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Open Source means that users have the freedom to see how software works, adapt it for the own needs, fix bugs and limitations and contribute back to the community.

DLSLUG, October 5th, 7 PM: Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples

By on October 3, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Security

Bill McGonigle announces Thursday's Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux User Group: “Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples” presented by Lloyd Kvam:

“Lloyd will talk about OpenWRT, the open source linux distribution that targets small routers such as the Linksys WRT45GL. He recently used one to make a bridging firewall, where a Windows computer needed protection, but there was no access to the router.”

“Lloyd will talk about hardware organization, installing packages, the layout of the default configuration, and how to customize the routing and firewall operations… Lloyd works at software development, preferably in Python.”

Should be a fun meeting. Hope to see you there!

CentraLUG: 2 October 2006 7 PM: Demos, Q&A, future topics

By on September 25, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central NH GNHLUG chapter, happens the first Monday of the month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu/welcome/directions.htm. This month, we'll be meeting in the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, marked as “I” on the map at the link above. The main meeting starts at 7 PM and we finish around 9 PM. Open to the public. Tell your friends.

At this meeting we'll cover a couple of quick demos, including a tour of the GNHLUG wiki and a demo of the NX remote desktop access tool. We'll review upcoming meetings for GNHLUG and discuss what presentations we'd like to see this fall and winter. Over the summer we had a couple of good meetings and talked about learning a bit about software development on Linux. I'd like to open up the discussion to what these “users” are that we are supposed to be a group of, and what sort of presentations these “users” might like to see. Over the summer, I attended two “Open Mike” meetings, one in Nashua and one in Peterborough, that were very interesting and highly interactive. We'll certainly include some Q&A in this meeting, and perhaps include it as a permanent part of the meeting. MonadLUG has also added a “man page of the month” to their meetings; let's consider this as well.

7:00 Welcome, Announcements
7:15 Questions
7:30 Demos
8:00 Answers
8:30 Discussion: Future meetings

There's lots more information about CentraLUG and its parent organization GNHLUG at http://www.gnhlug.org.

Python Special Interest Group: September 28: byte codes and TurboGears

By on September 23, 2006 in OpenSource, Python

Bill Sconce posts the news for next Thursdays Python Special Interest Group meeting in Manchester:

PySIG — New Hampshire Python Special Interest Group
Amoskeag Business Incubator, Manchester, NH
28 September 2006 (4th Thursday) 7:00 PM

PySIG meetings are seminar-style, hands on. Laptop-friendly: 'Net access, wired + wireless. Python questions, war stories, examples always welcome.Everyone is welcome. Free of charge. Free of braces.

7:00 PM: Introductions –Bill & Ted & Alex, Milk & Cookies –Ben, Janet

7:10 PM: Happenings & AnnouncementsL Python 2.5 Released! Hosstraders 5-6 October, Hopkinton…

7:15 PM: Anyone's question(s) about Python, Python Module of the Month, Favorite-Python-Gotcha contest, Topics for future meetings…

7:30 PM: Bytecode Disassembly & Reassembly, presented by Bill Sconce, In Spec, Inc., Milford NH

Bill: “An August announcement on python-announce-list caught my eye — a bytecode assembler/dissassembler for Python. Because I spent one of my former lives as project leader for a bytecode/stack-pseudomachine, JIT-compiled, commercial language I thought it'd be fun and instructive to poke into Python's pseudomachine. It was and is. This easy-to-use tool makes it easy for anyone to get a start looking at Python internals.”

Bill Sconce is co-founder and chief cookie-procurer at PySIG, teaches Python, and writes in Python as often as he can.

8:10 PM: TurboGears, presented by Lloyd Kvam, Venix Corp, Lebanon NH

Lloyd: “I am impressed with the TurboGears (TG) approach to combining data and templates. They have a 20 minute tutorial that took me an hour – I insist on trying to understand how the magic is done. TG has a very ingenious use of decorators to link templates and data.

“The result is very different from Myghty which is much more like PHP with lots of snippets that get combined any which way you like.

“I am not sure I really understand all of the tradeoffs between the TG and Myghty approaches. That could lead to some interesting discussion.”

Lloyd Kvam is a charter member of PySIG and has given a number of Python tutorials at PySIG and elsewhere.

IBM Publishes Linux Client Migration Cookbook, v.2

By on September 22, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

From DesktopLinux.com: “IBM has published a final draft of its “Redbook” titled Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. The 376-page book, which targets enterprises needing to begin an evaluation of desktop Linux, is available for free download. “

FireFox releases 1.5.0.7

By on September 15, 2006 in OpenSource, Technology

The Mozilla folks announce a new version, 1.5.0.7, available for download from their site or by selecting updates from within the application. A number of bugs have been squashed and several security issues addressed. Get patching!

Ohio LinuxFest

By on September 14, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

Linux.com has an article on an upcoming Ohio LinuxFest put on by their own corporation. There's a lot to be learned by reading what others have learned in putting on a conference…

Linux and open source software users in the Buckeye State who want to network with several hundred of their colleagues will get the chance when Ohio LinuxFest 2006 gets underway later this month. The one-day conference, to be held on Saturday, September 30, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, features presentations, exhibits, an after-conference party, and a special appearance by some live penguins.

MerriLUG September 2006: File Carving at Home or Office

By on September 14, 2006 in OpenSource, Security

On the GNHLUG-Announce list, Jim Kuzdrall announces the Septempber MerriLUG meeting, “File Carving at Home or Office”

  • Who : Andy Bair, Winning Team, 2006 File Carving Challenge
  • What : Unscramble randomized data sectors or packets back to files
  • Where: Martha's Exchange
  • Day : Thur 21 September **Next Week**
  • Time : 6:00 PM for grub, 7:30 PM for discussion

    :: Overview

    Want to undelete some Linux disk files? Piece together fragments of a deleted file? Recover a Windows disk where both FATS are destroyed or missing? Extract files from a network capture? MerriLUG presents Andy Bair with a new and effective approach to file carving that could be used to accomplish these tasks.

    Andy Bair (and teammates Klayton Monroe and Jay Smith) won the 2006 File Carving Challenge. The winners developed new tools and techniques which accurately extracted files from a 50MB disk image of containing JPEG, ZIP, HTML, Text, and Microsoft Office files.

    Andy's talk will explain the contest, contest data sample, methodology, and tools. There will be examples and a question-answer
    session. You might want to build a script to automate his method for your purposes (or entice him to do so). Get contest information at http://www.dfrws.org/2006/challenge/. Get a preview of the team's methodology, updated results and additional information at
    http://www.korelogic.com/Resources/Projects/dfrws_challenge_2006/.

    >>> RSVP to Jim Kuzdrall for dinner to assure adequate seating. Driving directions

Subversion new version, SourceSafe conversion

By on September 12, 2006 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Python, SourceSafe, Technology

OSNews reports Subversion 1.4.0 Released. “This is a feature release of Subversion [Updated link], featuring BDB 4.4 and repository auto-recovery support, a new tool for synchronizing repositories (svnsync), major speed enhancements in the versioned filesystem and the working copy, and of course the usual host of bugfixes and minor enhancements. Additionally, check this article on how to Set up Subversion and websvn on Debian.”

Good timing! I've been using subversion for the past year on a web development project with another (remote) developer, and have enjoyed the power and flexibility of the tool, as well as some of the cool add-ons, clients and scriptability.

Now, it's time to consider moving existing projects out of Visual SourceSafe and into subversion. The folks at Pumacode offer an vss2svn tool that runs as a native Windows executable, written in Perl and C, with the source available under an open license. Pumacode tried an interesting tactic to convert the VSS repositories: rather than interogate the VSS binary to retrieve files, it reads the repository files directly and interprets the results from there. There are some advantages where older versions might be corrupted, or to retrieve files flagged as deleted, which they say VSS will not allow.

On a 2 Ghz Pentium-M with a gig of RAM, it took about 2 hours to process my current VSS repository, which consists of forty thousand files and around 1.4 Gb of disk space. (The authors of vss2svn caution that it's better to convert the entire repository than to risk further corruption by pruning it first; leave that task to subversion post conversion.) This generated a dump file of 850+ Mb. Transferring that to the Linux box with a new repository took a few minutes, and loading the data about 20 minutes. Using RapidSVN from the Windows box, I was able to browse the subversion repository and confirm that files and folders and log history comments look about right. I'll confirm by checking out projects of interest and diff'ing them against the current development copies.

I had anticipated a different tack, using COM Automation to drive VSS, as I described in Essential SourceSafe. As a learning project, I had proposed using Python to browse the repository via COM Automation and use the excellent Python-svn bindings to migrate portions of a VSS repository to subversion. I still plan to try that, and to compare-and-contrast the results between the two techniques, while I learn a little more Python.

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