Intel has announced a big (VCSSv3 8.4 and 9.8 critical) bug in their
AMT/ISM/SBT technologies, which are mostly only in their business lines.
Most consumer desktops will not be affected. It seems more laptops than
you would think are affected so if you have an Intel-based laptop from 0-6
years old you might want to check this out. If you have a desktop with a
"Q" chipset (aka vPro) then you also are probably affected.
I'll repeat this so as to not cause undo alarm: MOST HOME DESKTOP …
[View More]SYSTEMS
ARE *NOT* AFFECTED.
Looks like this flaw could let an attacker take full control of the
system, probably including remote BIOS/desktop and/or OS image control
(not sure about file system?). Not sure if exploits are actually in the
wild yet, but once they are, just using any public wifi could get you
hosed. And this isn't just a Windows user problem like all the
RansomWare: this one is at the hardware/BIOS level so it affects all OS
users.
Patched firmware coming soon, or are already out.
https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?intelid=INTEL-SA-00075&lang…
Here's direct links to the list of affected systems for brands relevant to
my customers (other brands are at the link above):
https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/product_security/len-14963https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/000024181.h…https://www.asus.com/News/uztEkib4zFMHCn5r
Note, for Lenovo laptops: W series W520 and up are affected, and most T
and X series.
There are Windows (and maybe Ubuntu) programs you can d/l to check if you
have an affected system. Check the firmware site for your system often
until a fix is posted and then apply it.
-- Your friendly neighbourhood MUUG security announcer
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Forwarded on behalf of Dan Keizer. Remember folks, keep your
attachments to the mailing list as small as possible. I shrunk the pdf
from 500k to a 69k single jpg (it was just embedded jpg's anyhow).
=== Dan Keizer asked ===
Well, I decided not to ask this at the round table yesterday as it would
have taken too much time and have lots of possible options ...
a friend has a friend who has a 14 year old teenager looking at
building a gaming machine .. he put together some info and this …
[View More]friend
is looking for some feedback
I've attached a pdf of what they were looking at as options - not sure
where the pricing was scraped from -- but with guys on-line who are in
the business would have a better idea ...
What's your guys takes on this? I'm not into gaming machine
configurations ...
Dan.
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Thanks everyone who attended my Linux on Azure presentation last evening,
but I guess I gave my presentation a day early. Microsoft just announced
today (at Build) a bash shell built into the Azure portal!
Now instead of spinning up a linux virtual machine, or installing azure cli
on your linux laptop, you can instead use bash to manage your entire Azure
environment right from any browser.
Plus, an Azure app for iOS and Android was also announced and it also
includes the bash shell so you can …
[View More]use bash to manage Azure from a mobile
device.
Would have made a great demo. Perhaps at a future meeting.
And just a side note, Azure bash shell has been released before the
PowerShell module.
--
John Lange
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At the meeting the other day a member asked about an interesting
problem. He has 2 monitors on a linux box and one monitor is in a
different room. He wants to be able to see what is on the other-room
monitor on the first monitor (monitor the monitor??).
Got the ol' hamster spinning. My hunch that VNC could do it is
correct. Here's the solution I just hacked out:
1. install x11vnc package (dnf install x11vnc in Fedora/RH/CentOS;
something similar in other distros). install
tigervnc …
[View More]package (or any other compatible vnc client).
2. as root:
x11vnc -storepasswd
-- enter in a pw
3. as root (*might* work as normal user if the stars are aligned?):
x11vnc -many -usepw -clip xinerama1 -viewonly -scale 1/4 \
-auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -display :0
4. as normal user:
vnc localhost
This will put a little 1/4 scaled copy of the 2nd monitor on your
current one.
IMPORTANT: the above -auth voodoo works only for lightdm display
manager setups like I use on XFCE. Any other DM will need slightly
different voodoo, which you can probably divine by poking
around /var/run for dm-sounding entries. There's probably plenty of
google hits to help you too.
Notes:
- Change xinerama1 to 0 depending on which xinerama screen is which.
Any modern non-tweaked linux will use xinerama under the hood for any
multi-monitor setup. If for some reason you don't have xinerama then
-clip lets you specify actual X,Y WxH coords instead! Neat
- -viewonly is probably what you want, and without it I lost keyboard
repeat and if I ventured into the vnc window with the cursor it was
very hard to get out again as I entered some sort of recursive
dimension effect where many have perished.
- -scale adjust to make it as big/little as you want.
Now, for the ambitious reader: figure out a way to do this with just X
(no VNC). I'm thinking something that works like the old xmag but in
reverse and with a stationary target? If xmag can do its magic, surely
something like this is possible.
For bonus points, figure out how you can do this in wayland.
BZZZZZZZ. Trick question, it's almost certainly impossible (though I
could be proven wrong). If you're using wayland (i.e. new install of
F25) then read the docs on how to switch back to X and then curse
wayland three times while spinning in circles on the spot. Good for
the soul.
(P.S. You might want to block external port 5900 (but not loopback!)
with iptables on your box if it's world-accessible... default vnc
security stinks.)
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So I've got 4 IDE HDDs, each with 3 RAID partitions on them, that were
part of a RAID array in a now-very-dead NAS.
Of course, I need to get data off them that wasn't backed up anywhere
else.
I've got a 4-port USB3 PCIe card, and 4 IDE/SATA USB adapters, and all
the hardware seems to work. So far, so good.
The problem is that the disks use the v0.90 metadata format, and they
came from a big-endian system, not a little-endian system. MD
superblocks *since* v0.90 are endian-agnostic, …
[View More]but back in v0.90, the
superblock was byte-order specific.
mdadm(8) on an Intel processor refuses to acknowledge the existence of
the superblock. Testdisk detects it and correctly identifies it as a
Big-endian v0.90 superblock.
I'm reluctant to blindly do a forced --create on the four disks, because
I'm not 100% certain of the RAID topology; there are at least two RAID
devices, one of which was hidden from the user, so I have no a-priori
knowledge of its RAID level or layout.
The filesystems on the md(4) devices are, AFAIK, all XFS, and so should
(hopefully) not have any endianness issues.
I can't find any modern big-endian Linux systems... looks like all the
ARM distros run in little-endian mode.
Any suggestions on the best way to move forward?
Thanks,
-Adam
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Odd question - but I'll ask if anyone else has done such a thing ...
Using google earth pro on PC ...
Can't seem to find an easy solution to this one ...
I have a bunch of points on a map that were geocoded by address .. and I
have this circle (radius 50km or such) I drew on the map ...
I want to know the number of points that are within this circle --
optionally also want to extract these /save them to extrapolate out the
attached meta data on the points ...
anyone do such a thing …
[View More]directly in GEP?
Dan.
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*** Please note the updated meeting location below ***
The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly
meeting on Tuesday, May 9. The meeting topic for this month is as follows:
An Introduction to Linux on Azure
Microsoft has made Linux a "First Class" citizen on Azure. In this
presentation by John Lange, we'll cover some Azure basics, then
dive into setting up your first Linux systems on Azure and reveal
some of the hidden benefits of using public …
[View More]cloud to run and
manage your Linux virtual machines. Time permitting, we will setup
a small domain managed Linux cluster with load balancing and
automated management.
Daemon-Dash: Let's Encrypt
Adam Thompson will give a short tutorial on Let's Encrypt: the
up-and-coming, and free (as in beer), way to obtain hitherto
costly SSL certificates for your web servers.
The group usually holds its 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 2L17*
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:
https://muug.ca/
Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your
workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board:
https://muug.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf
--
Manitoba UNIX User Group E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca>
c/o Gilbert E. Detillieux Web: http://muug.ca/
University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161
Winnipeg MB CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609
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