auxsvr - Slashdot User

Submission + - DetaolB: a fast live distro for qemu/vmplayer

Submitted by

Christian MICHON

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @05:04AM

Christian MICHON writes: "Try this command in ruby ;-)

>> puts "bloated".reverse
detaolb

DetaolB is a fast, modular and minimal live CD that fits on a 20MB
media. It is currently designed to run primarily in emulated
(virtualised) environments.

DetaolB aimed to be a "much-less-than-a-floppy" x86 linux live distro.
Now, it's evolving more into "a-la-slax" type of distro.

DetaolB v0.3 was released 14th,June 2007 on sf.net

It's usable enough in a virtualized environment to do a kernel
compilation. The most noticeable part is that it's entirely based
on uclibc, not glibc. Most packages included are detailed on its
homepage http://detaolb.sf.net/

Currently in a phase of adding features and partial debug, this distro needs
the feedback of slashdot linux users.

Download it, evaluate it using qemu, virtualbox or even vmplayer/vmware.
Remember to attach a virtual disk image preformatted in ext2 fs, containing
whatever tar files you want to compile.

Feedback, suggestions, etc... are to be sent to the detaolb mailing list:
detaolb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

Christian MICHON"

Submission + - bin Laden dead...again.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @04:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: An "in depth" report (two small web pages) claims Osama bin Laden died...again. This time of typhoid. Claims of a top secret report to Saudi intelligence was leaked to French press. Forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Submission + - China censors "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" (reuters.com)

Submitted by nareshov on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @03:48AM

nareshov writes: The film bureau of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of China has cut several parts of the movie PoC3. Although this isn't the first time a Bollywood movie has angered the Chinese censor, pirated uncut versions of the latest flicks are available off the street at around a dollar's worth.

Submission + - Flaws in Arm and XScale (maybe PowerPC too) (securityfocus.com)

Submitted by

V4Vendetta

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @03:34AM

V4Vendetta writes: "Barnaby Jack developed a method for exploiting certain NULL pointer dereferences on the ARM and XScale architectures (and likely PowerPC).

In general, NULL pointer dereference flaws are considered non-exploitable. On the XScale and ARM architectures the memory address 0 is mapped, and also holds the exception vector table. The exception vector table is a set of branch instructions that correspond to different exceptions, such as software and hardware interrupts. When a case arises that writes to the 0 address with user-defined source data, it is possible to gain execution control by rewriting the exception table.

This method affects a lot of devices since most mobile phones and PDA are ARM based (iPhone?), and high-end routers often use the XScale architecture. The PowerPC architecture (used by Nintendo Wii, XBox360 and Playstation 3) also stores the vector table at a low address, and is likely vulnerable to this same attack.

This attack is more reliable than a remote stack overflow, due to the fact that no offsets are required. You will always be writing to address 0. The only data needed by an attacker is a copy of the vector table, which can be acquired by downloading and reversing the targets firmware.

Let me quote Barnaby: "As embedded exploitation is still in its infancy, I don't foresee a worm in the very near future — but yes, if a worm was targeting embedded devices, this would be a reliable attack vector.""

Submission + - Do patents stop people creating 'perfect' devices?

Submitted by Chris M on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @03:09AM

Chris M writes: In a recent CNET article, the mobile phone editor writes about what he thinks would make a perfect phone. Unfortunately, as someone in the comments section points out, much of the technology that is used in this concept phone belongs to separate companies. 'Im sorry to be the devils advocate here, but most of those things are patented to separate companies. So it would require almost all the major manufacturers to do this, which is highly unlikely.' Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating devices or is it just a lack of imagination?

Submission + - Keylogger Hardware Embedded in New Dell Laptop (virus.org.ua)

Submitted by

kendbluze

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:39AM

kendbluze writes: "Here's an EE who was doing a simple repair to a nearly-new Dell 600m laptop when he noticed something a bit curious. Turns out he found a hardware keylogger sitting between the keyboard and ethernet controllers! See what Homeland Security didn't have to say about it."

Submission + - AntiVirus kills PCs? Have some more, Symantec says (texyt.com)

Submitted by Tort reformation on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:32AM

Tort reformation writes: Dubious 'compensation' settlements from companies that have done wrong are nothing new (examples: 1,2,3). But Symantec may have hit a new low. After tens of thousands of PCs in China were crippled by Symantec's Norton AntiVirus when it went beserk last month and decided Windows XP was a virus, users demanded financial compensation for lost data, days of lost business, and repair fees. Symantec's counter-offer: a further year's free use of Norton Antivirus.

Submission + - ZFS on Linux: It's alive! (linuxworld.com)

Submitted by lymeca on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:30AM

lymeca writes: LinuxWorld reports that Sun Microsystem's ZFS filesystem has been converted from its incanartion in OpenSolaris to a module capable of running in the Linux user-space filsystem project, FUSE. Because of the license incompatibilities with the Linux kernel, it has not yet been integrated for distribution within the kernel itself. This project, called ZFS on FUSE, aims to enable GNU/Linux users to use ZFS as a process in userspace, bypassing the legal barrier inherent in having the filesystem coded into the Linux kernel itself. Booting from a ZFS partition has been confirmed to work. The performance currently clocks in at about half as fast as XFS, but with all the success the NTFS-3g project has had creating a high performance FUSE implementation of the NTFS filesystem, there's hope that performance tweaking could yield a practical elimination of barriers for GNU/Linux users to make use of all that ZFS has to offer.

Submission + - Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by hoyeru on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:09AM

hoyeru writes: Red Hat, the largest Linux vendor, and Ubuntu-maker Canonical have both rejected calls from Microsoft to forge a deal similar to the one the Redmond giant signed with Linux distributors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire.

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's CEO, said in a blog posting on Saturday, that Canonical has declined to talk to Microsoft about any agreement that provides legal protection to Ubuntu users related to "unspecified patents".

"Allegations of 'infringement of unspecified patents' carry no weight whatsoever. We don't think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together," he wrote.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Ubuntu-R ed-Hat-reject-Microsoft-patent-deal/0,130061733,33 9278741,00.htm

Submission + - Linux Chosen for Next-Generation Space Hardware (spacemart.com)

Submitted by EraserMouseMan on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:15AM

EraserMouseMan writes: WindRiver has been chosen by Honeywell to develop a Linux-based solution to run on top of Honeywell's next-generation Dependable Multiprocessor for spacecraft.

"Any material put into space is subject to variable accelerations, mechanical shock and vibration, harsh vacuum conditions, extreme temperatures, and often, intense particle and electromagnetic radiation. Wind River Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition, running in conjunction with GoAhead SelfReliant Software, which provides high availability middleware, and Honeywell''s Dependable Multiprocessing Middleware on Extreme Engineering Solutions'' XPedite6031 boards, will support the demonstration of high availability and high reliability operation for the ST8 Dependable Multiprocessor experiment."

The relevancy and robustness of Linux is being recognized by the biggest players in industry for their mission critical needs. Is Linux finally being recognized as suitable for everything from putting men on Mars to defending our country?

Submission + - Joining an existing Open Source Project

Submitted by Tathagata on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:09AM

Tathagata writes: I have been using GNU/Linux for quite sometime now. Though I'm from Computer Science background, getting into a project that really involves you into programming was not possible, as people(read teachers) run away, if you utter the word "linux". Being least bothered about mentoring an exciting project, they would suggest you to get settled with visual basic, .NET, — and would prefer a 24 hour solution when it comes to programming.(I'm a student in my final year, from a West Bengal, India). So my programming endeavours have remained limited to writing few lines of C/C++, Java. For last few days I've been googling, and trying to read how to join an existing open source project, and avoid reinventing the wheel by starting yet another. I read people suggesting to start by submitting patches, fixing bugs, becoming package maintainer — but most are overloaded with jargon like upstream/downstream, nightly builds, etc. Added to that how does joining the mailing list, or irc channel help when you don't even understand their slangs, forget about the tech discussion? Distributed/centralised scm, track, bugzilla, launchpad, with sourceforge or freshmeat laden with an unlimited number of projects regarding everything you have ever come across — it quite an overwhelming world to step in. Could you suggest a road map, links to essential tools or a few projects, for people like me, who would want to improve their skills by contributing FOSS?

Submission + - EU Privacy Directive - Coming to the US? (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:02AM

An anonymous reader writes: This article over at Computerworld implies that the EU Privacy Directive, or something like it, will soon be signed into law here in the good ol' U.S. of A. The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. What does the /. crowd think? Is it time for a national privacy law or "Privacy Czar", or are we better off letting things be?

Submission + - Plan 9 ported to Blue Gene (graverobber.org)

Submitted by

airwick

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:39AM

airwick writes: "A team from Bell-Labs, IBM Research, Sandia National Lab, and Vitanuova have ported Plan 9 to Blue Gene compute and I/O nodes including support for Ethernet, Torus. Collective, Barrier, and Management networks. A live demo will be given during the USENIX poster session. Screenshots are here."

Submission + - Nivio betas hosted Windows

Submitted by hihihihi on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:37AM

hihihihi writes: Many media sites are reporting the launch of Nivio, the "World's first Windows-based (!!!) online desktop". 5 gigabytes of storage, and all the standard desktop features such as file back-up, virus and spam protection, OpenOffice suite, the Outlook Express, Internet-Explorer/Mozilla-Firefox browser, Acrobat 8 reader, iTunes and Winamp players, Yahoo Messenger and also Foxit Reader.
The Nivio service is hosted on replicated highly-available servers in data centres in Switzerland and New Delhi — Nivio is a subsidiary of a Swiss company, SMX iNet Global Services, and is the brainchild of SMX founder and former Imperial College London student Sachin Duggal. Google News have further reports.
After the free-use period that might extend to year-end, Nivio will be offered on a monthly subscription of Rs.399 — with a 50 per cent discount.
There is also a comment from Iqbal Gandham , co-founder of Nivio.

Submission + - Plan 9 Running on Blue Gene/L (osnews.com)

Submitted by os_evaluator on Monday June 18, 2007 @11:29PM

os_evaluator writes: According to OS News, a team comprised of members from Bell-Labs, IBM Research, Sandia National Labs, and Vita Nuova has completed a port of Plan 9 to the Blue Gene supercomputer. Plan 9 kernels are running on both the compute nodes and the I/O nodes and the Ethernet, Torus, Collective Network, Barrier Network, and Management network are all supported." This is very good news for both Plan 9 and IBM. Hopefully now people will start taking Plan 9 as a serious operating system, and see the brilliant design of it that has been overlooked for so many years. Daily ISOs are available at the Bell-Labs website. You are encouraged to try it out and expect the unexpected.

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