Search Results: "kirkland"

11 April 2017

Reproducible builds folks: Reproducible Builds: week 102 in Stretch cycle

Here's what happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between Sunday April 2 and Saturday April 8 2017: Media coverage Toolchain development and fixes Reviews of unreproducible packages 27 package reviews have been added, 14 have been updated and 17 have been removed in this week, adding to our knowledge about identified issues. Weekly QA work During our reproducibility testing, FTBFS bugs have been detected and reported by: tests.reproducible-builds.org Misc. This week's edition was written by Chris Lamb, Vagrant Cascadian & reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC & the mailing lists.

22 July 2016

Russell Coker: 802.1x Authentication on Debian

I recently had to setup some Linux workstations with 802.1x authentication (described as Ethernet authentication ) to connect to a smart switch. The most useful web site I found was the Ubuntu help site about 802.1x Authentication [1]. But it didn t describe exactly what I needed so I m writing a more concise explanation. The first thing to note is that the authentication mechanism works the same way as 802.11 wireless authentication, so it s a good idea to have the wpasupplicant package installed on all laptops just in case you need to connect to such a network. The first step is to create a wpa_supplicant config file, I named mine /etc/wpa_supplicant_SITE.conf. The file needs contents like the following:
network= 
 key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
 eap=PEAP
 identity="USERNAME"
 anonymous_identity="USERNAME"
 password="PASS"
 phase1="auth=MD5"
 phase2="auth=CHAP password=PASS"
 eapol_flags=0
 
The first difference between what I use and the Ubuntu example is that I m using eap=PEAP , that is an issue of the way the network is configured, whoever runs your switch can tell you the correct settings for that. The next difference is that I m using auth=CHAP and the Ubuntu example has auth=PAP . The difference between those protocols is that CHAP has a challenge-response and PAP just has the password sent (maybe encrypted) over the network. If whoever runs the network says that they don t store unhashed passwords or makes any similar claim then they are almost certainly using CHAP. Change USERNAME and PASS to your user name and password. wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant_SITE.conf -D wired -i eth0 The above command can be used to test the operation of wpa_supplicant.
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
eth0: Associated with 00:01:02:03:04:05
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-STARTED EAP authentication started
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-PROPOSED-METHOD vendor=0 method=25
TLS: Unsupported Phase2 EAP method 'CHAP'
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-METHOD EAP vendor 0 method 25 (PEAP) selected
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-PEER-CERT depth=0 subject=''
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-PEER-CERT depth=0 subject=''
EAP-MSCHAPV2: Authentication succeeded
EAP-TLV: TLV Result - Success - EAP-TLV/Phase2 Completed
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-SUCCESS EAP authentication completed successfully
eth0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:01:02:03:04:05 completed [id=0 id_str=]
Above is the output of a successful test with wpa_supplicant. I replaced the MAC of the switch with 00:01:02:03:04:05. Strangely it doesn t like CHAP but is automatically selecting MSCHAPV2 and working, maybe anything other than PAP would do.
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
  wpa-driver wired
  wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant_SITE.conf
Above is a snippet of /etc/network/interfaces that works with this configuration.

3 January 2016

Iustin Pop: Orcas Island day trip, June 2015

I just finished going through my last set of pending-review pictures from 2015, so I'm starting 2016 with a post about the past. In June 2015 I travelled to Seattle/Kirkland area for work purposes, and took advantage of a weekend to plan some more outdoors stuff. After looking around on maps, I settled on the San Juan islands, so I started looking at hiking possibilities, and in the end Orcas island looked the best choice - all the others had much lower elevations. So, early in the morning, I started driving from Kirkland to Anacortes ferry terminal. The drive itself is quite nice: after getting past the more populated areas, passing Everett, the the view are very nice, especially in the early morning hours and with very few traffic. At Anacortes, there was already a small queue, fortunately I had a pre-ordered ticket, and there was not much to do until the ferry arrived except to look forward at the day, and hope that the weather will stay nice. On the ferry then, crossing the straits and enjoying the very nice views: Perfect blue Catching the morning wind The ferry stops at Orcas (is it a town or just the terminal), and the next stop is Eastsound town. I pre-planned here a stop to get a second mini-breakfast: however, I misjudged what the portion sizes are and got myself a maxi-cinnamon roll at Caffe Olga: Second breakfast :) At least I knew I wasn't going to be hungry for a while :) Driving on, briefly stopping at Cascade Lake (I also stopped on the way back, the view is nice), then reaching the parking at the Twin Lakes trail on the shore of Mountain Lake. Good think I arrived somewhat early the parking was quite full already. I also got a bit confused on which way the hike starts, since it's not well marked, but after that I started the hike. It's also possible to drive up to Mount Constitution, but that's just lame; hiking from the base it's quite easy, if you find how to start the hike. Anyway: Starting to climb Finished the steepest part At one point, one meets this particular sign: Which way now? Beware the Little Summit is not to be missed! After ~40 minutes of hiking, with some parts a tiny bit strenuous, the view is really breathtaking. It's definitely worth stopping by, as the view is (IMHO) nicer than the view from the top of Mt. Constitution: Wow! The reason I say this is better is because you look towards ocean, whereas later the view is back towards the continent. And looking towards the big ocean is just perfect! Plus, the many small island, fully covered with forest are also nice. Onwards then towards the peak of Mount Constitution. You cross the "ridge" of the island, and your view shifts to the other side. Which means you see back to the Mountain Lake where the hike starts: Loocking back towards the start Here the path is more exposed, not through tall forest like at the beginning: Watching the horizon Right before reaching the peak, you pass through an interesting forest: A different kind of forest And then you're finally reaching the peak. Compared to Switzerland, it's very much not impressive (730m), but nevertheless, being so close to the ocean results in some very nice views: Couldn't have asked for better weather You can go into the small tower, and read through the history of the location, including the personal life of Robert Moran (shipbuilder), who retired in 1905 to Orcas island to live what (his doctors said to be) his last months, and who instead ended living until 1943. Not bad! To be filled under "too much stress is bad, nature is good" heading, I think. After eating a small packed lunch, I started back. At the beginning the forest is similar to the one back at the beginning of the hike, but then, as you reach the level of lakes, it is slightly different. More tall (old?) trees, more moss and ferns: Afternoon sun in the forest I passed briefly by the Twin Lakes, which were interesting (lots of submerged trunks), and then finally on the Twin Lakes trail back to the start. The views of Mountain Lake from here are also nice, especially in the less harsh afternoon sun: Reached Mountain Lake How did those trees get there? And then the hike was over. I still had some time to spend before the ferry I had a ticket on was scheduled, so I drove down to Olga town, as I was curious what was at the end of "Olga Road". Not much, but again nice views, and this very picturesque pier: Nice pier in Olga And then it was back to the ferry, waiting in line, getting on the ferry, and crossing back: Goodbye Orcas! Overall, it was a day well spent, part different, part similar to last year's mostly road trip. Definitely recommended if you're in the area, and there are a couple of other hikes on Orcas Island, plus all the other islands which make up the San Juans. However, traffic on the way back was not that awesome :/ Small price though!

19 November 2015

Matthew Garrett: If it's not practical to redistribute free software, it's not free software in practice

I've previously written about Canonical's obnoxious IP policy and how Mark Shuttleworth admits it's deliberately vague. After spending some time discussing specific examples with Canonical, I've been explicitly told that while Canonical will gladly give me a cost-free trademark license permitting me to redistribute unmodified Ubuntu binaries, they will not tell me what Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries actually means.

Why does this matter? The free software definition requires that you be able to redistribute software to other people in either unmodified or modified form without needing to ask for permission first. This makes it clear that Ubuntu itself isn't free software - distributing the individual binary packages without permission is forbidden, even if they wouldn't contain any infringing trademarks[1]. This is obnoxious, but not inherently toxic. The source packages for Ubuntu could still be free software, making it fairly straightforward to build a free software equivalent.

Unfortunately, while true in theory, this isn't true in practice. The issue here is the apparently simple phrase you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code. "Trademarks" is defined later as being the words "Ubuntu", "Kubuntu", "Juju", "Landscape", "Edubuntu" and "Xubuntu" in either textual or logo form. The naive interpretation of this is that you have to remove trademarks where they'd be infringing - for instance, shipping the Ubuntu bootsplash as part of a modified product would almost certainly be clear trademark infringement, so you shouldn't do that. But that's not what the policy actually says. It insists that all trademarks be removed, whether they would embody an infringement or not. If a README says "To build this software under Ubuntu, install the following packages", a literal reading of Canonical's policy would require you to remove or replace the word "Ubuntu" even though failing to do so wouldn't be a trademark infringement. If an @ubuntu.com email address is present in a changelog, you'd have to change it. You wouldn't be able to ship the juju-core package without renaming it and the application within. If this is what the policy means, it's so impractical to be able to rebuild Ubuntu that it's not free software in any meaningful way.

This seems like a pretty ludicrous interpretation, but it's one that Canonical refuse to explicitly rule out. Compare this to Red Hat's requirements around Fedora - if you replace the fedora-logos, fedora-release and fedora-release-notes packages with your own content, you're good. A policy like this satisfies the concerns that Dustin raised over people misrepresenting their products, but still makes it easy for users to distribute modified code to other users. There's nothing whatsoever stopping Canonical from adopting a similarly unambiguous policy.

Mark has repeatedly asserted that attempts to raise this issue are mere FUD, but he won't answer you if you ask him direct questions about this policy and will insist that it's necessary to protect Ubuntu's brand. The reality is that if Debian had had an identical policy in 2004, Ubuntu wouldn't exist. The effort required to strip all Debian trademarks from the source packages would have been immense[2], and this would have had to be repeated for every release. While this policy is in place, nobody's going to be able to take Ubuntu and build something better. It's grotesquely hypocritical, especially when the Ubuntu website still talks about their belief that people should be able to distribute modifications without licensing fees.

All that's required for Canonical to deal with this problem is to follow Fedora's lead and isolate their trademarks in a small set of packages, then tell users that those packages must be replaced if distributing a modified version of Ubuntu. If they're serious about this being a branding issue, they'll do it. And if I'm right that the policy is deliberately obfuscated so Canonical can encourage people to buy licenses, they won't. It's easy for them to prove me wrong, and I'll be delighted if they do. Let's see what happens.

[1] The policy is quite clear on this. If you want to distribute something other than an unmodified Ubuntu image, you have two choices:
  1. Gain approval or certification from Canonical
  2. Remove all trademarks and recompile the source code
Note that option 2 requires you to rebuild even if there are no trademarks to remove.

[2] Especially when every source package contains a directory called "debian"

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18 August 2015

Matthew Garrett: Canonical's deliberately obfuscated IP policy

I bumped into Mark Shuttleworth today at Linuxcon and we had a brief conversation about Canonical's IP policy. The short summary:
The even shorter summary: Canonical won't clarify their IP policy because they believe they can make more money if they don't.

Why do I keep talking about this? Because Canonical are deliberately making it difficult to create derivative works, and that's one of the core tenets of the definition of free software. Their IP policy is fundamentally incompatible with our community norms, and that's something we should care about rather than ignoring.

comment count unavailable comments

20 July 2015

Matthew Garrett: Your Ubuntu-based container image is probably a copyright violation

Update: A Canonical employee responded here, but doesn't appear to actually contradict anything I say below.

I wrote about Canonical's Ubuntu IP policy here, but primarily in terms of its broader impact, but I mentioned a few specific cases. People seem to have picked up on the case of container images (especially Docker ones), so here's an unambiguous statement:

If you generate a container image that is not a 100% unmodified version of Ubuntu (ie, you have not removed or added anything), Canonical insist that you must ask them for permission to distribute it. The only alternative is to rebuild every binary package you wish to ship[1], removing all trademarks in the process. As I mentioned in my original post, the IP policy does not merely require you to remove trademarks that would cause infringement, it requires you to remove all trademarks - a strict reading would require you to remove every instance of the word "ubuntu" from the packages.

If you want to contact Canonical to request permission, you can do so here. Or you could just derive from Debian instead.

[1] Other than ones whose license explicitly grants permission to redistribute binaries and which do not permit any additional restrictions to be imposed upon the license grants - so any GPLed material is fine

comment count unavailable comments

12 October 2014

Iustin Pop: Day trip on the Olympic Peninsula

Day trip on the Olympic Peninsula TL;DR: drove many kilometres on very nice roads, took lots of pictures, saw sunshine and fog and clouds, an angry ocean and a calm one, a quiet lake and lots and lots of trees: a very well spent day. Pictures at http://photos.k1024.org/Daytrips/Olympic-Peninsula-2014/. Sometimes I travel to the US on business, and as such I've been a few times in the Seattle area. Until this summer, when I had my last trip there, I was content to spend any extra days (weekend or such) just visiting Seattle itself, or shopping (I can spend hours in the REI store!), or working on my laptop in the hotel. This summer though, I thought - I should do something a bit different. Not too much, but still - no sense in wasting both days of the weekend. So I thought maybe driving to Mount Rainier, or something like that. On the Wednesday of my first week in Kirkland, as I was preparing my drive to the mountain, I made the mistake of scrolling the map westwards, and I saw for the first time the Olympic Peninsula; furthermore, I was zoomed in enough that I saw there was a small road right up to the north-west corner. Intrigued, I zoomed further and learned about Cape Flattery ( the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States! ), so after spending a bit time reading about it, I was determined to go there. Easier said than done - from Kirkland, it's a 4h 40m drive (according to Google Maps), so it would be a full day on the road. I was thinking of maybe spending the night somewhere on the peninsula then, in order to actually explore the area a bit, but from Wednesday to Saturday it was a too short notice - all hotels that seemed OK-ish were fully booked. I spent some time trying to find something, even not directly on my way, but I failed to find any room. What I did manage to do though, is to learn a bit about the area, and to realise that there's a nice loop around the whole peninsula - the 104 from Kirkland up to where it meets the 101N on the eastern side, then take the 101 all the way to Port Angeles, Lake Crescent, near Lake Pleasant, then south toward Forks, crossing the Hoh river, down to Ruby Beach, down along the coast, crossing the Queets River, east toward Lake Quinault, south toward Aberdeen, then east towards Olympia and back out of the wilderness, into the highway network and back to Kirkland. This looked like an awesome road trip, but it is as long as it sounds - around 8 hours (continuous) drive, though skipping Cape Flattery. Well, I said to myself, something to keep in mind for a future trip to this area, with a night in between. I was still planning to go just to Cape Flattery and back, without realising at that point that this trip was actually longer (as you drive on smaller, lower-speed roads). Preparing my route, I read about the queues at the Edmonds-Kingston ferry, so I was planning to wake up early on the weekend, go to Cape Flattery, and go right back (maybe stop by Lake Crescent). Saturday comes, I - of course - sleep longer than my trip schedule said, and start the day in a somewhat cloudy weather, driving north from my hotel on Simonds Road, which was quite nicer than the usual East-West or North-South roads in this area. The weather was becoming nicer, however as I was nearing the ferry terminal and the traffic was getting denser, I started suspecting that I'll spend a quite a bit of time waiting to board the ferry. And unfortunately so it was (photo altered to hide some personal information): Waiting for the ferry. The weather at least was nice, so I tried to enjoy it and simply observe the crowd - people were looking forward to a weekend relaxing, so nobody seemed annoyed by the wait. After almost half an hour, time to get on the ferry - my first time on a ferry in US, yay! But it was quite the same as in Europe, just that the ship was much larger. Once I secured the car, I went up deck, and was very surprised to be treated with some excellent views: Harbour view Looking towards the sun   and away from it The crossing was not very short, but it seemed so, because of the view, the sun, the water and the wind. Soon we were nearing the other shore; also, see how well panorama software deals with waves :P! Near the other shore And I was finally on the "real" part of the trip. The road was quite interesting. Taking the 104 North, crossing the "Hood Canal Floating Bridge" (my, what a boring name), then finally joining the 101 North. The environment was quite varied, from bare plains and hills, to wooded areas, to quite dense forests, then into inhabited areas - quite a long stretch of human presence, from the Sequim Bay to Port Angeles. Port Angeles surprised me: it had nice views of the ocean, and an interesting port (a few big ships), but it was much smaller than I expected. The 101 crosses it, and in less than 10 minutes or so it was already over. I expected something nicer, based on the name, but Anyway, onwards! Soon I was at a crossroads and had to decide: I could either follow the 101, crossing the Elwha River and then to Lake Crescent, then go north on the 113/112, or go right off 101 onto 112, and follow it until close to my goal. I took the 112, because on the map it looked "nicer", and closer to the shore. Well, the road itself was nice, but quite narrow and twisty here and there, and there was some annoying traffic, so I didn't enjoy this segment very much. At least it had the very interesting property (to me) that whenever I got closer to the ocean, the sun suddenly disappeared, and I was finding myself in the fog: Foggy road So my plan to drive nicely along the coast failed. At one point, there was even heavy smoke (not fog!), and I wondered for a moment how safe was to drive out there in the wilderness (there were other cars though, so I was not alone). Only quite a bit later, close to Neah Bay, did I finally see the ocean: I saw a small parking spot, stopped, and crossing a small line of trees I found myself in a small cove? bay? In any case, I had the impression I stepped out of the daily life in the city and out into the far far wilderness: Dead trees on the beach Trees growing on a rock Small panorama of the cove There was a couple, sitting on chairs, just enjoying the view. I felt very much intruding, behaving like I did as a tourist: running in, taking pictures, etc., so I tried at least to be quiet . I then quickly moved on, since I still had some road ahead of me. Soon I entered Neah Bay, and was surprised to see once more blue, and even more blue. I'm a sucker for blue, whether sky blue or sea blue , so I took a few more pictures (watch out for the evil fog in the second one): View towards Neah Bay port Sea view from Neah Bay Well, the town had some event, and there were lots of people, so I just drove on, now on the last stretch towards the cape. The road here was also very interesting, yet another environment - I was driving on Cape Flattery Road, which cuts across the tip of the peninsula (quite narrow here) along the Waatch River and through its flooding plains (at least this is how it looked to me). Then it finally starts going up through the dense forest, until it reaches the parking lot, and from there, one goes on foot towards the cape. It's a very easy and nice walk (not a hike), and the sun was shining very nicely through the trees: Sunny forest Sun shinning down Wooden path But as I reached the peak of the walk, and started descending towards the coast, I was surprised, yet again, by fog: Ugly fog again! I realised that probably this means the cape is fully in fog, so I won't have any chance to enjoy the view. Boy, was I wrong! There are three viewpoints on the cape, and at each one I was just "wow" and "aah" at the view. Even thought it was not a sunny summer view, and there was no blue in sight, the combination between the fog (which was hiding the horizon and even the closer islands), the angry ocean which was throwing wave after wave at the shore, making a loud noise, and the fact that even this seemingly inhospitable area was just teeming with life, was both unexpected and awesome. I took here waay to many pictures, here are just a couple inlined: First view at the cape Birds 'enjoying' the weather Foggy shore I spent around half an hour here, just enjoying the rawness of nature. It was so amazing to see life encroaching on each bit of land, even though it was not what I would consider a nice place. Ah, how we see everything through our own eyes! The walk back was through fog again, and at one point it switched over back to sunny. Driving back on the same road was quite different, knowing what lies at its end. On this side, the road had some parking spots, so I managed to stop and take a picture - even though this area was much less wild, it still has that outdoors flavour, at least for me: Waatch River Back in Neah Bay, I stopped to eat. I had a place in mind from TripAdvisor, and indeed - I was able to get a custom order pizza at "Linda's Woodfired Kitchen". Quite good, and I ate without hurry, looking at the people walking outside, as they were coming back from the fair or event that was taking place. While eating, a somewhat disturbing thought was going through my mind. It was still early, around two to half past two, so if I went straight back to Kirkland I would be early at the hotel. But it was also early enough that I could - in theory at least - still do the "big round-trip". I was still rummaging the thought as I left On the drive back I passed once more near Sekiu, Washington, which is a very small place but the map tells me it even has an airport! Fun, and the view was quite nice (a bit of blue before the sea is swallowed by the fog): Sekiu view After passing Sekiu and Clallam Bay, the 112 curves inland and goes on a bit until you are at the crossroads: to the left the 112 continues, back the same way I came; to the right, it's the 113, going south until it meets the 101. I looked left - remembering the not-so-nice road back, I looked south - where a very appealing, early afternoon sun was beckoning - so I said, let's take the long way home! It's just a short stretch on the 113, and then you're on the 101. The 101 is a very nice road, wide enough, and it goes through very very nice areas. Here, west to south-west of the Olympic Mountains, it's a very different atmosphere from the 112/101 that I drove on in the morning; much warmer colours, a bit different tree types (I think), and more flat. I soon passed through Forks, which is one of the places I looked at when searching for hotels. I did so without any knowledge of the town itself (its wikipedia page is quite drab), so imagine my surprise when a month later I learned from a colleague that this is actually a very important place for vampire-book fans. Oh my, and I didn't even stop! This town also had some event, so I just drove on, enjoying the (mostly empty) road. My next planned waypoint was Ruby Beach, and I was looking forward to relaxing a bit under the warm sun - the drive was excellent, weather perfect, so I was watching the distance countdown on my Garmin. At two miles out, the "Near waypoint Ruby Beach" message appeared, and two seconds later the sun went out. What the I was hoping this is something temporary, but as I slowly drove the remaining mile I couldn't believe my eyes that I was, yet again, finding myself in the fog I park the car, thinking that asking for a refund would at least allow me to feel better - but it was I who planned the trip! So I resigned myself, thinking that possibly this beach is another special location that is always in the fog. However, getting near the beach it was clear that it was not so - some people were still in their bathing suits, just getting dressed, so it seems I was just unlucky with regards to timing. However, I the beach itself was nice, even in the fog (I later saw online sunny pictures, and it is quite beautiful), the the lush trees reach almost to the shore, and the way the rocks are sitting on the beach: A lonely dinghy Driftwood  and human construction People on the beach Since the weather was not that nice, I took a few more pictures, then headed back and started driving again. I was soo happy that the weather didn't clear at the 2 mile mark (it was not just Ruby Beach!), but alas - it cleared as soon as the 101 turns left and leaves the shore, as it crosses the Queets river. Driving towards my next planned stop was again a nice drive in the afternoon sun, so I think it simply was not a sunny day on the Pacific shore. Maybe seas and oceans have something to do with fog and clouds ! In Switzerland, I'm very happy when I see fog, since it's a somewhat rare event (and seeing mountains disappearing in the fog is nice, since it gives the impression of a wider space). After this day, I was a bit fed up with fog for a while Along the 101 one reaches Lake Quinault, which seemed pretty nice on the map, and driving a bit along the lake - a local symbol, the "World's largest spruce tree". I don't know what a spruce tree is, but I like trees, so I was planning to go there, weather allowing. And the weather did cooperate, except that the tree was not so imposing as I thought! In any case, I was glad to stretch my legs a bit: Path to largest spruce tree Largest spruce tree, far view Largest spruce tree, closer view Very short path back to the road However, the most interesting thing here in Quinault was not this tree, but rather - the quiet little town and the view on the lake, in the late afternoon sun: Quinault Quinault Lake view The entire town was very very quiet, and the sun shining down on the lake gave an even stronger sense of tranquillity. No wind, not many noises that tell of human presence, just a few, and an overall sense of peace. It was quite the opposite of the Cape Flattery and a very nice way to end the trip. Well, almost end - I still had a bit of driving ahead. Starting from Quinault, driving back and entering the 101, driving down to Aberdeen: Afternoon ride then turning east towards Olympia, and back onto the highways. As to Aberdeen and Olympia, I just drove through, so I couldn't make any impression of them. The old harbour and the rusted things in Aberdeen were a bit interesting, but the day was late so I didn't stop. And since the day shouldn't end without any surprises, during the last profile change between walking and driving in Quinault, my GPS decided to reset its active maps list and I ended up with all maps activated. This usually is not a problem, at least if you follow a pre-calculated route, but I did trigger recalculation as I restarted my driving, so the Montana was trying to decide on which map to route me - between the Garmin North America map and the Open StreeMap one, the result was that it never understood which road I was on. It always said "Drive to I5", even though I was on I5. Anyway, thanks to road signs, and no thanks to "just this evening ramp closures", I was able to arrive safely at my hotel. Overall, a very successful, if long trip: around 725 kilometres, 10h:30m moving, 13h:30m total: Track picture There were many individual good parts, but the overall think about this road trip was that I was able to experience lots of different environments of the peninsula on the same day, and that overall it's a very very nice area. The downside was that I was in a rush, without being able to actually stop and enjoy the locations I visited. And there's still so much to see! A two nights trip sound just about right, with some long hikes in the rain forest, and afternoons spent on a lake somewhere. Another not so optimal part was that I only had my "travel" camera (a Nikon 1 series camera, with a small sensor), which was a bit overwhelmed here and there by the situation. It was fortunate that the light was more or less good, but looking back at the pictures, how I wish that I had my "serious" DSLR So, that means I have two reasons to go back! Not too soon though, since Mount Rainier is also a good location to visit . If the pictures didn't bore you yet, the entire gallery is on my smugmug site. In any case, thanks for reading!

10 February 2014

Russell Coker: Fingerprints and Authentication

Dustin Kirkland wrote an interesting post about fingerprint authentication [1]. He suggests using fingerprints for identifying users (NOT authentication) and gives an example of a married couple sharing a tablet and using fingerprints to determine who s apps are loaded. In response Tollef Fog Heen suggests using fingerprints for lightweight authentication, such as resuming a session after a toilet break [2]. I think that one of the best comments on the issue of authentication for different tasks is in XKCD comic 1200 [3]. It seems obvious that the division between administrator (who installs new device drivers etc) and user (who does everything from playing games to online banking with the same privileges) isn t working, and never could work well particularly when the user in question installs their own software. I think that one thing which is worth considering is the uses of a signature. A signature can be easily forged in many ways and they often aren t checked well. It seems that there are two broad cases of using a signature, one is to enter into legally binding serious contract such as a mortgage (where wanting to sign is the relevant issue) and the other is cases where the issue doesn t matter so much (EG signing off on a credit card purchase where the parties at risk can afford to lose money on occasion for efficient transactions). Signing is relatively easy but that s because it either doesn t matter much or because it s just a legal issue which isn t connected to authentication. The possibility of serious damage (sending life savings or incriminating pictures to criminals in another jurisdiction) being done instantly never applied to signatures. It seems to me that in many ways signatures are comparable to fingerprints and both of them aren t particularly good for authentication to a computer. In regard to Tollef s ideas about lightweight authentication I think that the first thing that would be required is direct user control over the authentication required to unlock a system. I have read about some Microsoft research into a computer monitoring the office environment to better facilitate the user s requests, an obvious extension to such research would be to have greater unlock requirements if there are more unknown people in the area or if the device is in a known unsafe location. But apart from that sort of future development it seems that having the user request a greater or lesser authentication check either at the time they lock their session or by policy would make sense. Generally users have a reasonable idea about the risk of another user trying to login with their terminal so user should be able to decide that a toilet break when at home only requires a fingerprint (enough to keep out other family members) while a toilet break at the office requires greater authentication. Mobile devices could use GPS location to determine unlock requirements, GPS can be forged, but if your attacker is willing and able to do that then you have a greater risk than most users. Some users turn off authentication on their phone because it s too inconvenient. If they had the option of using a fingerprint most of the time and a password for the times when a fingerprint can t be read then it would give an overall increase in security. Finally it should be possible to unlock only certain applications. Recent versions of Android support widgets on the lock screen so you can perform basic tasks such as checking the weather forecast without unlocking your phone. But it should be possible to have different authentication requirements for various applications. Using a fingerprint scan to allow playing games or reading email in the mailing list folder would be more than adequate security. But reading the important email and using SMS probably needs greater authentication. This takes us back to the XKCD cartoon.

3 October 2013

Tollef Fog Heen: Fingerprints as lightweight authentication

Dustin Kirkland recently wrote that "Fingerprints are usernames, not passwords". I don't really agree, I think fingerprints are fine for lightweight authentication. iOS at least allows you to only require a pass code after a time period has expired, so you don't have to authenticate to the phone all the time. Replacing no authentication with weak authentication (but only for a fairly short period) will improve security over the current status, even if it's not perfect. Having something similar for Linux would also be reasonable, I think. Allow authentication with a fingerprint if I've only been gone for lunch (or maybe just for a trip to the loo), but require password or token if I've been gone for longer. There's a balance to be struck between convenience and security.

8 September 2010

Andrew McMillan: Making my laptop quiet

A few days ago I talked about how noisy my new Dell Studio 15 was but I can now report back with the beginnings of a solution to that problem, and it doesn't appear to be ACPI related. The first clue I needed was that if I switch to the proprietary fglrx drivers for the Radeon the fan quite quickly drops off to a much more reasonable level. It seems the fglrx drivers have issues, however, in particular I get big black patches on my screen. This video corruption happens especially in Firefox, but sometimes in other applications as well. They also appear to screw up my suspend/resume, which is probably even more annoying to me. The second clue that I needed was that Radeon power management support has only just made it into recent kernels. Thanks to Michael Kirkland for providing me with both of those clues :-) Looking under /sys/class/drm/ I find a whole bunch of stuff, but in particular there are /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method and /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile. Looking through the kernel source code I can see that power_profile can be set to low, mid, high, auto and default, while power_method can be set to either dynpm or profile. Trying out all of these values, it seems I get the quietest result with the profile method and either the low or mid profile. The dynpm method is nearly as good, and I would think it should really be the default for a 'Mobility' chipset. From the detailed benchmarking that Phoronix did I wonder if it shouldn't be the default for everyone. For myself, I see some small 'tearing' artifacts occasionally when running with the low profile. These disappear when I run with the mid profile, and since that seems to have pretty much the same temperature (and noise) results I'll go with that one. Though the laptop often does still make more noise than I would prefer it to, it is no longer annoying everyone in the room. Not unexpectedly this seems to have a huge impact on power use, too. It appears that the laptop should now give me around 4.5 hours when I do everything I can think of to lower the power use, whereas before it was more like 2.5 hours. Now I guess I can get back to hacking on DAViCal...

21 June 2010

Matt Zimmerman: Finishing books

Having invested in some introspection into my reading habits, I made up my mind to dial down my consumption of bite-sized nuggets of online information, and finish a few books. That s where my bottleneck has been for the past year or so. Not in selecting books, not in acquiring books, and not in starting books either. I identify promising books, I buy them, I start reading them, and at some point, I put them down and never pick them back up again. Until now. Over the weekend, I finished two books. I started reading both in 2009, and they each required my sustained attention for a period measured in hours in order to finish them. Taking a tip from Dustin, I decided to try alternating between fiction and non-fiction. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins This was the first book I had read by Tom Robbins, and I am in no hurry to read any more. It certainly wasn t without merit: its themes were clever and artfully interwoven, and the prose elicited a silent chuckle now and again. It was mainly the characters which failed to earn my devotion. They spoke and behaved in ways I found awkward at best, and problematic at worst. Race, gender, sexuality and culture each endured some abuse on the wrong end of a pervasive white male heteronormative American gaze. I really wanted to like Priscilla, who showed early promise as a smart, self-reliant individual, whose haplessness was balanced by a strong will and sense of adventure. Unfortunately, by the later chapters, she was revealed as yet another vacant vessel yearning to be filled by a man. She s even the steward of a symbolic, nearly empty perfume bottle throughout the book. Yes, really. Managing Humans by Michael Lopp Of the books I ve read on management, this one is perhaps the most outrageously reductionist. Many management books are like this, to a degree. They take the impossibly complex problem domain of getting people to work together, break it down into manageable problems with tidy labels, and prescribe methods for solving them (which are hopefully appropriate for at least some of the reader s circumstances). Managing Humans takes this approach to a new level, drawing neat boxes around such gestalts as companies, roles, teams and people, and assigning them Proper Nouns. Many of these bear a similarity to concepts which have been defined, used and tested elsewhere, such as psychological types, but the text makes no effort to link them to his own. Despite being a self-described collection of tales , it s structured like a textbook, ostensibly imparting nuggets of managerial wisdom acquired through lessons learned in the Real World (so pay attention!). However, as far as I can tell, the author s experience is limited to a string of companies of a very specific type: Silicon Valley software startups in the dot com era. Lopp (also known as Rands) does have substantial insight into this problem domain, though, and does an entertaining job of illustrating the patterns which have worked for him. If you can disregard the oracular tone, grit your teeth through the gender stereotyping, and add an implicit preface that this is (sometimes highly) context-sensitive advice, this book can be appreciated for what it actually is: a coherent, witty and thorough exposition of how one particular manager does their job. I got some good ideas out of this book, and would recommend it to someone working in certain circumstances, but as with Robbins, I m not planning to track down further work by the same author.

28 January 2010

Martin F. Krafft: DistroSummit 2010

Linux.conf.au 2010 has come to an end and I am looking back at an intense week of conferencing. A big shout out to the organisers for their excellent work. I think LCA (as well as DebConf) just keeps getting better every year. This does not at all discredit previous organisers, because they were the best at their times and then passed on the wisdom and experience to help make it even better in the following year. The week started off with the DistroSummit, which Fabio and I organised. Slides are forthcoming, as I failed to get them off the speakers right after their talks it s interesting how stress levels and adrenaline can cause one to forget the most obvious things. This is where experience comes in. I ll be there again next year, I hope, to do things better. The theme of the day was cross-distro collaboration, and we started the day a little bit on the Debian-side with Lucas Nussbaum telling us about quality assurance in Debian, alongside an overview of available resources. We hoped to give people from other distros pointers, and solicit feedback that would enable us to tie quality assurance closer together. Next up was Bdale Garbee who talked about the status of the Linux Standard Base. While I am really interested in such standardisation efforts, I realised during his talks that I had considerable difficulties paying attention because as organiser of the conference, I had all sorts of other things occupying my thoughts. I proceeded to tell the audience the room was mostly filled throughout the day with an estimated 40 50 folks, and I d say about half of them stayed throughout, while the other half came in and left the room between talks. I could not get the projector to work with my laptop after the upgrade to Kernel Mode Setting, and thus used the whiteboard to give a brief introduction to vcs-pkg.org, talk about the current state of affairs, summarise the trends in discussions around patch management and collaboration, give an outlook of what s up next, and solicit some discussion. Sadly, just like during Bdale s talk, I found myself worrying over the organisation of the day, rather than actually taking in most of the discussion. Fortunately, others have written about the most important points, so I defer to them. Michael Homer then told us about GoboLinux s Aliens system, which is a way to integrate domain-specific packages with distro-specific package maintenance e.g. how to get APT to handle CPAN directly, or how to let YUM manage Python packages. The ensuing discussion was interesting, and we carried it over to the next slot, because Scott, the next speaker, was stuck in traffic. To summarise briefly: scripting languages have a lot of NIH-style solutions because it works for them, but these are a nightmare to distro packagers. One symptom of the status quo is that complex software packages like Zimbra are forced to distribute all required components in their installation packages, which make distro packaging, quality assurance, and security support even harder. I don t think we found a solution, other than the need for further standardisation (like the LSB), but the road seems to be a long and windy one. Laszlo Peter introduced the audience to SourceJuicer, a new build system used by OpenSolaris. The idea is that contributors submit packages via a web interface, kicking off a workflow incorporating discussion and vetting, and only after changes have been signed-off are packages forwarded to auto-builders and eventually end up in the package repository. This is very similar to upload ideas I ve had a while ago, which I ve started to (finally) implement. Unfortunately, SourceJuicer seems very specific to OpenSolaris, as well as non-modular, so that I probably won t be able to reuse e.g. the web interface on top of a Debian-specific package builder. After the break, Dustin Kirkland stepped up to tell us about his user experience of Launchpad. Unfortunately, I found his talk a bit too enthusiastic. Launchpad undoubtedly has some very cool features and ideas, but it s just one of the available solutions. The dicussion of Launchpad also dominated the next talk, in which Lucas Nussbaum told us about the Debian-Ubuntu relationship. While his presentation showed that the relationship was improving (Matt Zimmerman made the point that there are rather many relationships, rather than one relationship), I was a bit disturbed by the comments of Launchpad developers in the room, ranging from Debian is declining anyway to Just use Launchpad if you want to collaborate with others and not go down . There was a slight aura of arrogance in their comments which tainted my experience of the otherwise constructive discussions of the day. Overall I had a great time. Debian and Ubuntu made up the vast majority of attendants, with only a handful of representatives from other distros present. I wonder why that would be. One reason might be that around 70% of LCA attendants declared themselves Debian or Ubuntu users, and so there weren t many other distros around. Another might be that I still haven t spread the word enough. Let s hope to do better next year! Thanks to all the speakers. We may have organised the day, but you made it happen and interesting! Slides and recordings of the talks will be linked from the archived website when they become available (yes, the archive page does not exist yet either).

5 June 2006

Andrew Pollock: [life] 2099 miles later...

The problem with going away on these lengthy trips, is I never end up blogging about it while I'm there, so I have to write a behemoth post when I get back, and try to remember everything. Oh well... Aggregator summary Photos are here. Had a great time seeing more of the country. Seattle was nice, albeit a bit wet. Portland was also nice. We've now covered the whole West Coast. States we've visited as of June 2006 Read on, Macduff!

26 May 2006

Andrew Pollock: [life] Another massive road trip coming up

It's not a Holiday Weekend unless it involves us putting heaps of miles on the car. This time, we're going to Kirkland, where I'll work from for the week. The route outlined on this image isn't quite the route we're going to take, we're going to camp amongst the redwoods on Saturday night, and stop off in Portland on Sunday night. On Friday night we'll stop where we drop, which we expect will be Ukiah. The following weekend, on the way back, we'll take a more direct route, which will probably be closer to what's on the map. Rough idea of the trip