Meeting Notes, MonadLUG, 11-Jan-2007

[Ted Roche]

Nine attendees made it to the SAU1 offices in Peterborough last night  
for the monthly MonadLUG meeting.

Charlie Farinella declared himself in charge (Go, Charlie!) and ran a  
great meeting. We announced upcoming meetings (and talked quite a bit  
about MythTV and the upcoming meeting next week with Jarod Wilson at  
MerriLUG).

Lloyd Kvam, our presenter, ran into trouble getting his laptop to  
work with the projector, so while Bill Sconce and he struggled with  
that, the remainder of the group plowed along. Chris Maple did a  
great presentation on the Man Page of the Month, sort. Chris had a  
single-page, duplex printed set of notes and examples on using sort.  
I have never listened to a MPoM when I didn't learn something new,  
and last night was no exception. Did you know sort can be used to  
randomize a list? Or that it can merge sorted files into one? Chris  
had an excellent real-world example of sorting TV listings in the  
format "Wed Nov 08 02:00am ... program" into a chronologically sorted  
list. Chris noted "sort has become huge; 354k in the most recent  
implementation." We discussed the issue of POSIX compliant locales  
and the rules of sorting for some European languages. An excellent  
discussion.

As Bill and Lloyd continued to struggle with their laptops, we opened  
the floor to discussion. Ray Côté related some recent discussion they  
had had about security, with the differences between sudo and su (and  
su - ): which is more secure: a sudo that records all of the commands  
executed, but allows an attacker access with only one password, or  
using su where two passwords are required. Of course, anyone with  
physical access could do what they wanted, but there was a good give- 
and-take on the various advantages or disadvantages.

Lloyd and Bill were able to get a working system in place just after  
8 PM, using VNC and Bill's laptop to project the contents of Lloyd's  
laptop. Lloyd talked about a friend's need for help, with a  
compromised Windows server that needed to keep providing web pages  
until a replacement was available, but with blocked malware (a zero- 
day exploit for which there was not yet a fix). Lloyd explained how  
he used the OpenWRT firmware and software (http://openwrt.org/) to  
change the behavior of  Linksys WRT-54G to work as a bridge between  
the internet and the Windows machine to pass only necessary services  
(http, ssh, arp and a few others) while blocking all other traffic  
transparently. OpenWRT may be unique among the replacement firmwares  
in its design: it provides a writable file system where the operator  
may upload the specific modules they need, rather than a static  
firmware image burned into Flash. Lloyd explained how he used the  
ebtables (ethernet bridging) program to route (well, technically,  
bridge) only specific packets and could modify the hardware  
configuration to repurpose the various ethernet ports into separate  
VLANs. Despite all of the hardware challenges, the presentation came  
off well and lead to a vigorous round of Q&A

Thanks to Lloyd for the presentation, Charlie for taking charge, Bill  
for wrestling hardware, Chris for his MPoM, and all for their  
participation!

Next month's meeting: Guy Pardoe and Joomla, MPoM: uniq by Ray Côté

Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com