I just tryied OpenBSD 2.7. Very lean, well done, doc are excellent. Complete base system (including dev environnement) without X fit in 120MB.
Also, base Debian 2.1 fit on 7 floppy... (last time I checked)
Personnally, I ditched RedHat for server/router/fw. They have the install system that could be the most flexible, but they screwed it up with so many interdepencies that you can't build a coherent system by hand. I once spent 2 hour trimming the packages list, but gave up. It's fine for a workstation to have two dozen image converter, but you don't want all this shit on fw.
Considering that text terminal can be salvaged from dump for free, why you would want to use a Classic Mac for terminal is beyond me. The keyboard is stiff and too small, and the screen is TINY ! However, I admit that having a terminal that has a SCSI interface has a good geek-factor...
In a few years, we'll have to reverse-engineer and hack our access device to stop it from uploading browsing data to our provider (or even better, send fake data). People will have all their request identified by "digital signature", wich will help advertiser target their ad by cross-referencing demographic database. If you have any traffic remotely objectable, sending it over encrypted channel (disguised as streaming media, to be less suspect) will be mandatory unless you want your transmission to trigger automated sniffer (Echelon anybody ???). Router with built-in URL detection will throttle traffic to/from your carrier competitor, balkanizing the Web in the process. Backbone provider will coerce small ISP in submission with unfair routing practice, and we will be back with telecomm being controlled by an oligopole of big business. The list could go on and on.
I don't want to sound to pessimistic, but it's where we are going...
I used to admin an MS Proxy. MSP provide standard proxying of HTTP, SSL, FTP and Gopher (anybody still using that ???). These service should work fine from any browser, on any platform (not quite sure about stand-alone FTP client). For all the rest, you need to install a "client", wich is really only a modified winsock.dll. Winsock.dll is a shared library that TCP/IP client (IRC, mail, etc.) on Windows use. This modified winsock.dll communicate with MSP somehow to proxy almost every application under the sun.
Since this client is obviously not released for any other platform than Windows, you're out of luck. It's a shame since, beside being locked to Windows, MSP is great. That's the only proxy that I know of that can transparently forward ANY application, log connection and is able to tunnel TCP/IP application connection through IPX (yes! TCP/IP over IPX !!!).
One way around it might be to install some kind of NAT software on a Windows box that has the proxy client installed, then route through it. May require some voodoo to work.
You should also investigate SOCKS support of MSP. I am pretty darn sure they add it to 2.0 (I admined 1.0).
It might not be an option for you, but xDSL would probably better fit your need. Cable being a shared network, your multiple modem will all fight for the same bandwidth since they are all on the same (shared) cable network. xDSL is a point-to-point link, so at least the bandwidth to your ISP is constant (from there on, it's another story...).
Personnally, I would not use laptop for the following reasons :
When they break, part are expensive;
Most use non-standard video chipset, meaning possible headache configuring X on these machine;
Price/performance ratio lower than desktop box(not really revelant for X-term);
Their keyboard are'nt exactly ergonomic;
Older LCD are'nt comfortable to work on. Ten inches viewable, come on !
I never completed a similar project, but I would definitely do it with second-hand PC if I had to. A nice place to buy older hardware is IT Xchange. They are a bit pricey, but the inventory is large. Personnally, I'll buy a batch of identical machine to ease maintenance. I'll definitely buy brand new monitor however (for picture quality and reliability).
Another option would be older Sun hardware (SS2, SS5). However, these suffer from some of the same problem as laptop (expensive part, price/performance ratio, etc.). But if you insist on exotic hardware, you could get these cheap on Ebay.
Have you given a tought about the network? X is a network hog, so it would be worth considering network capacity. IMHO, switched 10baseT sould be enough, and I'll choose that over shared 100baseT anytime.
I am not aware of any package that does exactly what you need, but HTML::Mas on could help you roll your own solution in Perl. You could also have a look at Perlfect::Template.
I am working as tech support in a high school environment. I see a lot mice taking various abuse.
Contrary to some previous poster, I never had a single problem with MS or Logitech mices. They are still consumer device, so they are higher end option, but I never had to replace one of these. I usually declare one or two mice dead a week,so it give you an idea of the relative reliability of MS/Logitech vs. El Cheapo brand.
From my experience, under any environment, 6 month is ether really short or you are buying really cheap stuff. Don't use 10$ mice, don't pound on your mice and you should enjoy much greater lifespan.
As for the need to budget for mouse replacement, maintenance credit is a must in a lab environment. Other thing that might need replacing periodically are mouse pad and headset. This is not counting the replacement of diskette drive (I have seen various object inserted in these), CD-ROM drive, burnt power supply or monitor, etc.
Check out www.itxchange.com. Full online inventory with price. My employer bought refurbished printer from this place, and the deal went sweet. They carry a wide range of equipement from 486 to refurbished Pentium III.
You seem bitter, my friend... Maybe you are shocked by the extra punctuation in variable name, or maybe you can't stand the ambiguity of the langage. Anyway, don't take our word for it and listen to the master. You should be enlightned.
You probably already know about it, but there is a very fine digest of the Linux kernel mailing list called Kernel Traffic available at kt.linuxcare.com. Since most documentation tend to fall behind the actual developpement, it might be a good idea to read a few past issue to get you going. I am not a kernel hacker personnally (don't know C), but I still find KT really informative. A really good read.
I have not read the book, but I agree with tha idea that bare-metal backup are the way to go.
I work as a tech monkey for a school board and I deal almost exclusively with M$ crap. Win95 and friend keep of lot of state data that change constantely, so the only way to have a restorable backup is to take a snapshot of the disk. The file in your backup is'nt randomely accessible, so this solution can't be used for archival. I personnaly use Norton Ghost 5 (does good work).
The other great thing about this approach is that I can now afford to be lazy on problem-solving. Computer X had been doing a lot of BSOD lately ? Pop in that network-enabled boot floppy and dump the last-known-good image to disk from the server.
The only drawback I am aware of is that you can dump these image only on identical hardware. A NIC in a different slot is enough to fsck-up your restore. As I said, Windoze and friend keep a lot of state data (including hardware-related thing such as IRQ, IO, etc.).
Hi everybody, I am also shopping for a web host. My main requirement are access to a database (MySQL ok, PostgreSQL best) and permission to use custom CGI. I recently spotted Perlfect, wich seem to fit my need pretty well. I have'nt investigated their service very much, but they look proficient. Worth a look.
Disclaimer : I have not read the C2 spec and have no plan to waste any time on an obsolete certification.
However, from what I know of the whole C2 thing, it does'nt mean much. You can have a remote root exploit wide open (buffer overflow, etc.) and still be certifiable. Basically, the C2 cert involve permission management, audit and accountability of the OS/app being certified. Else, how can they keep with the onslaught of vulnerabilities being found every day ?
Thus, thrusting an OS on the basis of C2 certifiability is pretty pointless. So would be having Linux certified.
That's all nice if you can afford and manage the infrastructure, but most household still own only one PC, never mind a server ! And what about laptop that are on and off the network ?
I admit I could live with such a setup, but I'm an exception, not the norm.
Yes, but why buying a USB->serial interface for a few bucks when you could have it included with the base system ?
This is like the iMac without removable media. A great idea in theory, but everybody I know owning an iMac ended up buying a Zip. So in my opinion, Apple should have included a Zip drive (or some other RW removable media) and saved the customer the assle of buying and installing one himself.
Beside that, USB is still a pretty flaky technology. RS-232, with all it's limitation, is well understood and pretty much Plug-and-Play : most OS recognize any serial mouse without problem and as soon as you your modem is hooked up, you can send AT command.
I am happy to hear that you have a good experience with the HP 692C. While I don't know about Linux support, I do know that these printer are shit. I have about 30 of these to manage and I have a few of these experiencing mechanical problem (strange noise coming out the printer, does'nt feed paper, etc.). They constantly need service. For durability, you can pass. I sent one once to HP service; it cost as much as a brand new one (300 CDN$) and breaked again a year later. Beside that, their driver are quite buggy (especially on NT). And the ink cartridge are quite expensive.
These problems are pretty common with cheap ink-jet. IMHO, you should avoid ink-jet printer at all cost unless you need color printing. Invest in a laser; you'll save in the long run on the supply and keep your printer longer.
Because Internet Explorer for Linux will be open source, that bunch of 1,000 Linux programmers will be able to suggest changes that will improve it rapidly. Microsoft could make like quarterly releases of IE for Linux on CD-ROM (with all the suggestions and changes from Linux programmers).
Availability of source code does'nt mean a theorical IE on Linux would gather much developper. Look at Sun with their pseudo-OS Solaris : are they're thousand of developper contributing to Solaris code ?
Beside that, I doubt that MS could release anything remotely open-source...
Personnally, I don't frequent the security and (h|cr)ackers circles, so I did'nt knew about this guys before he was featured on Slashdot. He could have convinced me he was right and correct. Thoughtful answer and insightful comment would have done the job.
Instead, he defend himself by attacking his detractor, not a strategy I find respectable. This interview was empty and leave me the feeling of an arrogant media whore washing his laundry in public. Sure, the guy is under attack, but his attitude does nothing to sooth his relation with the public.
Anyway, it's being said over and over but I think this interview should'nt have been done. They are hundred of worthwhile interview candidate, why choose this guys ? Slashdot should be after Larry Wall, Donald Knuth, Brian Kerniggan and other significant people of our community for an interview, not the controversial figure du jour.
Slashdot Mirror
I just tryied OpenBSD 2.7. Very lean, well done, doc are excellent. Complete base system (including dev environnement) without X fit in 120MB. Also, base Debian 2.1 fit on 7 floppy ... (last time I checked)
Personnally, I ditched RedHat for server/router/fw. They have the install system that could be the most flexible, but they screwed it up with so many interdepencies that you can't build a coherent system by hand. I once spent 2 hour trimming the packages list, but gave up. It's fine for a workstation to have two dozen image converter, but you don't want all this shit on fw.
Considering that text terminal can be salvaged from dump for free, why you would want to use a Classic Mac for terminal is beyond me. The keyboard is stiff and too small, and the screen is TINY ! However, I admit that having a terminal that has a SCSI interface has a good geek-factor ...
Difference between disk space and RAM is easy to teach. Try explaining directory structure and file system layout to a newbie ...
Similar problems where discussed here less than a month ago.
In a few years, we'll have to reverse-engineer and hack our access device to stop it from uploading browsing data to our provider (or even better, send fake data). People will have all their request identified by "digital signature", wich will help advertiser target their ad by cross-referencing demographic database. If you have any traffic remotely objectable, sending it over encrypted channel (disguised as streaming media, to be less suspect) will be mandatory unless you want your transmission to trigger automated sniffer (Echelon anybody ???). Router with built-in URL detection will throttle traffic to/from your carrier competitor, balkanizing the Web in the process. Backbone provider will coerce small ISP in submission with unfair routing practice, and we will be back with telecomm being controlled by an oligopole of big business. The list could go on and on.
...
I don't want to sound to pessimistic, but it's where we are going
I used to admin an MS Proxy. MSP provide standard proxying of HTTP, SSL, FTP and Gopher (anybody still using that ???). These service should work fine from any browser, on any platform (not quite sure about stand-alone FTP client). For all the rest, you need to install a "client", wich is really only a modified winsock.dll. Winsock.dll is a shared library that TCP/IP client (IRC, mail, etc.) on Windows use. This modified winsock.dll communicate with MSP somehow to proxy almost every application under the sun.
Since this client is obviously not released for any other platform than Windows, you're out of luck. It's a shame since, beside being locked to Windows, MSP is great. That's the only proxy that I know of that can transparently forward ANY application, log connection and is able to tunnel TCP/IP application connection through IPX (yes! TCP/IP over IPX !!!).
One way around it might be to install some kind of NAT software on a Windows box that has the proxy client installed, then route through it. May require some voodoo to work.
You should also investigate SOCKS support of MSP. I am pretty darn sure they add it to 2.0 (I admined 1.0).
It might not be an option for you, but xDSL would probably better fit your need. Cable being a shared network, your multiple modem will all fight for the same bandwidth since they are all on the same (shared) cable network. xDSL is a point-to-point link, so at least the bandwidth to your ISP is constant (from there on, it's another story ...).
Personnally, I would not use laptop for the following reasons :
I never completed a similar project, but I would definitely do it with second-hand PC if I had to. A nice place to buy older hardware is IT Xchange. They are a bit pricey, but the inventory is large. Personnally, I'll buy a batch of identical machine to ease maintenance. I'll definitely buy brand new monitor however (for picture quality and reliability).
Another option would be older Sun hardware (SS2, SS5). However, these suffer from some of the same problem as laptop (expensive part, price/performance ratio, etc.). But if you insist on exotic hardware, you could get these cheap on Ebay.
Have you given a tought about the network? X is a network hog, so it would be worth considering network capacity. IMHO, switched 10baseT sould be enough, and I'll choose that over shared 100baseT anytime.
Also, you should give the Linux based diskless X terminal toolkit a look.
Just my 2 bit ...
Try searching Google for "PS\/+2 keypad". It return 2757 hits, and a few are revelant on the first page.
I am not aware of any package that does exactly what you need, but HTML::Mas on could help you roll your own solution in Perl. You could also have a look at Perlfect::Template.
I am working as tech support in a high school environment. I see a lot mice taking various abuse.
Contrary to some previous poster, I never had a single problem with MS or Logitech mices. They are still consumer device, so they are higher end option, but I never had to replace one of these. I usually declare one or two mice dead a week,so it give you an idea of the relative reliability of MS/Logitech vs. El Cheapo brand.
From my experience, under any environment, 6 month is ether really short or you are buying really cheap stuff. Don't use 10$ mice, don't pound on your mice and you should enjoy much greater lifespan.
As for the need to budget for mouse replacement, maintenance credit is a must in a lab environment. Other thing that might need replacing periodically are mouse pad and headset. This is not counting the replacement of diskette drive (I have seen various object inserted in these), CD-ROM drive, burnt power supply or monitor, etc.
Check out www.itxchange.com. Full online inventory with price. My employer bought refurbished printer from this place, and the deal went sweet. They carry a wide range of equipement from 486 to refurbished Pentium III.
You seem bitter, my friend ... Maybe you are shocked by the extra punctuation in variable name, or maybe you can't stand the ambiguity of the langage. Anyway, don't take our word for it and listen to the master. You should be enlightned.
Half-a-thousand people had probably posted this already, but linux.com run an article on this very subject at http://www. linux.com/multimedia/multimedia.phtml?function=dis part&id=70.
You probably already know about it, but there is a very fine digest of the Linux kernel mailing list called Kernel Traffic available at kt.linuxcare.com. Since most documentation tend to fall behind the actual developpement, it might be a good idea to read a few past issue to get you going. I am not a kernel hacker personnally (don't know C), but I still find KT really informative. A really good read.
I have not read the book, but I agree with tha idea that bare-metal backup are the way to go.
I work as a tech monkey for a school board and I deal almost exclusively with M$ crap. Win95 and friend keep of lot of state data that change constantely, so the only way to have a restorable backup is to take a snapshot of the disk. The file in your backup is'nt randomely accessible, so this solution can't be used for archival. I personnaly use Norton Ghost 5 (does good work).
The other great thing about this approach is that I can now afford to be lazy on problem-solving. Computer X had been doing a lot of BSOD lately ? Pop in that network-enabled boot floppy and dump the last-known-good image to disk from the server.
The only drawback I am aware of is that you can dump these image only on identical hardware. A NIC in a different slot is enough to fsck-up your restore. As I said, Windoze and friend keep a lot of state data (including hardware-related thing such as IRQ, IO, etc.).
Hi everybody, I am also shopping for a web host. My main requirement are access to a database (MySQL ok, PostgreSQL best) and permission to use custom CGI. I recently spotted Perlfect, wich seem to fit my need pretty well. I have'nt investigated their service very much, but they look proficient. Worth a look.
Disclaimer : I have not read the C2 spec and have no plan to waste any time on an obsolete certification.
However, from what I know of the whole C2 thing, it does'nt mean much. You can have a remote root exploit wide open (buffer overflow, etc.) and still be certifiable. Basically, the C2 cert involve permission management, audit and accountability of the OS/app being certified. Else, how can they keep with the onslaught of vulnerabilities being found every day ?
Thus, thrusting an OS on the basis of C2 certifiability is pretty pointless. So would be having Linux certified.
Security wiz are welcome to correct me.
Remove the NetBIOS Interface service
...)
and
nable NetBT to open TCP and UDP ports exclusively
Remember : NetBT == NetBIOS over TCP/IP
I am missing sommething, or we have a contradiction here ? (disabling NetBIOS and configuring it for TCP/IP
That's all nice if you can afford and manage the infrastructure, but most household still own only one PC, never mind a server ! And what about laptop that are on and off the network ?
I admit I could live with such a setup, but I'm an exception, not the norm.
Yes, but why buying a USB->serial interface for a few bucks when you could have it included with the base system ?
This is like the iMac without removable media. A great idea in theory, but everybody I know owning an iMac ended up buying a Zip. So in my opinion, Apple should have included a Zip drive (or some other RW removable media) and saved the customer the assle of buying and installing one himself.
Beside that, USB is still a pretty flaky technology. RS-232, with all it's limitation, is well understood and pretty much Plug-and-Play : most OS recognize any serial mouse without problem and as soon as you your modem is hooked up, you can send AT command.
Else, how I am gonna connect to the console port of my router, or download test result from my Pentascanner ?
RS-232 is just so widespread, keeping just one serial port would be a Good Thing (tm), IMHO.
I am happy to hear that you have a good experience with the HP 692C. While I don't know about Linux support, I do know that these printer are shit. I have about 30 of these to manage and I have a few of these experiencing mechanical problem (strange noise coming out the printer, does'nt feed paper, etc.). They constantly need service. For durability, you can pass. I sent one once to HP service; it cost as much as a brand new one (300 CDN$) and breaked again a year later. Beside that, their driver are quite buggy (especially on NT). And the ink cartridge are quite expensive.
These problems are pretty common with cheap ink-jet. IMHO, you should avoid ink-jet printer at all cost unless you need color printing. Invest in a laser; you'll save in the long run on the supply and keep your printer longer.
Just my 2 bit.
Because Internet Explorer for Linux will be open source, that bunch of 1,000 Linux programmers will be able to suggest changes that will improve it rapidly. Microsoft could make like quarterly releases of IE for Linux on CD-ROM (with all the suggestions and changes from Linux programmers).
...
Availability of source code does'nt mean a theorical IE on Linux would gather much developper. Look at Sun with their pseudo-OS Solaris : are they're thousand of developper contributing to Solaris code ?
Beside that, I doubt that MS could release anything remotely open-source
Personnally, I don't frequent the security and (h|cr)ackers circles, so I did'nt knew about this guys before he was featured on Slashdot. He could have convinced me he was right and correct. Thoughtful answer and insightful comment would have done the job.
Instead, he defend himself by attacking his detractor, not a strategy I find respectable. This interview was empty and leave me the feeling of an arrogant media whore washing his laundry in public. Sure, the guy is under attack, but his attitude does nothing to sooth his relation with the public.
Anyway, it's being said over and over but I think this interview should'nt have been done. They are hundred of worthwhile interview candidate, why choose this guys ? Slashdot should be after Larry Wall, Donald Knuth, Brian Kerniggan and other significant people of our community for an interview, not the controversial figure du jour.