Root Access

Oliver Salzburg

10:35

Incompetent support staff is driving me nuts!

Who is hiring these people?

Journeyman Geek

;p

Oliver Salzburg

First he makes an appointment with me on Friday, misses it and only emails me like 3 hours after

Then he calls me today and doesn't even fucking apologize

And then proceeds to tell me the problem is not with their software, but with our server and that I need to reboot and re-install their software

Even though he is the one who installed the software, because it wouldn't install when I did it. And he even fucked up back then and used the same shitty "your server is fucked" excuse

The server isn't fucked, he just has no fucking clue what he's doing

And then he doesn't even know the contents of the ticket!

So he calls me and is like "So, you're not receiving any emails. Is that right?"

No! That's not right at all. That has nothing to do with the issue I reported

Curses!

Boris_yo

Huh?

How can you operate laptop without removing it from case?

Bob

Think phone and tablet cases.

Odd for laptops though, because they have air vents.

Boris_yo

@Bob You know somebody who operates phones and tablets inside cases?

Oliver Salzburg

10:51

Taking the phone out of its case to use it seems kinda pointless

Journeyman Geek

you could use a laptop case as a heat shield

Boris_yo

@OliverSalzburg The subject matter is 16" laptop case.

Oliver Salzburg

So?

You asked if @Bob knows someone who operates their phone inside a case. That was the context I was talking about

Boris_yo

Nevermind

Bob

11:30

@OliverSalzburg Ya. I do know somebody who uses a phone inside a case.

At least, I think I know myself.

And just about every other person I've ever met too...

@OliverSalzburg That... that sounds suspiciously familiar.

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob From all the other times I bitched about it?

Bob

lol

TRiG

13:47

@JourneymanGeek Are there any extant computer systems which use non-octet bytes? (I have heard of a UTF-9, designed for ease of use on computers with nine-bit bytes, but I think it was never actually standardized.)

Journeyman Geek

for certain values of extant

modern? No

TRiG

Ah, UTF-9 was an April Fool's Day RFC.

Journeyman Geek

Harwell computer

The Harwell computer, later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH), or the Harwell Dekatron Computer, was an early British relay-based computer. From 2009 to 2012, it was restored at the National Museum of Computing, where it is described as "the oldest original functioning electronic stored program computer in the world". The museum hopes to use the computer's visual, dekatron-based memory to teach schoolchildren about computers. == Construction and use at Harwell == The computer, which weighs two and a half tons was built and used at the Atomic Energy...

Journeyman Geek

14:24

@Bob: travel.stackexchange.com/questions/51070/…

the plot thickens.

Oliver Salzburg

lol wat

Bob

@TRiG Still some 4-bit micros.

Oliver Salzburg

@User: That's why you assemble a Bazooka in the bathroom. Duh. — Jonas 1 hour ago

Bob

@JourneymanGeek wh... what?

Journeyman Geek

Seriously, that guy's questions are an 80s bond movie.

Bob

14:27

Random hypothetical scenarios.

Journeyman Geek

I'm pretty sure he's just repwhoring and trolling at once ;p

allquixotic

14:38

hi

@Bob Archipel. I connect to it over HTTPS (on security-tuned nginx) and have a long password.

Bob

@allquixotic I'd probably end up with an SSH tunnel and binding that to localhost :P

@allquixotic Pretty much decided: in the interest of my sanity and my wallet, I'm going to run everything in KVM

Plus one KVM for Ubuntu + lxd for quick 'n dirty containers

TRiG

-1 I'm sorry but I do not believe your questions are serious. You've recently asked about bringing deactivated bazookas, bullet-proof vests and gold bars on planes. It seems vanishingly unlikely that any single person would be interested in bringing such items on planes in such rapid succession. — David Richerby 1 hour ago

Journeyman Geek

;p

allquixotic

@Bob :(

TRiG

in V'dibarta Bam, 1 min ago, by Isaac Moses

@TRiG Wrong-headed, IMO. Evaluate each question's seriousness and fitness on its own terms. If a single user posts many questions that are deemed, on their own terms, non-fitting (including, e.g., if they're all marked as dupes of each other), it could be worth intervening with that user. It doesn't look like that's the case here, as the cited questions have not been closed, have been significantly up-voted and have received significantly upvoted answers.

allquixotic

14:42

@Bob wat. why not lex-dee on Debian? :(

Bob

@allquixotic Too much trouble...

allquixotic

@Bob seriously? do I need to fire up a Debian VM and get it working and give you the instructions?

Bob

@allquixotic No :(

I just don't want to dive into a completely experimental config like that.

allquixotic

it's worth the trouble to not have to run kernels on top of kernels and filesystems on top of filesystems

Bob

Not for the important services anyway.

allquixotic

14:44

~~It's not really that experimental~~ OK, lex-dee is pretty fucking experimental right now ;p

still, WFM.

on Ubuntu.

Bob

@allquixotic In this case, that's actually more likely considering they're developing it for Ubuntu.

There's absolutely no official Debian support at the moment, AFAICT.

Sure, they'll try to help if you ask.

But it's not high on their list of tested configs.

allquixotic

@Bob I think Canonical's modus operandi with software development is: Step 1: Make it work on Ubuntu. Step 2: Make it work on Debian. Step 3: Half-assedly make it kinda work with a lot of effort on other distros.

They still are serious about making it work on Debian, but only after Ubuntu

Bob

@allquixotic Yea, but that could be a month, a year, a decade. Who knows?

I might as well get shit running on KVM for now, while I still have resources to spare, then shuffle things as necessary.

Should be trivial to move a KVM guest to LXD.

allquixotic

true... I feel like the development velocity of lex-dee right now is very high, which means that the code churn makes it unpredictable as to when it'll finally start to "crystallize"

I think, once the dev pace slows down, it'll start landing in Debian's main package repo

at which point apt-get install lxd

Bob

@allquixotic I want to play with it. I want to use it for spinning up quick containers. I don't want to rely on it.

> It looks like you're trying to use it for spinning up quick containers.

Would you like help?

-_-

allquixotic

14:47

lol

It looks like you don't want to rely on it. Would you like help?

Bob

@allquixotic s/main/unstable/

allquixotic

@Bob well. main (repo) of unstable (branch) :P

and then 1-2 years later, in stable/main

Bob

Maybe when Debian 9.0 rolls around I can start fiddling with it.

allquixotic

right now they're up to (I think) release 1.1-something? And both lxc itself and lxd are making rapid development progress

Bob

Or maybe it'll have to wait till 10.0.

allquixotic

14:48

the 1.x version number is encouraging

BUT it keeps getting new features

Bob

@allquixotic Or just semver.

allquixotic

it's really impressive

Bob

@allquixotic Impressive for dev. Not nice for stable prod.

allquixotic

I'm tracking the lxd Ubuntu PPA... they upload a new version like every 2 weeks

Bob

Also potentially worrying for security.

allquixotic

14:49

apparently the main dev tests these releases, so it's safer than building from git master

Bob

(more features = more potential holes)

allquixotic

@Bob true, but what lxd really needs is a large user base, so people will start paying attention to security, and finding and closing holes

Bob

@allquixotic That's like saying a bulletproof vest is safer than nothing. Technically true, but I still don't want to be in a position where that might be useful!

@allquixotic I'll be happy to test it for my experimental stuff.

allquixotic

lxc out of the box is about as secure as having your front door hanging wide open and every window open with no screens. lxd probably closes every window and door, and locks most of them, though I'm not sure about that one door... I can't put my finger on it, but I'm not 110% positive it's totally bulletproof

Bob

But I don't want my gitlab server going down.

Or ff-sync.

Or just about anything else.

allquixotic

14:52

well anyway, unless you're running something very CPU-intensive or very network-intensive, KVM is a great hypervisor... to put things in perspective, my SP-128 (and earlier, my SP-64, KVM on SmartOS) ran Windows Server 2012, which does loads of pointless network and disk I/O for "management" and "maintenance" background tasks, and it still ran great

try not to saturate KVM too much in terms of disk or network throughput and it's great -- if you load it down overly much it'll start to choke

Bob

@allquixotic Dunno about network, but disk is interesting...

Especially with my setup that should have absurdly high throughput and IOPS.

allquixotic

also consider using the qed disk format instead of qcow2

it's just better

Bob

I have no idea what either of those are.

Going into this blind :P

speaking of, brb switching to laptop

allquixotic

oh. when you make a KVM virtual machine, a lot of your configuration is dictated by the userspace side of KVM, which is QEMU.

QEMU reads and writes the disk file format in userspace from the host FS

qed is a new, modern disk format for VMs, and qcow2 sucks

in fact, you can think of it this way: a KVM guest is basically exactly the same as a QEMU guest, except that the kvm kernel module is loaded into your kernel, and whenever qemu is executed, it runs syscalls that access KVM to greatly speed up performance compared to running qemu in "software" mode without KVM.

so if you have any prior experience with qemu, whether it's software-only or whatever, you can transfer that knowledge to a KVM+qemu setup

KVM is purely a kernel thing and there is nothing really to configure about it except to say "hey, qemu! use kvm!"

Bob

@allquixotic I was actually thinking about exposing a ZFS block device directly.

allquixotic

14:58

@Bob ahh, okay... interesting

Bob

@allquixotic zfsonlinux.org/example-zvol.html

allquixotic

anyway, the easiest way to use kvm/qemu is to run libvirtd (which is a much more stable and mature thing than lxd, by the way), which automatically manages your kvm/qemu settings for you and exposes them at a higher level. For easy console access you can use the command line tool virsh

Archipel will make you want to throw things. I sure as heck did. I got it working eventually but not before causing significant property damage ;p

Bob

o.O

Advice noted.

allquixotic

j/k

it has a lot of configuration, though

Bob

@allquixotic Hoping the zvol will limit FS overhead.

And virtualisation overhead.

The only problem is I can't really resize it.

That's what I hate about VMs... you have to allocate resources.

But I think it's worth the tradeoff for the stability :P

allquixotic

15:01

...which isn't really a problem with containers

I put memory limits on some of my containers, like the Cavil container has a limit of 8 GB, because otherwise PhantomJS would just memory leak until it eats all RAM on the system

and I try to assign CPU shares by ratios depending on which containers I want to have the most CPU time (priority)

Bob

15:49

I feel like @OliverSalzburg.

2

Everything is blowing up in my face today.

I should just go to sleep.

Attempted to secure web hosting for a planned site launch. Delays everywhere, then finally got the order through only to find their control panel is currently broken.

allquixotic

-_-

Bob

Attempted to restart OVH server via IPMI/KVM. Got kicked out of the KVM session, and now a new one simply won't start.

> An error occurred on attempting to connect to the IPMI module using a Java applet (Internal error)

wtf is this.

allquixotic

@Bob never seen that one before

Oliver Salzburg

Am I synonymous for shit going wrong or what? :D

allquixotic

ticket that

Bob

15:51

It doesn't even get to the point where i can download the Java launcher.

@allquixotic already did

allquixotic

@OliverSalzburg you have a starred message indicating as such

Bob

I'm just watching the stupid spinny thing hoping it'll do something useful.

Noooope.

Something's broke.

@OliverSalzburg You seem to attract an abnormally large amount of it :P

Oliver Salzburg

Well, I'm the cleaner. People call me when shit hits the fan ;P

Actually, I'm more like the cleaning lady :(

allquixotic

@Bob Any idea where I can buy a pack of assorted width Ferrite Beads, loose, which snap-on to cables? I need them to be designed for various cable gauges/widths depending on what I'm putting it on.

I won't be putting them on Cat6 or anything that thick, but mostly various widths of USB and 3.5mm cables.

Bob

16:07

@allquixotic uhhh o.o

You do remember I'm in Australia, so anywhere I suggest is likely going to be tailored to cheaper Aus shipping? :P

(if it were just a few, I'd hop down to Jaycar)

For more than a few... dx? ebay? questionable quality.

There's always Amazon, which'll probably work better for you.

amazon.com/UF-50B-Noise-Suppressor-Ferrite-Filters/dp/… amazon.com/Gino-UF35B-Inner-Diameter-Ferrite/dp/B007Q94CZM amazon.com/Movable-Inner-Diameter-Black-Ferrite/dp/B007Q94DBK

If I were ordering a whole lot, I might look at element14

You could also look at Digikey and Mouser... no idea what their shipping policies are.

@allquixotic OVH is taking a rather long time to respond... I wonder if something caught fire.

@allquixotic Also, IIRC you technically aren't supposed to have ferrite on USB (@JourneymanGeek?)

Well, I'm out.

Maybe tomorrow will go better.

allquixotic

17:21

@Bob Thanks!

@Bob O_O... I have a USB cable at home with a ferrite core built into the cable >_>

BGM

18:42

Hi, y'all!

Hey, I'm wondering if you all have any clues... I've run out myself. tomshardware.com/answers/id-2719460/…

I'm trying to use a WD Passport USB 3.0 external drive to install a custom Windows7 installation.

But I keep getting stuck at the place in the installer where it says I need a cd/dvd driver...

So I've tried to supply the USB 3.0 driver for that model (Dell Optiplex 990) and it won't accept it.

So, I'm out of clues.

allquixotic

@BGM apparently you formatted the drive incorrectly if it's asking for a CD/DVD driver. How did you create the installation image?

BGM

Hi, allquixotic!

I'm using this guide: raymond.cc/blog/…

allquixotic

heya

BGM

The installer boots just fine and it runs.

The computer does not have an y USB 3.0 ports, however, so I've got my USB 3.0 drive plugged into a USB 2.0 port.

So I've created the installation using NTLite.

Which allows me to add Windows Updates into the installation.

allquixotic

uhh, was gonna say possibly USB driver related, but win7 should have the usb drivers for usb 2.0 chipsets built-in

BGM

18:48

I have the OEM disk, so I could always fall back to the "good 'ole way"

I just want to get this drive to work because it would be a great improvement.

I've also tried supplying the drivers for the usb disk that come with My Passport.

Even though the drive seems to work properly.

And I've used the installer to format the HDD in the computer.

I've tried deleting the existing partitions and repartitioning it - all to no avail.

allquixotic

@BGM the Windows installer is pretty messed up - it does "raw" reads from the disk as provided by the BIOS in order to bootstrap itself, then it needs to identify and mount your USB drive using Windows' drivers rather than the BIOS in order to read the rest of the installation payload

BGM

So you are basically saying this ain't gonna work.

I've also tried supplying the OEM disk as the source for drivers...

allquixotic

I'm not saying it isn't going to work

I'm just saying you need the right .inf and .sys files to fully initialize the drive on Windows

is the installation media Win7 SP1 or RTM?

BGM

It is a Dell OEM Windows 7 SP1 source

I'm customizing the Dell installation disk to provide missing Windows updates so I don't have to download them every time

If, during the installation, I put in the DVD, then it will continue to where I can format the drives. But then it says it can't create a new system partition and to see the log files. Where would I find log files on a DVD anyway?

And it won't go past that point.

It lets me delete the existing partition and create a new one and even format it, but then it says to see the log files.

allquixotic

it can't just magically write log files to the DVD; that's ridiculous. it's a read-only medium

BGM

18:56

I know its ridiculous, but that's what it says.

allquixotic

the external installation drive is normally read-only, too, for that matter - the only thing that would be read/write is the new installation's formatted disk

maybe missing (updated) drivers for the SATA chipset

BGM

Well, it can't write to the unformatted disk.

SATA chipset?

allquixotic

yes. SATA chipset.

BGM

for the DVD drive?

allquixotic

no; for the disk you're installing it onto

BGM

18:59

ah - the HDD is a Western Digital 320 GB drive

allquixotic

rather, for the SATA chipset it's connected to on the motherboard

not for the disk itself

hard disks themselves do not have drivers

BGM

firmware drivers, they do, no?

allquixotic

the chipset that interfaces them to the rest of the system, does, though

BGM

I can get this from Dell: WesternDigitalHDD-Driver_R313263.exe

allquixotic

@BGM firmware and drivers are not the same thing; and this is almost certainly not a firmware issue with the disk

BGM

19:00

but I can't extract it.

This is the Dell drivers page for that model: downloads.dell.com/published/Pages/optiplex-990.html

allquixotic

honestly I'd just say install Windows normally using the DVD on one computer, then take a disk image of it, then just pave that disk image onto whatever disk you want to install it on thereafter - assuming you have similar specced computers that you frequently have to install Windows on

messing with windows installer is an exercise in frustration, especially when it comes to external drives, and especially with Windows 7 and earlier

install Windows -> get all the system updates and drivers you need -> put SystemRescueCD on the external USB drive -> boot up sysresccd -> dd if=/dev/sda of=/somewhere/on/the/external/drive -> go to another computer with a disk the same size or larger -> boot up sysresccd from the same external drive -> dd if=/somewhere/on/the/external/drive of=/dev/sda

BGM

Problem is that I always have different computer models. They are usually Dells, but all the drivers will differ.

allquixotic

@BGM then you're going to be repeating the process of finding the right drivers for stuff on each computer anyway

since each one will have its own SATA chipset without support built into windows 7

it never ceases to amaze me how limited the driver support is in truly built-in Windows (without updates or third party drivers)

it's really, really limited

it's slightly less limited in Windows 8.1, but everyone goes "eww start screen eww" without realizing you can make it permanently go away with 2 minutes of effort

BGM

There is also this Dell Drivers list: delldriverdownload.com/?s=optiplex+990

But I can't find any SATA driver for WD.

I've not worked much with disk images.

allquixotic

you're looking for the wrong thing

you need to look for an updated SATA driver for the SATA chipset on the computer's motherboard -- which has nothing whatsoever to do with Western Digital -- in all likelihood it's a Marvell or Intel chipset, but I can only guess

snipe

19:13

is there any way I can still login to windows messenger

BGM

Probably Intel...

snipe

not to chat just to take screen shots

allquixotic

@BGM don't guess; look up the system specs to find the motherboard make and model, then look up the motherboard specs, and it should be listed there

honestly it's just a matter of trial and error to find the right missing driver; you can load a ton of different drivers into the installation environment for just about every component under the sun until it works

BGM

Chipset: Intel Q67 Express Chipset is what is used by Dell D6H9T OptiPlex 990 SFF Motherboard.

allquixotic

not specific enough - that's like saying I cut my steak with a utensil - have to get specific about the exact motherboard model, otherwise you end up cutting your steak with a slotted spoon

snipe

19:21

the .net passport wizard fails too so I dont know if thats an option to use to sign into windwos messenger

allquixotic

wait nevermind

> D6H9T

should be able to figure out what SATA chipset(s) are on it from that

snipe

trying virtualbox 5

hope its cool

hmm the installer hangs on XP

nm

BGM

19:51

Well, I guess I'm stuck. I've looked all over for that driver. The best I've come up with is #17 from here: delldriverdownload.com/?s=optiplex+990

HarryCBurn

Hey!

BGM

allquixotic - thanks for your help anyway

I'll just use the disk, at least that works.

Hennes

20:50

@snipe Does the installer also hang on win2000?

Journeyman Geek

22:01

hm. I just realised the older dell monitor on the shared box is hitting 5 years

Michael Frank

22:19

How secure are password protected zip files?

Canadian Luke

Not very

Michael Frank

22:35

Is that a result of known or unknown flaws?

Bob

@Michael depends.

Michael Frank

@Bob I was under the impression that is was useful for keeping a regular user out of the file, but anyone with motivation could quite easily get into a ZIP file.

Bob

22:50

@MichaelFrank ZipCrypto is basically worthless. but the ZIP format also supports AES, amongst others.

@MichaelFrank funnily enough, it's been asked

31

Q: How secure are password-protected zip files?

In modern zip utilities like 7zip, you can specify a password when creating a .ZIP file. But, how secure is this? What encryption algorithm(s) are used to secure password-protected zip files?

I do wonder what key derivation function they use.

Looks like it's decent as long as a suitable work factor is chosen:

35

Q: Is 7-Zip's AES encryption just as secure as TrueCrypt's version?

The main difference being TrueCrypt creates containers and 7-Zip encrypts the file itself, so file sizes can be guessed. Now let's just talk about the strength and breakability of the encryption. Update: http://forums.truecrypt.org/viewtopic.php?p=107396

encryption truecrypt

And the default work factor is surprisingly high.

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