The meeting agenda is already posted for tonight s (Wednesday s) SPI board IRC meeting which will be at 2030 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net.
I m sorry it s pretty late notice, but you might like to come along and let the board know what you think they should be doing, or offer to help out with the new website.
I have finally reached a decision regarding my involvement in the Debian Ruby packaging efforts. I have decided to stop. This has been a very hard decision to make. I have invested huge amounts of time in that work over the years. I still love the language, and will continue to use it on a daily basis for my own developments. I still hope that it will succeed. I know that some people will be disappointed by that decision (and that others will think your work was useless anyway, people should use RVM and rubygems ).
But I also know that I won t be able to push for all the required changes alone. I just don t have the time, nor the motivation. For the record, here are the changes I would have liked to see in the Ruby community.
The core Ruby development community should mature. So, last week I bricked a device and I think I can fix it over a RS-232 cable from a borrowed Windows computer. However, I don t have the right cable in my office and the Windows computers I can borrow no longer have old-style serial ports. So I had two choices:
For my birthday back in October, my wonderful wife gave me a Kindle 3 from Amazon. I d been considering other e-book readers for quite some time, but I had mostly ignored the Kindle due to the lack of EPUB support and a general dislike of Amazon s DRM enforcement. In the end, the superior hardware and ecosystem of the Kindle overpowered those concerns and overall I m very pleased with the purchase. The screen is amazing, literally just like reading off a piece of paper and the selection of books is OK. I ve been buying almost all my books from Amazon to date since it s so easy (the Whispernet is amazingly quick!) but it s not terribly difficult to get EPUBs from elsewhere onto the device after a quick run through Calibre to turn them into a MOBI file, so I keep telling myself I ve still got some flexibility.
Almost as much fun as reading on the device has been learning about how it works. The Mobile Read forums have lots of step by step posts on how to do specific tasks like replacing the screensaver image, but they don t give much background detail on how the Kindle is actually operating which is what really interests me. Luckily among all the step by step posts I also found a usbnetwork package which also adds an SSH server to the Kindle, so after installing that and then SSHing in to my Kindle I ve been poking around.
Under the cover the Kindle reveals a fairly standard Linux installation. While the hardware and IO devices are obviously unique, compared to something like an Android phone, the Kindle is refreshingly normal .
Hardware
/proc rather than as a device. With a bit of digging I found some simple constants that when written to the proc files cause the screen to display the standard boot/progress/upgrading images. I haven t deciphered how to make more complex updates to the display yet./opt/amazon/ebook and consists of lots of Java classes. The system uses the cvm Java environment from Sun/Oracle which is specialised for embedded low-memory devices like this. The framework appears to take over most of the co-ordination, management and interaction tasks once it has started up.sendlogs scripts I d noticed and a few syslog lines containing GPS co-ordinates that had been pasted on the Mobile Read forums. I can t find any trace of GPS co-ordinates in any syslog messages I ve seen on my device, but there is definitely information about the cell sites that my Kindle can see, the books that I m opening and where I m up to in them:
101206:235431 wand[2515]: I dtp:diag: t=4cfd77b7,MCC MNC=272 01,Channel=10762,Band=WCDMA I IMT 2000,Cell ID=1362209,LAC=3021,RAC=1
,Network Time=0000/00/00 00.00.00,Local Time Offset=Not provided,Selection Mode=Automatic,Test Mode=0,Bars=4,Roaming=1,RSSI=-88,Tx
Power=6,System Mode=WCDMA,Data Service Mode=HSDPA,Service Status=Service,Reg Status=Success,Call Status=Conversation,MM Attach St
ate=Attach accept,MM LU State=LU update,GMM Attach State=Attach accept,GMM State=Registered,GMM RAU State=Not available,PDP State=
Active,Network Mode=CS PS separate attach mode,PMM Mode=Connected,SIM Status=Valid; PIN okay; R3,MM Attach Error=No error,MM LU Er
ror=No error,GMM Attach Error=No error,GMM RAU Error=Not available,PDP Rej Reason=No error,Active/Monitored Sets=0;39;-11 1;180;-1
5,RSCP=-111,DRX=64,HSDPA Status=Active,HSDPA Indication=HSDPA HSUPA unsupp,Neighbor Cells=,Best 6 Cells=,Pathloss=,MFRM=,EGPRS Ind
ication=,HPLMN=,RPLMN=272;01 ,FPLMN=234;33 234;30 234;20 272;05 ,n=1:
101206:235758 cvm[3426]: I Reader:BOOK INFO:book asin=B003IWZZ3Y,file size=233168,file last mod date=2010-11-27 19.18.22 +0000,con
tent type=ebook,length=MobiPosition_ 465747,access=2010-12-06 09.44.32 +0000,last read position=MobiPosition_ 464387,isEncrypted=f
alse,isSample=false,isNew=false,isTTSMetdataPresent=false,isTTSMetadataAllowed=true,fileExtn=azw:
101206:233416 udhcpc[5639]: Offer from server xxx.xxx.2.254 received
101206:233416 udhcpc[5639]: Sending select for xxx.xxx.2.10...
Interestingly you can see from the last two lines, that Amazon has taken some care to preserve privacy by not including the full IP address given to the device by my local Wifi network, so in light of that I find it interesting that they decided not to obfuscate the Cell and Book IDs in those respective log messages too. Seems rather inconsistent.
As to how and when these logs are sent to Amazon, the picture is a little bit murky. Every 15 minutes tinyrot runs out of cron and rotates /var/log/messages if it is greater than 256k in size. Rotated logs are stored into /var/local/log under filenames like messages_00000044_20101207000006.gz and alongside the log files are a set of state files named nexttosendfile, messages_oldest, messages_youngest. Something regularly sweeps through this directory to update the state and remove the old logs (after sending them up to Amazon I assume). I suspect that something is buried in the Java application code mentioned above.
On the whole the Kindle is a fascinating piece of technology. It delivers a wonderful reading experience on top of a familiar Linux system and is going to provide me with many more hours of entertainment as I unpack all the tricks and techniques that have gone into this device. I would recommended it as a present for geeks everywhere.
While I share Alex s law [is] boring view, this also attracted my attention because it s (slightly) about statistics software. I feel the SAS v WPL case mentioned on his blog deserves a wider airing:
The basic story is that the Judge in this case is deeply unsure of the boundary of copyright. [...] has sent a number of questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The questions are hypothetical, but clearly designed to test the waters and figure out where this line falls.Now will this re-affirm what I ve always been told, that copyright s border is between ideas and expressions, and copyright only covers expressions? Or will it draw a different boundary? It seems that those most likely to be affected are those who are at the edges of acceptability of licences like LGPL, or trying to provide workalikes of hostile proprietary companies, but please, read it for yourself.
How much would you pay to participate in a social network and what would you expect for that?
On the web, I m used to some social networks being available for free. Usefulness and size varies massively, but there s quite a choice of them. There s a price to access them (computer, internet access, time) but once you ve paid that, there are free-to-use networks.
Offline, a lot of networking opportunities cost money and not just access costs (travel, time). Especially business networks. OK, there are paid business networks online too, but some of the biggest ones have some long-term free access level, to try to entice people to upgrade. Offline, it seems like the reverse: there are some free networks and some that have short-term free access, but the norm seems to be pay-to-play. Often you get nothing except entry for the basic subscription, but at least our co-op usually prefers networks where we re proper members with some say in how things are run.
Not that democracy always works. One networking organisations made a mistake in posting out ballot papers that means we can t vote in its leadership election. This isn t the first administrative problem we ve suffered and their last decent event was at least a year ago, too. At what point should we quit? I think I ll try to address this through the membership democracy first.
In this recession, some of our offline networks are reviewing their prices. In one case, a network which was free is going to become one of our more expensive annual subscriptions if we renew. If I look at it as a simple does this bring in enough work to pay for itself? decision then probably it won t. How much value do you attach to being there and to being visible, though?
Security is more than bug fixing. Security fixing/updating, the thing most people are exposed to, is reactive security . However, a large area of security work is proactive where defensive abilities are put in place to try and catch problems before they happen, or make classes of vulnerabilities unexploitable. This kind of security is what a lot of people don t understand, and I think it s important to point out so the distinction can be clearly seen.
In the Linux kernel, there s yet another distinction: userspace proactive security and kernel proactive security. Most of the effort in kernel code has been protecting userspace from itself (things like Address Space Layout Randomization), but less attention has been given to protecting the kernel from userspace (currently if a serious enough flaw is found in the kernel, it is usually very easy to exploit it).
One project has taken great strides with proactive security for the Linux kernel: PaX and grsecurity. There hasn t been a concerted effort to get its pieces upstream and it s long overdue. People are starting to take proactive kernel security more seriously, though there is still plenty of debate.
While I did my best to push some userspace protections upstream earlier in the year, now it s time for kernel protections. What to help? Here is the initial list of things to do.
Dan Rosenberg has started the information leaks discussion, and I ve started the read-only memory discussion. Hopefully this will go somewhere good.
If you re running a 64bit system, and you ve got users with access to a video device (/dev/video*), then be sure you update your kernels for CVE-2010-2963. I ve been slowly making my way through auditing the many uses in the Linux kernel of the copy_from_user() function, and ran into this vulnerability.
Here s the kernel code from drivers/media/video/v4l2-compat-ioctl32.c:
static int get_microcode32(struct video_code *kp, struct video_code32 __user *up)
if (!access_ok(VERIFY_READ, up, sizeof(struct video_code32))
copy_from_user(kp->loadwhat, up->loadwhat, sizeof(up->loadwhat))
get_user(kp->datasize, &up->datasize)
copy_from_user(kp->data, up->data, up->datasize))
return -EFAULT;
return 0;
Note that kp->data is being used as the target for up->data in the final copy_from_user() without actually verifying that kp->data is pointing anywhere safe. Here s the caller of get_microcode32:
static long do_video_ioctl(struct file *file, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)
union
struct video_tuner vt;
struct video_code vc;
...
karg;
void __user *up = compat_ptr(arg);
...
switch (cmd)
...
case VIDIOCSMICROCODE:
err = get_microcode32(&karg.vc, up);
...
So, the contents of up are totally under control of the caller, and the contents of karg (in our case, the video_code structure) are not initialized at all. So, it seems like a call for VIDIOCSMICROCODE would write video_code->datasize bytes from video_code->data into some random kernel address, just causing an Oops, since we don t control what is on the kernel s stack.
But wait, who says we can t control the contents of the kernel s stack? In fact, this compat function makes it extremely easy. Let s look back at the union. Notice the struct video_tuner? That gets populated from the caller s up memory via this case of the switch (cmd) statement:
...
case VIDIOCSTUNER:
case VIDIOCGTUNER:
err = get_video_tuner32(&karg.vt, up);
...
So, to control the kernel stack, we just need to call this ioctl twice in a row: once to populate the stack via VIDIOCSTUNER with the contents we want (including the future address for video_code->data, which starts at the same location as video_tuner->name[20]), and then again with VIDIOCSMICROCODE.
Tricks involved here are: the definition of the VIDIOCSMICROCODE case in the kernel is wrong, and calling the ioctls without any preparation can trigger other kernel work (memory faults, etc) that may destroy the stack contents. First, we need the real value for the desired case statement. This turns out to be 0 4020761b. Next, we just repeatedly call the setup ioctl in an attempt to get incidental kernel work out of the way so that our last ioctl doing the stack preparation will stick, and then we call the buggy ioctl to trigger the vulnerability.
Since the ioctl already does a multi-byte copy, we can now copy arbitrary lengths of bytes into kernel memory. One method of turning an arbitrary kernel memory write into a privilege escalation is to overwrite a kernel function pointer, and trigger that function. Based on the exploit for CVE-2010-3081, I opted to overwrite the security_ops function pointer table. Their use of msg_queue_msgctl wasn t very good for the general case since it s near the end of the table and its offset would depend on kernel versions. Initially I opted for getcap, but in the end used ptrace_traceme, both of which are very near the top the security_ops structure. (Though I need share credit here with Dan Rosenberg as we were working together on improving the reliability of the security_ops overwrite method. He used the same approach for his excellent RDS exploit.)
Here are the steps for one way of taking an arbitrary kernel memory write and turning it into a root escalation:
security_ops with default_security_ops, which will revert the LSM back to the capabilities-only security operations. This, however, means we can calculate where cap_ptrace_traceme is.default_security_ops->ptrace_traceme to point to our supplied function that will actually perform the privilege escalation (thanks to Brad Spengler for his code from Enlightenment).ptrace(PTRACE_TRACEME, 0, NULL, NULL)).default_security_ops->ptrace_traceme to point to cap_ptrace_traceme so the next caller doesn t Oops the system (since userspace memory will be remapped).cap_getcap (which is pretty unstable, so you might want to switch it to use ptrace_traceme), and as a stand-alone memory writer.
Conclusions: Keep auditing the kernel for more arbitrary writes; I think there are still many left. Reduce the exploitation surface within the kernel itself (which PaX and grsecurity have been doing for a while now), specifically:
fops, IDT, security_ops, etc) to be writable. These should all be marked correctly, with inline code exceptions being made for updating the global pointers to those tables, leaving the pointer read-only after it gets set. This would stop this particular exploit above, but there are still plenty more targets. I travel across the Sedgemoor/North Somerset/Bristol council borders, so I m a big fan of FixMyStreet which puts fault reporting for things like potholes, flytipping and broken lights behind a common interface. Credit to the MySociety charity project, once again.
So I m quite happy that something similar is starting for website faults. If you know disabled people who are willing to report web accessibility issues for volunteers to pick up, please let them know they can currently:
#fixtheweb #fail url problem I just had another conflict with a debatable anti-spam configuration. I think it was debatable rather than obviously wrong, so I m not going to rant about the specific setup, but while discussing it with other postmasters, the following two Domain Name Service Blacklist (DNSBL) facts surprised me:
I attended this meeting last Saturday, taking up the Cooperatives-SW invitation (we have been invited before, as reported on this blog). It was held, once again, at SCAT in Taunton.
First, we had introductions from everyone. The Go! Co-op rail plan for Yeovil-Oxford and beyond got a mention by the chair after I introduced myself I didn t realise it at the time, but C-SW member Co-Cars were next door at an exhibition in the Genesis centre and are preparing to launch in Taunton. Then there was a formal welcome from Christopher Irwin, TravelWatch SouthWest CIC Chair and a keynote presentation from First Great Western s operations director Kevin Gale.
Delays on the GW Main Line have returned in the last three months, with performance below targets. The blame was squarely laid at the door of not-for-profit infrastructure company Network Rail, but this area is still better than it used to be. The FGW 30 train fleet (refurbished Sprinters from London Midland and London Overground?) start arriving in about two weeks. There s a new consistent company organisation. In the Q+A, I think we were told:
Blog Action Day approaches on Friday. The call this year is for clean water and some high profile blogs including the UKFCO and the White House will be joining in.
But until then, you can look at the wonderful direct blog action by Lars Wirzenius In defense of Nicole and others after this shocking episode. I hope Lars is wrong in this case and the Davids will join together in their common interest to overthrow the Goliath.
There is a far longer prelude than Lars describes, going back to the April 2005 launch of Liblime (announcement here). An independently-authored history of Koha and LibLime and the recent problems can be found at LWN.net (US$7/month if you woud like to subscribe and support LWN).
Actually, I m not sure if PTFS is even a Goliath. They seem to stomp around a lot, but how big are they? Biggest credible guess I ve seen is 125 people across all products (not only Koha), which is fewer than the 150ish Koha-Community developers (not all supporters). So there you have it: Koha is bigger than PTFS. Literally.
There was a lot of news coverage like Credit card fees being imposed by councils, says Which? earlier this week.
People seemed outraged that councils were making a small surplus over the year in total. Interviewees suggested that councils should just include the cost of taking payments in the amount charged.
Of course, councils are sort-of not-for-profit, so they ll just set prices to include the credit card fees and make a small surplus on other cheaper forms of payment over the year in total. So everyone who uses bank transfers will pay more because credit card fees are high! Will that be next year s scandal?
Presumably that s what happens in France, Germany and other countries where sellers can t charge more for credit card payment. That, or you just don t accept credit cards, like many German retailers never used to. What else can they do?
It s a bit odd of Visa to claim it costs more to accept other forms of payment. Cheques are horrendously expensive if you only get a few, but seem to get cheaper if handled in bulk. Domestic bank transfers and cash also seem cheaper than Visa to me.
Sellers seem to be asked explicitly to assume much more fraud risk in order to accept credit cards, too. Mind you, with the amazingly slack approach of most US retailers to cards (no chip-and-PIN and they usually don t bother to even check the signature I cut up the card I used in the USA when I arrived home), I m surprised there s not more card fraud.
I m also a bit surprised Bath and North East Somerset (which neighbours my home district) is paying 2% on credit card transactions. Our co-op has been offered deals about as good as that and we don t do anything like as many transactions. We ve not yet taken one up because the setup paperwork is a pain and the setup and maintenance fees usually suck. It feels like it doesn t matter what you do with money, bankers still get rich.
Even though I keep looking (like in 2007), it ll probably happen: we need to act again, because some overseas customers seem unwilling or unable to register with a site to pay (and some payment sites have ethical questions too), while international bank transfers are even more expensive and an even bigger pain.
Besides card payments, we re considering opening a currency trading account and a Euro bank account. Anyone done these and do you think they re worth it or not? And do any Eurozone banks allow a UK company to open an account without a member visiting in person? I ve found few possibilities, after looking at banks in seven countries so far.
I m putting together a list of email server features that you should look for. I m thinking:
Hello fellow developers,
The summer is over 
but I m happy to announce that this year s Summer of Code at Debian has been better than ever! 
This is indeed the 4th time we had the privilege of participating in the Google Summer of Code and each year has been a little different.
This year, 8 of our 10 students succeeded in our (very strict!) final evaluations, but we have reasons to believe that they will translate into more long-term developers than ever, all thank to you.
The highlight this year has been getting almost all of our students at DebConf10. Thanks again this year to generous Travel Grants from the Google Open Source Team, we managed to fly in 7 of our students (up from 3!). You certainly saw them, presenting during DebianDay, hacking on the grass of Columbia, hacking^Wcheering our Debian Project Leader throwing the inaugural pitch of a professional baseball game or hacking^Wsun-tanning on the tr s kitsch Coney Island beach.
Before I give the keyboard to our Students, I d like to tell you that it will be the pleasure and honor of Obey Arthur Liu (yours truly, as Administrator) and Bastian Venthur (as Mentor) to represent Debian at the Summer of Code 2010 Mentors Summit on 23-24 October 2010, at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View. Like last year, we expect many other DDs to be present under other hats. We will be having 2 days of unconference on GSoC and free software related topics. We all look forward to reporting from California on Planet and soc-coordination@l.a.d.o!
All of our students had a wonderful experience, even if they couldn t come to DebConf, that is best shared in their own voice, so without further ado, our successful projects:
Multi-Arch support in APT
by David Kalnischkies, mentored by Michael Vogt
apt-get install MultiArch does mostly work now as most code is already merged in squeeze, but if not complain about us at deity@l.d.o! Still, a lot left on the todo list not only in APT so let us all add MultiArch again to the Release Goals and work hard on squeezing it into wheezy.
Debbugs Bug Reporting and Manipulation API
by David Wendt Jr., mentored by Bastian Venthur
Hello, I m David Wendt, and I went to Debconf10 to learn more about the development side of Debian. Having used it since the 9th grade, I ve been intimately familiar with many of Debian s internals. However, I wanted to see the developers and other Debian users. At DebConf, I was able to see a variety of talks from Debian and Ubuntu developers. I also got to meet with my mentor as well as the maintainer of Debbugs.
Content-aware Config Files Upgrading
by Krzysztof Tyszecki, mentored by Dominique Dumont
Config::Model is now capable of manipulating files using shorter and easier to write models. Thanks to that, packagers may start experiment with creating upgrade models. Further work is needed to support more complicated config files Dominique Dumont is working on DEP-5 parser, I ll shortly start working on a cupsd config file parser. Members of our co-op will be attending:
Russel Garlick writes on behalf of the KohaCon10 Organising Committee:
KohaCon10 starts on October 25th in Wellington, New Zealand. We have an exciting line up of speakers on a range of topics related to Koha and [Free and] Open Source and Open Standards in libraries. See our programme for details. KohaCon is an opportunity for the entire Koha community, librarians and developers alike, to come together, meet each other, swap ideas and learn something new. The conference is split into 2 parts. The community conference will be held over 3 days 25-27th of October. This is not just a developer s conference. There will be presentations from librarians and developers alike. The second part of the conference is the Hackfest for Koha developers that will be held from 29th-31st of October. For more information see our website KohaCon10 is a free conference (that is right it will cost nothing for you to attend), but you still need to register to reserve your place. Registrations from the international Koha community have been very strong. Over half of all available spaces are already taken. If you have been holding off on the premise that you will have plenty of time to do this later, then please register now. Please do not rely on there being free spaces on the day. Registration is quick and easy via the website. We look forward to seeing you in Wellington!Our co-op will be represented there. Will you?
In a great post a few days ago, Jono asks why you are doing free software and reminds us to remember it. It s quite easy to lose sight of our goals and motivations while working on the day-to-day tasks.
This reminds me of an interesting point made in the course I m currently studying on Applying Our Co-operative Values and Principles. As well as our shared values and principles, each co-op should have a statement of its goals. For our co-op, that s to provide computer-related services . For the Co-operative Group, it s currently inspiring young people; tackling global poverty; and combatting climate change it s a big co-op, so it has big goals.
But while goals are a shared commitment, your motivation for them is often a personal thing. Often it will be rooted in a negative, a dissatisfaction about how the world was before you started, then making that into an excitement about what you could do, the new possibilities that are opened up. I think you can see this a little in Jono s motivation of how excited they were at exploring their new system and many of the comments there. They re positives and often the silver lining around some cloud.
So, please, head over to Jono s page and share your motivations. Then pop back to my site and tell me your goals (or how I ve misinterpreted this 
) in a comment.
Next.