, and ideas of what content would be the most valuable I've put together a questionnaire. http://bit.ly/networking_questionaire If you are interested in learning more about networking and network design, you are invited to fill in this questionnaire. As well please feel free to send this questionnaire along to any other groups or folks whom may be interested in participating. -- Sean

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Interesting Linux Kernel Developer Panel discussion video
by Bradford C. Vokey 22 Aug '14

22 Aug '14

The latest on the Linux kernel from Linus Torvalds; Andrew Morton (Google); Shuah Khan (Samsung); Andy Lutomirski (AMA Capital Management); and Greg Kroah-Hartman Interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8myENKt8bD0

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CA Domain Registrars
by Dan Keizer 19 Aug '14

19 Aug '14

Hi there -- well, I'm getting frustrated with my current registrar " domainsatcost.ca" ... whom I've used for many years. They recently implemented an automatic renewal for all domains. Meaning, I get an email in my inbox saying I've been billed x$ for my domains that are 45 days from expiring. I understand the reasoning behind it, (ie: DAU's) but I certainly don't agree with being billed without a pre-notice invoice of some type. (They pointed out that I have the option of logging onto the site and looking at my expiry date to find out when I would get billed -- bah -- not the point). Since they have no opt-out option and have no other option to not be renewed automatically, I am looking at other registrars to send my small needs, referrals, to. What do you guys know of for decent registrars for CA domains that you'd recommend? that don't have draconian policies ... Thanks. Dan.

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Control panels - WHM/cPanel, Plesk, Virtualmin
by Hartmut W Sager 14 Aug '14

14 Aug '14

I know that most of you are "raw Linux" geeks, but, as a control panel user on rented Linux servers (usually VPS), I'll ask anyway. This affects a decision about to be made. I have had extensive experience with WHM/cPanel (crappy!) and Plesk (superb!) over the years and right up to the present. But, partly to save money, we are now looking at Virtualmin, which is part of the Virtualmin/Webmin/Cloudmin family. The question is simple: Is this Virtualmin/Webmin/Cloudmin stuff a viable alternative? We don't need a huge array of features, but we need the stuff to work properly, and to be user-friendly enough for us to use. Reseller and/or customer layers for setting up domains/sites would be desirable. We are IT people to quite a degree, but not knowledgeable enough at the Linux prompt nor of all the details of the Linux OS. Also, does anyone here know whether Virtualmin/Webmin/Cloudmin entangle themselves into the OS the way WHM/cPanel and Plesk both do (requiring a disk format and fresh OS install to get rid of them)? And finally, would anyone here be willing to give some paid help if we get stuck or into trouble with Virtualmin/Webmin/Cloudmin? Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331

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Pipelight - Flash, Unity, etc. on Linux
by Adam Thompson 13 Aug '14

13 Aug '14

So I'm sure lots of you already know about this, but in case you don't (I didn't!) - there's an *easy* way to run Windows plugins under Linux: pipelight. See all the details at http://pipelight.net/ . YMMV, but it finally lets me run Unity3D plugins on Ubuntu. (One note: it requires NSAPI support, so it won't work in Google Chrome v36+) -- -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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