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1. Create a linux image (you can use Clonezilla, g4u or Ghost) that requires labusers authenticate to either LDAP, AD or something so you have their actual user details for logging and auditing. Alternatively you could boot it from the network or from CD. Another alternative is to use deep freeze.
2. Ensure that the system is checked for integrity on startup and the latest image is downloaded and applied if it doesn't match the correct version. cron a reboot that forces this if you're worried about users doing stuff and not rebooting.
3. Ensure that logs are written to a syslog log server or that you get the authlogs somewhere (who logged in where, on what ip address and when etc...).
4. Give users as much access as you need to (yes, even root). If they do anything wrong you have audit logs and because of the imaging unwanted software and programs will be removed.

Since we're on the subject -- NetBSD is being ported to the RaspberryPi, despite all the roadblocks in place to do so. (RPi is not an open platform) It is booting to multiuser in test code. See hubertf's post on the subject. I intend to help test as soon as my unit arrives.

6to4 translation - so your legacy server that requires a IPv4 (which, of course, will begin to fade away as people upgrade) can be accessed from your IPv6 client. You don't need dual stack network, what happens is the IPv4 address gets a IPv6 one at the router that begins with the special 2002: prefix.

The big win is that you won't need to purchase an IPv4 address in the future - none of us want that.

i think you are looking for ping
http://ping.windowsdream.com/

or g4u
or CloneZilla
or dd > gzip > ftp (which is what g4u does, actually).

Well, toss an image on a thumb-drive, then.

But if you have apps that aren't ported to Linux and don't run under Wine, where do you (legally) get that image?

I was actually referring to tossing a small bootable install of Linux on the thumbdrive, to facilitate using dd to push the image of the drive over the network. g4u is a good example of something designed for this purpose.

Sorry for the confusion, I should have been more specific.

... were just the next logical step beyond simple ASCII terminals,
and before a decent graphics protocol (X, etc.).
For some background/data on how those things fit together, see here:
http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/ttys.html

Enjoy!

  - Hubert

"A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source."

"The BSD philosophy seems to hold that creating and giving away code, then seeing it used by others, is victory and reward enough. But most of the GPL supporters disapproved of allowing "others" to close off source code and hide enhancements."

"The BSD license allows someone to take the code, improve it, and not share the improvements"

I suppose you're going to say they are wrong too.

Falcon

I use G4U. it can snapshot your system on a remote server and do all kinds of neat tricks.

• bsdtalk various interviews with BSD people
• debaday not really a debianwhore but nice gems to be found there
• fleshbot who doesn't like porns?
• hubertf everyone's favorite NetBSD dev
• papod PA podcast
• tdwtf the daily wtf so you don't feel you are alone in your editor
• thinkgeek must buy everything!
• undeadly not dead yet

Use G4U instead then.

FYI, Panasonic Aviations uses g4u, a NetBSD-based harddisk image cloning software to deploy their in-flight systems.

For more information on g4u, see http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

  - Hubert
      Author or g4u

Make sure you have a decent Firewall / Gateway. There are lots of good ones on the 'Net. I use IPCop, which has a Squid proxy as well as lots of addon programs. URLfilter is useful to remove the totally obnoxious.

That's it, except that imho you should not tie the machines down to the point at which they become useless and painful to use.

FWIW I've written the following article on how to testdrive (NetBSD, but that shouldn't matter) -current on a 'release' system quite some time ago:

http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/testdriving-current.ht ml

Maybe it's of interest to someone. Enjoy!

  - Hubert

See my blog entry for other experiences made during the quest for a slim desktop, and what ups and downs I found beyond the "big" desktop environemnts. (Includes a screenshot of my desktop :-).

- Hubert

See my blog entry for other experiences made during the quest for a slim desktop, and what ups and downs I found beyond the "big" desktop environemnts. (Includes a screenshot of my desktop :-).

- Hubert

Try these:

G4U

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Cobian

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Both work well.

Jeff

> I don't know what to do to solve this, any suggestions?

1) Address the ignorance factor first. Make sure people are aware of the issue of data security and the seriousness of it. Don't assume they automatically know. Explain it to them in a way that is informative and not condescending.

2) Use a platform designed to keep users in userland.

3) Setup laptops with encrypted filesystems [0] and encrypted connections [1]. Do not give users administrative access. Re-image [2] system partitions for extra freshness. Stop using WEP.

[0] http://rubyforge.org/projects/fusefs/
[1] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/02/2 3/wep.html
[2] http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

Is this that?

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Imaging_with_a_LiveCD

This is excellent advice! As to imaging software, I would add Acronis True Image to the list. If you want free imaging software, and are willing to work a little harder, there's also "ghost for linux" http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/. You should also use the "immunize" feature in Spybot. You can get Immunization Database updates offline to add to your installation before creating the working image. In addition to Spybot, I would install Spyware Blaster and Windows Defender. I've never found one spyware app to be adequate.

Or an even cheaper (as in free) solution... http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Check out http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ as it runs very well on low end hardware and utilizes some of Knoppix's hardware detection infrastructure. I've got it running quite nicely on several low end laptops ie Pentium-90 w/24Mb ram with X running. No cdrom or USB can be overcome by creating an image from a well endowed system and dumping it on the low end hardware(needs floppy drive and network card) using "Ghost for Unix" aka g4u available at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ . Good luck in your noble endeavor.

Dominic Caffey

In general, I can only recommend NetBSD, as it not only comes as a rock solid operating system in itself, but as it supports many different platforms and crosscompiling of kernel, userland and (if needed) X11, so migrating to a different hardware platform is not a problem or a showstopper long-term.

Check it out!

- Hubert

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ helped me when ghost failed on my laptop.
A supertool without doubt.

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

I have successfully imaged ext3 volume sets, NTFS disks, and NetBSD disks with this tool. In spite of what you might think, it actually is quite fast and the drive images are relatively compact.

The key is to have a gigabit network at hand, if you can, and to have relatively modern hardware across the board.

G4U, a unix based cloning tool.

``As an introduction the properties of a "hardware platform" are described, and it's showen that getting the same behaviour of software on different hardware platforms isn't "portability". After repeating the tasks of an operating system, it is explained what an operating system needs to provide in the lower layers to be portable. The article ends with a case study of the NetBSD operating system.''

Full article here.

``Richard Rauch is doing a radio show on human rights, and he's using NetBSD to prepare the show: post-processing interviews, improving overall sound quality, adding music, etc. See his first, more general, and second, more detailed, posting to the netbsd-advocacy list. '' [see my blog entry for more]

http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/images/toast_final12.g if

Ok, then, read his: http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050807_034 0

And please point me to a single code tree, which downloaded from kernel.org would build on everything linux supposedly "runs" on.

And then visit NetBSD's ftp, grab and iso of an obscure platform, look into it, grab the pkgsrc.. And imagine, that each of them builds.

A non-buildable package _IS_ en ERROR upon reported to netbsd's bug tracking system. And they fix that.

Never do they say "if you want it, write it yourself".

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

- Hubert

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,

I was thinking more along the lines of a g4u image file, but I certainly wouldn't grip over a live cd.

There are some very specific issues with using darwin to make a livecd. Not impossible by any strech, but not trivial.

there's a review that looks at openbsd from the perspective of its ancestor, netbsd:

http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/openbsd-comparison.htm l

looking at openbsd commit logs, the apm issue was solved shortly after that review came out, but without mentioning the review.

Why yet another distribution when everyone's favourite operating system already works, even on Xen - ``Of course it runs NetBSD!'' :)

Some links:
* What does Xen look like - a screenshot:
http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/in-Action/hubertf-xe n.png
* Installation:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/xen/howto.html
* General information on NetBSD/Xen:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/xen/
* Live CD with Debian, NetBSD and FreeBSD:
http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050421_004 1
* Benchmarking:
http://www.iki.fi/kuparine/comp/xendom0/xendom0.ht ml

- Hubert

And what about Ghost for You. this does netbackup with onlye one 1.44" disk.

not the same?

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

1. NetBSD - Free, business-friendly open source operating system, donate at paypal@NetBSD.org
2. g4u - Harddisk image cloning for PCs, donate at paypal@feyrer.de

I can't believe nobody has mentioned g4u.

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Full disk backups, supports FTP, compression, dual boot, and any x86 operating system.

You don't with Windows either, but you have to make sure there are no handles to critical files when you do. After that you can just use dd or whatever, I use dd, because I came from a unix background and found it the most simple solution.

If you're not in the know and still reboots, why not just g4u?

The 'unofficial roadmap' you can find (http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/roadmap.html). For 3.0, some things are already in-tree for it (PF, PAM), but most of that hasn't even shown evidence of being attempted. I'm not sure which devs actually agree with that map, but it is clear to see they don't all believe they can do it. 3.0-beta currently offers very little 2.0 doesn't for a huge range of users, the most likely to be noticed being the wonderful PF (which is forwarding these packets now... and normalizing them!).

One note to PF newbies, if you want behavior like the other packet filters (linear top->bottom checking of rules, stopping at any matches), use 'quick' for every rule. It will save you headaches figuring out why some rules appear to be completely useless.

Back on topic, it appears NetBSD (or at least someone there) decided to use Solaris-like SMP locking (the same thing that 'killed' FreeBSD 5). We'll see how that pans out, or if it's even true: but suffice to say it's not there in the netbsd-3 branch yet.

NetBSD is hampered by poor scalability and its limited rudimentary SMP.

SMP, yes at the moment. But Uni proc scalability? I don't think so. This looks interesting too.

NetBSD also lacks a production ready journaling file system.

With Soft Updates, it doesn't need it.

Wrong. They would have to modify it, and hence release the sources (as per GPL). Since there are no sources and no admitting they did so, none of those products have Linux. On the other hand, it does have things from NetBSD in hardware and software (see http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html - search 'PS2' (gets you an XIII-related piece) and 'Playstation' (the latter being the PSP itself). I say this because linking to these from Slash seems to break.

I guess I should ask you, is blind zealous ignorance bliss?