Roundtable January 2015

roundtable@muug.ca

15 participants
14 discussions

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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Android/Nexus 5 on MTS & MMS.
by Sean Cody 28 Jan '15

28 Jan '15

Does anyone have a Lollipop based Android on MTS that has MMS working? Apparently I can't make it work on this nexus 5 and dealing with MTS is aggravating. I want to rule out a bad sim or something but would like to see the config on a phone that actually works first. :) Please contact me directly off lists/thread if you can help. :) -- Sean

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Better elevation script for powershell
by Adam Thompson 24 Jan '15

24 Jan '15

So, basically, sudo, for Windows... OMG. Now I remember why I don't use PowerShell! https://gist.github.com/fearthecowboy/0781e8914ad9b3a1b104 -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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stderr/stdout in Linux cronjobs?
by Grigory Shamov 23 Jan '15

23 Jan '15

Hi All, I have a weird (or stupid idk) problem. A script of mine produces different results when ran interactively as root, from when ran as a cron job. used=`report -i --csv 2>/dev/null | awk '/Total/ {print $4}'` echo $used is Total The command executed says "Using config file XXX" to stderr and something useful to stdout of which I extract the value of Total. Redirecting the barf to /dev/null. Now as a cron job the $used is empty. I believe that cronjob would redirect stderr to stodut? But here it happens also for the subprocesses ? Confused.. -- Grigory Shamov Westgrid/ComputeCanada Site Lead University of Manitoba E2-588 EITC Building, (204) 474-9625

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Re: [RndTbl] Roundtable Digest, Vol 121, Issue 10
by Kat 23 Jan '15

23 Jan '15

Is Notepad++ too low-brow for what you want? If I want WYSIWYG-style, I just load the page in a web browser. I love that program to pieces. I'm working on custom markup for our Meru logs. On 22 January 2015 at 12:00, <roundtable-request(a)muug.mb.ca> wrote: > Send Roundtable mailing list submissions to > roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > roundtable-request(a)muug.mb.ca > > You can reach the person managing the list at > roundtable-owner(a)muug.mb.ca > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Roundtable digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. web design software (Trevor Cordes) > 2. Re: web design software (Wyatt Zacharias) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 04:43:27 -0600 > From: Trevor Cordes <trevor(a)tecnopolis.ca> > To: roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > Subject: [RndTbl] web design software > Message-ID: <20150122104327.GA11789(a)pog.tecnopolis.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Can anyone recommend web design / editing software that is free (beer) > that runs on (gasp) Windows (and Linux too would be nice, but Windows is a > must). I'm talking about something for non-programmer-type semi-"power > user" people. Doesn't need fancy AJAX / HTML5 / CSS3 stuff, just a basic > editor to let non-technical people edit existing static HTML. > > Basically FrontPage, but free. And preferably not something that is more > mal/ad/spy than ware. > > (No, it's not for me...) > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 09:13:10 -0600 > From: Wyatt Zacharias <wyatt(a)magitech.ca> > To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca> > Subject: Re: [RndTbl] web design software > Message-ID: > <CANd2pR3G+ohVwicCV97si= > ubAT_7ADfrx7e4ZUZQtUqaA-Cxig(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Take a look at http://kompozer.net/ it's open source from the mozilla > foundation. > > -- > Wyatt Zacharias > > > On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:43 AM, Trevor Cordes <trevor(a)tecnopolis.ca> > wrote: > > > Can anyone recommend web design / editing software that is free (beer) > > that runs on (gasp) Windows (and Linux too would be nice, but Windows is > a > > must). I'm talking about something for non-programmer-type semi-"power > > user" people. Doesn't need fancy AJAX / HTML5 / CSS3 stuff, just a basic > > editor to let non-technical people edit existing static HTML. > > > > Basically FrontPage, but free. And preferably not something that is more > > mal/ad/spy than ware. > > > > (No, it's not for me...) > > _______________________________________________ > > Roundtable mailing list > > Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable > > >

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X11 forwarding through SSH after su/sudo
by Adam Thompson 23 Jan '15

23 Jan '15

Turns out, at least on RHEL/Centos-style systems, if you run su(1) or sudo(8) after ssh'ing into a system, you can't run X11 apps from the su{do}'d user because of the way SSH handles X authentication there - it puts the Xauth cookie into the .Xauthority file instead of an environment variable. I'm seeing references that Ubuntu & Debian don't behave like this, but don't have a live system to confirm. I vaguely recall HPUX not behaving like this, and I don't care enough to test on *BSD right now. Since I regularly need to su/sudo to another identity on a remote CentOS system, and it's a shared system, I don't want to gratuitously grant wide-open connection to my local X display; I at least want to limit the window of vulnerability... it doesn't look like I can eliminate it entirely. Here's the best work-around I could come up with. I think it manages to avoid exposing the Xauth data or anything else, but potentially requires you to enter your password more than once if sudo(8)'s cache has expired. It also allows someone else su'd into that userid *at the same time as me* to access my Xauth cookies, but that's an acceptable window of risk for me since the cookie becomes invalid after I disconnect the SSH session. Plus, I'm not the only person with root, so that vulnerability exists no matter what :). > #!/bin/sh -e > U=someuserid > D=${DISPLAY/*:} > E="$(hostname)/unix:${D%.0}" > xauth extract - "$E" | sudo -u "$U" -- xauth merge - > if [ -z "$*" ]; then > sudo -u "$U" -i > else > sudo -u "$U" -- "$@" > fi > sudo -u "$U" -- xauth remove "$E" Unfortunately, ssh(1)/sshd(8) sets DISPLAY to something like localhost:NN.0, but xauth has it recorded internally as FQDN/unix:NN ... these two $DISPLAYs are equivalent, but don't parse the same way on the command-line, hence the ugly manipulation. I think this chunk of code is safe from obvious exploits (or errors), but dissenting opinions are welcome. N.B. long-time shell users will cringe at seeing $* instead of $@, but it turns out to be correct in this case: $@ *doesn't work* there. The reason why is left as an exercise for the reader :-). -- -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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web design software
by Trevor Cordes 22 Jan '15

22 Jan '15

Can anyone recommend web design / editing software that is free (beer) that runs on (gasp) Windows (and Linux too would be nice, but Windows is a must). I'm talking about something for non-programmer-type semi-"power user" people. Doesn't need fancy AJAX / HTML5 / CSS3 stuff, just a basic editor to let non-technical people edit existing static HTML. Basically FrontPage, but free. And preferably not something that is more mal/ad/spy than ware. (No, it's not for me...)

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parallel port
by Trevor Cordes 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

Having some parallel port issues (ok, stop laughing!). Can some people with parallel ports on their mobos (real ones, not usb-based ones) send me the output of: tail -c+1 /proc/sys/dev/parport/parport0/{autoprobe,base-addr,dma,irq,modes} I'm especially interested to see what you get if you have ECP mode set in the BIOS. Also: dmesg |grep parport or grep parport /var/log/messages My 2008 motherboard refuses to let linux use ECP, even though the BIOS says ECP. EPP seems to work, but doesn't give me a DMA. Other boards I've checked use EPP and DMA. Without DMA, cups printing uses I/O polling and is ***SLOW*** and uses 100% cpu for 30s per page. Ouch. To the zero people who are interested in the bugzilla, here's a link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1180396

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Roundtable January 2015