Root Access

Journeyman Geek

15:07

that's not right

Sathya

okay

allquixotic

Thanks. A warning — Colonel Panic 3 hours ago

Sathya

I've told fk guys I want a replacement looking at the condition

they said they'll get back to me

allquixotic

I think he was trying to warn me about something, but he got attacked by wild bears before he got his warning out :(

Journeyman Geek

o0

Tanner

15:12

Bonus points for his name though.

Journeyman Geek

questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2374 @allquixotic: its the feral hogs you need to worry about!

allquixotic

@Tanner haha yeah

Tanner

Got my first tumbleweed :( superuser.com/questions/541861/…

What happens when you combine OpenOffice with Microsoft Access? No love. That's what.

Journeyman Geek

>_>

edited!

allquixotic

@Tanner what I'd suggest is opening it on another box in MS Access, remove the password, then make a copy, open it in Base, and if you want, set the password back on the original file

also, TRWTF is Access (I'll admit that their completely new file format is relatively less sucky than before, but anything ending in .mdb is basically a time bomb a la Win95 due to extremely poor data structure management, the file eventually explodes)

Tanner

15:14

No, TRWTF is that it's our password database ^____^

Secure, right?

allquixotic

@Tanner TRWTF is having a password database... okay, okay, so maybe KeePassX would've been acceptable, but... ACCESS???

Journeyman Geek

TRWTF?

Sathya

wonder if I should ask it on main site - or if it's too localized

allquixotic

I don't even think Access encrypts its text strings

Tanner

@JourneymanGeek The real what the fk

Journeyman Geek

15:15

ahh

allquixotic

it might compress them but that doesn't help

i bet your password database's password is "password"

Tanner

@allquixotic Oh, it doesn't. You can just pop that sucker open. The password is just a mild inconvenience.

allquixotic

super secure

do you host the database over http to the public internet on IIS? :D

using a "secret" URL (extremely secure!)

r.tanner.fi/youll/never/guess/this.mdb

Tanner

haha

It's on our AS400 at least with some security permissions...

allquixotic

oh ok =D

Journeyman Geek

15:18

ooh

allquixotic

storing insecure files on systems that are so ancient that nobody knows how to access because they were phased out before most hackers were born = pretty darn secure

Journeyman Geek

precisely!

Security by obscurity. Unless you are being hacked by a retirement home

Tanner

> deleted 1 characters in body

Journeyman Geek

;p

Tanner

still substantial >_> that was a heinous typo

Journeyman Geek

15:20

XD It was

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek most really serious security setups employ security by obscurity as a layer on top of real security mechanisms (based on encryption, strong permissions, etc) to slow down attackers and perhaps provide evidence of intrusion

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: yeah

allquixotic

like port knocking (send magic packets to magic ports in a certain order or with a certain pattern)

Tanner

I don't like obscurity. Period. I just can't stand by it. =\

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: with my home server. i just drop packets if you arn't on my lan, and make a mistake with my password 3 times.

allquixotic

15:21

can't they forge the source ip in the IP packet header?

Journeyman Geek

most of these guys are speculative

and use pwned servers

I don't need to stop them. I just need to make myself a annoying enough target

allquixotic

I use PKI for everything, which is like using a 2048-bit password

I disable password based auth

Sathya

yeah in this it's clear it's not proper youtube.com/…

allquixotic

actually i think my private key is 4096-bit

Tanner

Oh, nice... Our Citrix consultant added a forward lookup zone for our company name, now we can't load our web page =D

William Hilsum

15:39

@Sathya Thanks :)

@Bob thanks :)

Hennes

Brrrrr

ibood.com/nl/nl

Which salesdroid ever thought that "personal cloud" is a recommendation?

William Hilsum

@Hennes I would recommend never buying these things! I want to be proved wrong, and the Netgear I won here was better than most, but, for ~£130 (ok, granted double!) you can get a HP Microserver which is a 4port full blown pc and so much more feature rich

Hennes

I am not considering it.

I realised that 95% of the time I am on my desktop, so I just got local disks

allquixotic

Does anyone know the details about the Micro USB connector physical specifications (in the standard)? I have several Micro USB devices, and the only one that requires an enormous amount of physical force to insert or remove the connector is my Razr Maxx HD phone

even other modern Android devices like the Google Nexus 7 have a plug that can be fairly easily inserted and removed, but my Razr Maxx HD makes me hold the phone steady with one hand and grab the plug with all fingers to remove it

it requires a very intentional yank; I can hold on to the cable and the force due to gravity from the weight of the phone won't cause the cable to be unplugged

Hennes

Micro-USB: Width: 7mm , height: 1.5–3 mm (uhm, that is a factor 2!)

Micro-USB Cables and Connectors Specification 193.219.66.80/datasheets/usb_20/Micro-USB_final/…

allquixotic

16:00

@Hennes does it say anything about insertion/removal force? I thought USB was supposed to be "ZIF"

Hennes

I hope it is not quite zero force. That would let s plugs fall out of a socket all the time

But a quick scan failed to notice force needed

allquixotic

I found USB 3.0 Type A connector has maximum 35 Newton insertion force

user88311

16:20

@Hennes I was just wondering, if a live OS like ubuntu had persistence enabled, would it be possible to install a driver for a USB ethernet adapter into the live OS, and if not, how would one go about doing such a thing

Hennes

I never ran a live OS from CD. But I assume you either need a partition or file on disk so it can rememeber persistent changes, or write enable the pen drive you booted from, or rip the ISO, mofity it and burn it back

user88311

16:34

I'm not running from cd, I don't see me saying it either

but thanks

allquixotic

16:59

@user88311 you don't even need persistence enabled

the default live boot environment on a CD or USB makes / (and /usr, etc) read-write in a ramdisk

if you had enough RAM for the source code, intermediate object files and final kernel modules, you could do it

user88311

interesting

allquixotic

or if you're on USB with persistence enabled then of course you can do it

user88311

Good to know, makes life bit easier

allquixotic

persistence just means it hangs around after a reboot, whereas with the ramdisk it won't

due to the way the changes are saved in the persistence file, i don't think it saves anything in /usr persistently, don't quote me on that

what you'd have to do is run make install freshly from the built object files on the persistent space (/home I think) each time you boot up, even on USB

which would copy the modules to /lib/modules/kernel-ver/...

otherwise OS doesn't know where they are

ruda.almeida

@allquixotic What's wrong with Keepass?

allquixotic

17:02

and the /lib/modules stuff isn't part of the persistent partition

Tanner

@allquixotic You actually found a spec for usb 3.0 insertion force?

allquixotic

@ruda.almeida oh, nothing; but I don't really consider it to be an enterprise solution, it's suitable for personal use but I wouldn't use it in an enterprise

ruda.almeida

@allquixotic Oh, I see.

allquixotic

the main reason is that someone could easily sneakernet it away or even base64 encode it and paste it on pastebin or something, and all your passwords are leaked outside the organization... you have to have at least some basic controls against enormous inside job information disclosure in an enterprise IT environment, and that's usually done by segmentation (don't give any one person the whole picture)

having a centralized password DB with all useful sysadmin passwords is very fragile and not compartmentalized at all, unless the scope of that password DB is very narrow (one server or something)

ruda.almeida

The folks at my organization are considering TeamPass teampass.net

allquixotic

17:05

I've learned that Tanner's job isn't extremely enterprisey in the sense that he pretty much runs the show, so I guess it's fine for him

Tanner

I just get to do what I want xD

allquixotic

but once you start having lots of people and very large dollar value, you probably want to start hiring more sysadmins and dividing up the power so that a rogue insider can't break your whole business

the environment where I work is extraordinarily resilient against even the most malicious insider, which is a good thing

the freetard in me says these walls and restrictions are unnecessary, but the cynical businessman in me says that it's very wise and will probably prevent catastrophe down the road, or already has done so at least once

Tom Wijsman

@allquixotic: Meh... This guy rather goes to Google instead of giving dmesg information.

allquixotic

@TomWijsman the problem is likely much larger than Gentoo and could apply to many ASICs and many customers, so I think we should latch onto this despite what the OP did and try to get it looked at by someone maintaining net drivers in upstream Linux

it'd be great if someone with more motivation and technical know-how could reproduce the problem on relevant hw, though

I don't think I have anything using that specific driver

my realtek hw is actually newer than that

Tom Wijsman

@allquixotic It's almost always larger than Gentoo, out of all the distros out there Gentoo is amongst the ones that do the least vendor patches.

jokerdino

17:28

I see Evan Carroll in our mod election chat room o.O

Ask Ubuntu 2013 Moderator Elections

for the 2013 election chit-chat. askubuntu.com/election/3

Hennes

Who is this Ubuntu guy ? :)

jokerdino

Me?

allquixotic

@jokerdino is SU having 2013 moderator elections now, too?

jokerdino

@allquixotic No, they have in July.

allquixotic

oh okay =P July is right as i was joining SU

I'll be a Yearling by then

Sathya

17:31

@jokerdino au's having an election?

jokerdino

@Sathya In a matter of hours, yep.

And that's why EC showed up, I suppose.

Ah, he has left.

Not enough rep.

Sathya

ah

> This election is currently in the notstarted phase.

lol

jokerdino

haha

Been in that phase for 10 days now.

Sathya

should nominate myself :P

jokerdino

It was in the bulletin for so many days too.

@Sathya Please do!

Sathya

17:33

Triple diamond stud :P

jokerdino

AU can always use your goodness.

Sathya

na I'm pretty sure I'll lose badly

+ not enough time, got lot happening in coming months

(read: my wedding)

jokerdino

Hurray!

I think I saw your engagement photos

lucky ladki ;)

Sathya

:)

jokerdino

Ok, let me not stir up any controversy.

Sathya

17:38

@jokerdino hahaha. She's well aware

2

jokerdino

hehehe

Fixed the date?

For wedding I mean.

Sathya

yep, may 26

jokerdino

Hm, that seems like a decent gap. I wonder.

Usually, folks in here get done with this stuff, you know.

Anyway, that's too much prying.

Nighters

Sathya

ciao

William Hilsum

0

Q: Did I screw up my USB stick? And if not, how can I fix it?

Basically, I am doing various tests with Linux/BSD and USB booting at the moment. I had a live CD and tried to partition a 1GB memory stick in FreeBSD. The image I had stated it wanted/needed to format a swap slice of 8GB - I clicked next and got an exception in the installer about out of bounds...

Anyone have any ideas?

jokerdino

17:44

@Sathya I forgot to say Congrats. Congrats!

Now, laters.

Sathya

@jokerdino thanks :)

allquixotic

17:55

@WilliamHilsum Windows' tools suck; try using Easeus partition manager

also, stupid question, but if your flash drive has a hardware write protect switch, make sure, uh, that it's not switched.......

make triply sure that the flash drive isn't assigned to any drive letters

then fire up easeus personal part mgr

Oliver Salzburg

Woops

allquixotic

:7962113 CAT TYPING DETECTED

Oliver Salzburg

I was just rubbing my numpad ;D

allquixotic

40% of OpenBSD installs lead to shark attacks. It's their only standing security issue.

2

@WilliamHilsum that might be relevant to you also

Tanner

18:08

@Sathya That's an absolutely awesome picture by the way.

Sathya

@Tanner thanks :)

Tanner

Is that traditional in India? I mean, is that what your "typical" wedding looks like?

'cuz it makes ours look like a joke xD

or, I guess that's not the wedding?

allquixotic

@Tanner notta wedding; it's not til May

Tanner

18:54

Anyone know of USB to ISO tool for Windows? Not ISO to USB, there's a bajillion of those. I need the reverse... (And would that be a fair enough question?)

allquixotic

@Tanner what do you want to do with the ISO? burn it to a CD?

Tanner

Boot a VM with it. There's no USB boot option in VMWare Workstation and the workaround is flakey.

Sathya

@Tanner yes, that's pretty much a traditional Indian Hindu engagement

the christian ones are the typical Church, white gown etc :)

allquixotic

@Tanner USB disks are formatted differently than CDs, so a direct copy of the data won't work... ISO9660 images typically use the El Torito boot sector while a USB disk is basically the same as a fixed storage HDD in that it has an MBR

you can't do up an ISO or burn a coaster with a block level layout comparable to a mass storage device because of the way BIOSes are coded to try and boot a CD device

Tanner

@Sathya That's what our traditional US wedding is like. Our engagements typically just involve a fancy dinner and some punk getting on one knee.

@allquixotic ahhh... so I'm just better of rebuilding it the right way, huh?

Sathya

19:03

@Tanner the wedding will be somewhat like above. Except much longer ;P

Tanner

Haha, wow. Very cool.

allquixotic

you both are very photogenic

Tanner

^

I looked like a dumb kid in my wedding photos. Well... I guess I was a dumb kid but hey.

KronoS

wait what?!

Tom Wijsman

19:19

@OliverSalzburg: blokkfont.com :D

Luke

@KronoS It was a test

Tanner

> for clients who do not understand latin

hahaha

How is this OT?

1

Q: Subdomains for server behind NAT

I have server (ip: 192.168.1.2, openSUSE 12.2, Apache 2) behind router (ip: 192.168.1.1, TomatoUSB Toastman Build). I'm using FreeDNS (afraid.org) and I assigned subdomain (say x.afraid.org) to router, which has static external ip. After 443 port forwarding my sites work well, but I want to have ...

dns nat tomato subdomain dnsmasq

KronoS

@Luke obviously... but hasn't my record been good enough? :P

just was taken aback for sec there

Luke

slhck

19:39

@Tanner Reopened

Had to pin Sathya's Tumblr.

Oliver Salzburg

@TomWijsman Sweet :D

Luke

Sathya

19:55

@slhck :D

2 more posts queued

one by you, other by @manishearth

switched to GMT too

allquixotic

> A brittle, mildly toxic, rare, silver-white metalloid which looks similar to tin

@Luke don't know if that sounds very CuTe

Ivo Flipse

Odd, so its both @Sathya and @WilliamHilsum's birthdays today?

Are you guys like twins?!?

allquixotic

Ha ! I got fed up with bloatware starting up on my system that I can't disable (no admin), so I wrote 50 lines of C++ (more like heavily copy and pasted with a tiny bit of my own knowledge) calling GetBaseModuleName, EnumProcesses and TerminateProcess on each process, and created a desktop shortcut to my 89 KB EXE.

could've used Cygwin killall but wanted a self-contained file with no sort of external dependency

Ivo Flipse

That's one way of doing it :P

allquixotic

the simpler a task I embark on doing, the lower-level the language I write it in -- but I end up writing way more SLOC for that simple task than would really be necessary in a higher level language

I write big automated testing applications in Java; moderate hacks in VBScript or Ruby or JavaScript; and the most elementary tasks imaginable (which still require a herculean effort to code up) in C++/Win32API.

William Hilsum

20:07

@IvoFlipse Huh, it isn't Sathya's Birthday? :/ I don't remember when, but, I'm sure I've said Happy Birthday before and would have remembered if it was today!

Ivo Flipse

Oh wait, they congratulated him for the wedding thing

Sathya

@IvoFlipse it's not mine :P cc @WilliamHilsum

Ivo Flipse

Laaaaaame

Man, that obnoxious Indian posts those pics all over the place ;P

allquixotic

the closest thing you could give to @Sathya in terms of well-wishings is "happy marriage half-year" since he's getting married in May

Ivo Flipse

My whole Facebook wall is filled with them

William Hilsum

20:08

@allquixotic Like that comic... and, yeah - no write protect switch at all... will look at that software... And as for Windows, I agree Disk Manager could be better, but, diskpart is quite good... (IMHO)

Sathya

or like an engagement gift :P

allquixotic

ubuntu wants to write their own display server? whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???

are they batty?

Sathya

wayland?

allquixotic

no. write their own = not use Wayland and not use Xorg

Sathya

Oo

allquixotic

20:16

phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI5MjI

Tom Wijsman

Yeah, saw that pass by yesterday; probably didn't like something wayland said at FOSDEM.

Sathya

3 moderator positions for Ask Ubuntu

Tom Wijsman

Or maybe just coincidental... /care :D

allquixotic

20:38

> As I mentioned in the videocast, the simple reality is that we have found that neither X nor Wayland is ideal for the convergence story we are working on with Ubuntu. This is a story that needs a really thin display server that is not just efficient and capable of delivering the Ubuntu experience on desktops, but also on more constrained devices such as phones, tablets and potentially other form factors too.

so he actually means it. wtf

allquixotic

20:52

interesting ... 3 nominations for mod for AU... maybe my standards are inflated because of the relatively higher number of questions and upvotes and badges to be gained in the larger SU community, but two of the candidates seem like they're really not a good fit

1

Q: Win 7 taskbard do not apear after start

After I killed a virus in the PC and restarted it, everything works fine but the taskbar with the start menu and the icons in the desktop aren't apear. I still can open and run everything from Task Managger but can't start the process that managges the taskbar and the desktop, however in the Proc...

windows-7 windows taskbar

> After I killed a virus in the PC and restarted it, everything works fine but the taskbar with the start menu and the icons in the desktop aren't apear.

maybe he didn't totally "kill" it, or he killed it so well that it killed his taskbar

Tanner

The number of people who "fix" viruses kills me.

allquixotic

@Tanner grr, you posted a shorter version of what i wrote seconds before i hit answer

Tanner

haha

sorry, I figured you weren't gonna answer it

allquixotic

just got a drive by email from an unknown sender in my gmail with the subject of "RE" and the sender's name in all caps. leaning towards "report phishing" without even reading

Tanner

At least now he has two people saying "Dude just reformat"

allquixotic

21:04

true

where's that stupid guy who made a meta.su post about answer verbosity, who kept saying we just need to "git 'r done" (stupid, stupid saying that makes me want to punch the person saying it) to post an answer saying "Just reformat." ?

-9

Q: Answers that are too long, drawn out and contain too much excess theory

Many answers I've seen are dauntingly written out like a college homework assignment when 2-3 sentences at the most would have sufficed. Shouldn't we aim for conciseness and develop skills to articulate answers that say a lot with less words? If a user is concerned with the excess baggage, he/she...

discussion

Tanner

looooool

Yeah let's just simplify all our answers to one or three sentences.

Forget the whole... art of writing, keeping the readers attention, etc, etc

allquixotic

I like how it's -9

that guy also wrote "I.T." in the comments. Who the heck writes "I.T." instead of "IT"?

Tanner

-12 now :P

hahahahaha

1

A: Answers that are too long, drawn out and contain too much excess theory

Short ain't helpful.&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&...

What was that?

I also like how long his comments are...

> in the trenches of an I.T. project with deadlines etc, the answers need to be concise or the searcher will go elsewhere.

He's going to go far in "I.T."

allquixotic

@Tanner I know lol

Tom Wijsman

@Tanner Just some non-breaking space, such that my answer doesn't break into a comment... :D

Tanner

21:22

6 days left on my VMWare Workstation trial... I'm kinna thinking about buying it out of pocket =S

...or it could stop accepting mouse input.

That could happen too.

allquixotic

@Tanner did it just randomly stop accepting mouse input, or is that what it threatens to do?

I loved JManGeek's answer to this q, but I had to weigh in myself :P

0

A: How does one become a top contributor and solves computer problems independenly?

I'm not sure if one of the answers here already covered this, but it's very important to work on your analytical skills. Computers, like most man-made artifacts, are divided up into a finite number of separate components. Unlike the natural world, where everything in nature is infinitely divisib...

Tanner

@allquixotic Randomly

Rebooted VM and it still won't grab it

it's pissing me off lol

allquixotic

@Tanner what's the host and guest OS?

and is this WS 9?

Tanner

21:37

yeah WS 9

host os is win7, guest is server 2012

allquixotic

I think you get 30 days of unlimited support tickets when you buy a full license, so you might be able to use that leverage to get it fixed if it is a genuine issue... I think Workstation 7.1.1 had a fix that resulted from a support ticket I filed

VMware's support techs are ruthless when you file a ticket -- not only will they not ignore it, but they will check back with you on a bi-weekly basis to see if you get any more info or workarounds or resolve it, and they'll let you know what their engineer has been able to do to fix it

Tanner

Good to know. I like that kind of support.

But I think my main thing is I'm sick of fiddling with hypervisors...

allquixotic

basically -- while you don't have a direct line to an engineer, the support tech's job is to constantly go between you and the engineer and make sure that the problem gets resolved if it's even remotely able to be resolved

Tom Wijsman

@allquixotic blog.superuser.com/2011/04/07/solving-problems :)

Linked that as a comment on the question.

allquixotic

@TomWijsman good, that's very comprehensive and nice

wondering how many people will take the time to learn that though :/

@Tanner the other thing about VMW support that I like is that they treat paying customers' problem reports as very high priority, and they have a dedicated software maintenance team that supports the current release and issues point releases, so your question gets a lot of management oversight

since their products are fairly expensive, the sheer number of support tickets they get (which are not PEBKAC) is reasonably low, and manageable, so each one is like a "!" for the engineering management

Tanner

21:42

Would be nice to stay away from the Virtual Box forums xD

allquixotic

and I may be bias but I have supported VMware fairly fervently ever since they acquired Tungsten Graphics, which means that they're now paying the salaries accounting for at least 50% of the worldwide open source graphics driver development man-hours

Brian Paul, the creator of the Mesa project (open source libGL on Linux), is employed by them

Tanner

That's definitely worth supporting.

allquixotic

proprietary software company makes money selling expensive licenses to enterprises and barely-affordable licenses to first world geeks; pays salaries of open source software developers contributing to the public good; sounds nice to me :)

Red Hat's still better because all their code is FOSS, but some is better than none

Tanner

And it's not like they're getting those expensive license sales without some heavy lifting. VMWare is a must if you're doing any serious virtualization.

They actually have a data center out here...

allquixotic

I think KVM or Xen is a serious competitor to VMware's proprietary hypervisor if you're running server-side and doing, for example, Linux on Linux, or Solaris on Linux, or Linux on Solaris, but if Windows is involved, it's pretty much VMware for performance/stability

Tanner

21:49

Is KVM or Xen good for managing hundreds of VMs?

allquixotic

@Tanner the bare tools for KVM and Xen are fairly limited compared to the vSphere stuff, but companies including Red Hat and Parallels and Citrix have developed enterprisey (proprietary) software packages built on top of the core hypervisor tech of KVM/Xen

Red Hat's KVM has libvirt and a fairly decent GUI for managing VMs

all of that is FOSS

Tanner

Citrix does that level of virtualization? Ew...

allquixotic

I'm eating crunchy Ramen-esque (not really Ramen but somewhat close) out of a cup of noodles... too impatient to wait for them to soften up

Tanner

My wife and son do that. I find it disgusting...

allquixotic

I find it awesome

I'd shake your son's hand for being a crunchy-noodle-eater ;) good boy!

Tanner

21:52

Oh dang, she got a job offer today. =D Considering the pay increase + moving from education (and only working 180 days a year) she's looking at doubling her money.

allquixotic

your wife, well, not touching that one

Tanner

haha

allquixotic

ugh i hate target credit services... they try to be helpful but i wish i could tell them to go away easier than picking up the phone, because i'm at work

they call like every 120 minutes

i tried to place an order with my credit card, it got declined because i typoed something, and then i decided not to place it in the first place

so they're trying to call me to say "this thing was declined, are you sure?" or something like that

slhck

@Sathya What's the rule about profanity on your Tumblr?

Anyway, you got a few more for your queue.

slhck

22:21

Journeyman Geek

23:09

is it just me, or did the css on SU just blow up?

Tanner

So did SF lol

Hennes

Ah, is that why I can not load new pages on SU

Hennes

23:37

That might have been the problem.

Ask Ubuntu 2013 Moderator Elections

Transcript for