It is said that most free software comes about as the result of some
developer scratching a personal itch. It's also said that very little
innovative free software development is done; free software projects spend
their time "chasing taillights" - catching up to the features offered by
proprietary code. The field of spam filtering may well confirm one of
those stereotypes while refuting the other. After all, if there is
anything that truly itches, it's spam. But some of the free software being
developed to combat spam is truly innovative.
Most spam filtering work has involved two techniques: testing mail against
patterns indicative of spam and blocking mail from known sources of spam
(and other likely sources, such as ISP dialup lines). Source-based
blocking can be effective, but it also tends to block a fair amount of
legitimate mail along with the spam. For example, some blacklists cause the blocking of mail from kernel.org,
despite the fact that no spam originates there. Source-based blocking is
unreliable enough that quite a few sites are unwilling to use it, despite a
strong desire to be rid of spam.
Pattern matching has shown more promise. Early spam filtering was done
with complex procmail
scripts, but the current champion of pattern-based spam filtering can
only be SpamAssassin. Using a
detailed set of rules, SpamAssassin cleans out the trash to great effect.
LWN has been using it for some months, and it has made life much easier -
lwn@lwn.net gets a lot of spam. SpamAssassin has returned much of
our time back to us to work on LWN, as well as keeping us from accidentally
deleting mail from readers that tended to get buried in the spam.
One thing that SpamAssassin users tend to notice, however, is that its
effectiveness decreases over time. Each new update blocks more spam - a
recent upgrade freed us from a whole unpleasant class of Nigeria spam, for
example. But pattern-based matching only works as well as its patterns,
and they tend to go stale as spammers move on to new tricks. Keeping
SpamAssassin effective requires a number of highly dedicated people to
actually read all that spam and come up with new rules. Most
SpamAssassin users are unlikely to be able (or willing) to write new rules
themselves.
Recently, a new approach to spam filtering has attracted a lot of
attention, thanks mostly to Paul Graham's paper A Plan for Spam. Rather
than try to come up with an endless stream of clever patterns to detect
spam, why not just look at the words spammers use? Each word can be
assigned a probability that any message that contains it is spam; the
probabilities for the words in any specific message are then combined using a
Bayesian filter, yielding an overall probability estimate. If that
estimate is high enough, the message is classified as spam.
At a first glance, going up against a tool as good as SpamAssassin with
such a simple technique seems like a losing battle, but this approach has a
number of advantages:
- Development of the word-based rules can be automated - it is
just a matter of feeding the filter enough spam and "ham" (legitimate
mail) and letting it work out a probability factor for each word.
- The filter can be made to follow shifting patterns in spam by
passing it each message that it misclassifies. Users can not be
expected to master regular expressions and write patterns, but they
can be asked to hit a "this is spam" key in their mailer.
- Each user's spam filter comes to reflect the mail that the user
receives. Spam seems like the ultimate in indiscriminate marketing,
but the fact is that different people can receive very different spam.
An individually derived rule base should prove more effective than a
"one size fits all" set of patterns.
- Classification of mail with a Bayesian filter can be done relatively
quickly.
All of the above is irrelevant, however, if the Bayesian approach does not
succeed in actually filtering spam. To get a sense for the state of the
art, we took 3000 messages received at lwn@lwn.net - a little under two
weeks worth. 295 of those messages were real mail, and 2705 were spam. If
one were to believe the bulk of our mail, one would conclude that about
every part of our anatomy (even those we don't possess) is the wrong size,
that we are so honest that people want to extract money from Africa via our
bank account, that we're missing out on numerous hot stocks, that we have a
strange attraction to domesticated animals, and that the purchase of
something called the "TushyClean" would greatly improve our lives. Trust
us, this exercise has not been fun, but no sacrifice is too great for our
readers.
Once the messages were sorted, we fed them all to SpamAssassin and to bogofilter, a new
Bayesian filter written by Eric Raymond. Bogofilter was tested twice: once
after training with 15% of the 3000 messages, and once after being trained
with the whole set. Then we ran both filters on 5000 recent postings from
the linux-kernel list, twelve of which were spam (devfs flames were not
counted). The results were:
False positives are legitimate mail classified as spam. These, of course,
are bad news, since they can cause the loss of real mail. False negatives
are spam that slip through - an annoyance. It is appropriate that spam
filters tend to err toward false negatives, and both filters shown here do
exactly that.
The results indicate that bogofilter requires a substantial amount of
training before it reaches the level of effectiveness achieved by
SpamAssassin. This training is best done with each individual user's mail,
but most users are unlikely to have a few thousand nicely sorted messages
sitting around to train their filters with. So bogofilter is likely to be
frustrating for many users to adopt - it won't work well until the user has
run "about one thousand" (according to Eric Raymond) messages through it.
That said, bogofilter is surprisingly effective for a tool that
is so new and very much still in development. And the run time relative to
SpamAssassin speaks for itself. Much of the difference there will be
explained by the fact that bogofilter is coded in C, while SpamAssassin is
in Perl. But bogofilter also owes its speed to a much faster algorithm.
The Bayesian filter idea is not new - see this 1998
paper on the Microsoft site, for example. But recently a great deal of
effort has gone into expressing this approach in free software. Bogofilter
is one example; another is the spambayes
project, which has been set up as a testbed for variants on the Bayesian
filter idea. It will be interesting to see where these projects go; they
seem to be off to an interesting start. Taking on a tool as effective as
SpamAssassin is a difficult challenge, but the free software world likes
challenges.
Comments (28 posted)
RISKS 22.24 includes
a detailed article
by Rebecca Mercuri on the latest fun with the new voting systems in
Florida. That state, of course, was the source of (ongoing) uncertainty in
the 2000 U.S. presidential election, due, in part, to its ancient voting
equipment. Since then, the voting machines have been upgraded to new,
computer-based systems with touchscreen interfaces.
These systems are based on closed source code. There is no
external audit trail, no way of verifying that they are recording votes as
they were actually cast. Trade secret law forbids the inspection of the
code in the systems. One just has to trust the vendor that the results are
correct.
A primary election held there recently turned up a whole set of
problems, ranging from basic usability issues to outright failure.
There has been a lot of interest recently in laws requiring governments to
use free software in many or all situations. It remains unclear, to some
people anyway, that such laws are really in the best interest of
government, the governed, or the free software community. But, in the
case of voting systems, the case seems clear: no part of the system that
elects people into positions of power should be opaque. The creation of a
free, transparent, verifyable electronic voting system should not be that
hard a task for governments or the free software community. There is no
excuse for using anything else.
Comments (10 posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Security
Brief items
Worth a read: Paul Karger and Roger Schell have released a new paper
(available
in
PDF format) entitled "Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics
Security Evaluation." It includes an analysis of the security of the
Multics operating system, written by the same two authors and published in
1974, along with a new forward describing how things have changed in the
mean time. Their assessment of the current state of computer security is
harsh:
The unpleasant conclusion is that although few, if any,
fundamentally new vulnerabilities are evident today, today's
products generally do not even include many of the Multics security
techniques, let alone the enhancement identified as essential.
That essential enhancement is the creation of verifiable "security kernel"
around which the rest of the system could be built. In 2002, very few
systems built around such kernels exist, and the authors are not very
enthusiastic about those which do exist:
...the ring 0 supervisor of Multics of 1973 occupied about 628K
bytes of executable code and read-only data. This was considered
to be a very large system. By comparison, the size of the SELinux
module with the example policy code and read-only data has been
estimated to be 1767K bytes. This means that just the example
security policy of SELinux is more than 2.5 times bigger than the
entire 1973 Multics kernel and that doesn't count the size of the
Linux kernel itself. Given that complexity is the biggest single
enemy of security, this suggests that the complexity of SELinux
needs to be seriously examined.
Or, to put things in more general terms:
Given the understanding of system vulnerabilities that existed nearly
thirty years ago, today's "security enhanced" or "trusted" systems would
not be considered suitable for processing even in the benign closed
environment.
So how do we make things better? The paper does not provide a whole lot of
new suggestions. The authors talk some about the tools that are used; for
example, Multics was mostly free of buffer overflow vulnerabilities, thanks
to the use of PL/I as the implementation language. PL/I required an
explicit declaration of the length of all strings.
The net result is that a PL/I programmer would have to work very
hard to program a buffer overflow error, while a C programmer has
to work very hard to avoid programming a buffer overflow error.
Beyond that, one gets the sense that the authors feel they said what needed
to be said thirty years ago, and they are still waiting for the message to
get across. Their prediction:
It is unthinkable that another thirty years will go by without one
of two occurrences: either there will be horrific cyber disasters
that will deprive society of much of the value computers can
provide, or the available technology will be delivered, and
hopefully enhanced, in products that provide effective security.
The authors hope for the latter scenario; so do we.
Comments (8 posted)
Security reports
AFD ("automatic file distributor") suffers from buffer overflow
vulnerabilities which can lead to a local root compromise. Version 1.2.15
of AFD contains fixes for the problems.
Full Story (comments: none)
The KDE project has issued a couple of security advisories:
- This one describes a cross-site
scripting vulnerability in Konqueror (and any other application which
uses the KHTML renderer). Javascript code running in one frame can
access other frames which should be inaccessible. This problem is
fixed in kdelibs 3.0.3a.
- The second is for a secure cookie
problem in Konqueror. The "secure" flag in cookies is not recognized,
with the result that "secure" cookes can be transmitted over
unencrypted connections. KDE 3.0.3 fixes the problem.
We will, of course, pass on distributor updates as we receive them.
Comments (1 posted)
The XFree86 project has
released
XFree86 4.2.1, which fixes a few security problems. The most urgent
problem is a vulnerability in the internationalization code which can allow
an attacker to cause a privileged X client to load and execute arbitrary
code. This vulnerability only exists in XFree86 4.2.0; earlier releases
are not vulnerable.
No distributor updates have been received as of this writing, though
Slackware has updated its XFree86 packages.
Comments (1 posted)
New vulnerabilities
Denial of service vulnerability in amavis
| Package(s): | amavis |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | September 11, 2002 |
Updated: | September 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
AMaViS is vulnerable to a denial of service attack via maliciously crafted input. Patches exist for AMaViS, but the recommended solution is to upgrade to the (actively developed) amavis-perl tool. See this advisory for details. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Input validation vulnerability in cacti
| Package(s): | cacti |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | September 11, 2002 |
Updated: | September 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
Cacti is a PHP front end to rrdtool; it assists in the creation of plots from a MySQL database. This tool does not properly validate all input, leading to a remote code execution vulnerability in certain, limited conditions. See this Bugtraq posting for details. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Cross-site scripting vulnerability in mhonarc
| Package(s): | mhonarc |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0738
CAN-2002-1307
CAN-2002-1388
|
| Created: | September 11, 2002 |
Updated: | January 3, 2003 |
| Description: |
Mhonarc is an HTML formatter for electronic mail; it can be vulnerable to cross-site scripting problems when presented with maliciously crafted messages. This problem is fixed in mhonarc version 2.5.3, but it is not clear that all possible vulnerabilities have been fixed. See the Debian advisory below for information on how to disable text/html attachment support in mhonarc, which may be a more secure solution. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities in wordtrans
| Package(s): | wordtrans |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0837
|
| Created: | September 11, 2002 |
Updated: | February 4, 2003 |
| Description: |
The "wordtrans" interface to multilingual dictionaries suffers from input validation and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities; versions through 1.1pre8 are vulnerable. See this Guardent advisory for details. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Updated vulnerabilities
Heap corruption vulnerability in at
| Package(s): | at at, sudo, xchat |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0004
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | May 15, 2003 |
| Description: |
The at command has a
potentially exploitable heap corruption bug.
(First LWN report: January 17th).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries
| Package(s): | bind glibc |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684
|
| Created: | July 8, 2002 |
Updated: | October 1, 2003 |
| Description: |
The BIND 4.9.8-OW2 patch and BIND 4.9.9 release (and thus 4.9.9-OW1)
include fixes for a libc related vulnerability which does not
affect Linux. Updates from
the Internet Software Consortium (ISC)
are available from here.
No release or branch of Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) is known to be
affected, due to Olaf Kirch's fixes for this problem getting into the
GNU C library more than two years ago.
Unfortunatly that does not mean that Linux systems are not vulnerable.
Similar code, without Olaf Firch's fixes,
is in the glibc getnetbyXXX functions.
These functions are described in the SuSE alert as
"
used by very few applications only, such as ifconfig and ifuser,
which makes exploits less likely."
CERT Advisory: CA-2002-19
Buffer Overflow in Multiple DNS Resolver Libraries
CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Potential unauthorized root access vulnerability in dietlibc
| Package(s): | dietlibc |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0391
|
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | December 5, 2002 |
| Description: |
Felix von Leitner, discovered a
potential division by zero bug in
code derived from the SunRPC library with is used in
dietlibc, a libc optimized for small size.
The bug could be exploited to gain unauthorized root
access to software linking to dietlibc.
CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#192995 Integer
overflow in xdr_array() function when deserializing the XDR stream |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Ethereal 0.9.6 fixes potential remote code execution vulnerability
| Package(s): | ethereal |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0834
CAN-2002-0821
CAN-2002-0822
|
| Created: | September 4, 2002 |
Updated: | September 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
Ethereal 0.9.6 was released
on August 20, 2002 fixing a serious
buffer overflow vulnerability in the ISIS protocol dissector in Ethereal 0.9.5 and earlier versions.
It may be possible to make Ethereal crash or hang by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, or by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file. It may be possible to make Ethereal run arbitrary code by exploiting the buffer and pointer problems.
Ethereal 0.9.4 has multiple buffer overflow and other
vulnerabilities hat are best delt with by upgrading to 0.9.6.
These vulnerabilities may allow remote attackers
to cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code.
Updating now, rather than later, is recommended. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Ethereal buffer overflow, infinite loop and memory management vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | ethereal |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0012
CAN-2002-0013
CAN-2002-0353
CAN-2002-0401
CAN-2002-0402
CAN-2002-0403
CAN-2002-0404
|
| Created: | June 12, 2002 |
Updated: | October 27, 2002 |
| Description: |
Ethereal 0.9.4
was released
on May 19, 2002 fixing four potential security issues in Ethereal 0.9.3:
- The SMB dissector could potentially dereference a NULL pointer in two cases.
- The X11 dissector could potentially overflow a buffer while parsing keysyms.
- The DNS dissector could go into an infinite loop while reading a malformed packet.
- The GIOP dissector could potentially allocate large amounts of memory.
No known exploits exist "in the wild" at the present time for any of these issues.
Ethereal 0.9.2 has several packet handling vulnerabilities
that are best avoided by upgrading to 0.9.4.
The PROTOS test
suite found some flaws in SNMP and LDAP protocols support.
Malformed packets could also crash ethereal 0.9.2 due to a
ASN.1 zero-length g_malloc problem.
The zlib "double free" vulnerability
was addressed by the updates for that bug from many distributors. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
| Package(s): | fam |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0875
|
| Created: | August 19, 2002 |
Updated: | January 5, 2005 |
| Description: |
"fam" (file alteration monitor) watches files and directories for changes and lets interested applications know when something happens. This package has a flaw in its group handling that blocks some legitimate operations while, at the same time, exposing the names of files that should otherwise be invisible. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
GNU fileutils race condition
| Package(s): | fileutils ucdsnmp |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0435
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | May 16, 2003 |
| Description: |
A race
condition in rm may cause the root user to delete the whole filesystem.
The problem exists in the version of rm in
fileutils
4.1 stable and 4.1.6 development version. A patch
is available.
(First LWN
report: May 2).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Buffer overflow vulnerability in the Jabber plug-in module for gaim
| Package(s): | gaim |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0384
CAN-2002-0377
|
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | September 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
gaim versions prior to 0.58
contained a buffer overflow in the Jabber plug-in module.
The problem is fixed in
gaim 0.59 which is available here.
"Gaim is an instant messaging client written in GTK and is based on the
published TOC messaging protocol from AOL." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Remote arbitrary code execution vulnerability in gaim
| Package(s): | gaim |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 28, 2002 |
Updated: | September 4, 2002 |
| Description: |
gaim versions prior to 0.59.1
contained a arbitrary code execution vulnerabilty in the
the hyperlink handling code.
The 'Manual' browser command passes an untrusted
string to the shell without escaping or reliable quoting, permitting
an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the users machine.
Unfortunately, Gaim doesn't display the hyperlink before the user
clicks on it. Users who use other inbuilt browser commands aren't
vulnerable.
The problem is fixed in
gaim 0.59.1 which is available here.
Versions prior to 0.58 also contained a buffer overflow in the Jabber plug-in module which, of course, is still fixed in 0.59.1.
"Gaim is an instant messaging client written in GTK and is based on the
published TOC messaging protocol from AOL."
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Potential remote root exploit in glibc
| Package(s): | glibc |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0391
|
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | June 30, 2003 |
| Description: |
Felix von Leitner, discovered a
potential division by zero bug in
code derived from the SunRPC library which is used in glibc.This bug could be
exploited to gain unauthorized root access to software linking to glibc.
Updating as soon as practical is a good idea.
Because SunRPC-derived XDR libraries are used by a variety of vendors in a variety of applications, this defect may lead to a number of differing security problems. Exploiting this vulnerability will lead to denial of service, execution of arbitrary code, or the disclosure of sensitive information.
CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#192995 Integer
overflow in xdr_array() function when deserializing the XDR stream
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Buffer overflow in groff
| Package(s): | groff |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0003
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | December 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
The groff package has a buffer overflow
vulnerability; if it is used with the print system, it is conceivably
exploitable remotely.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
HylaFAX 4.1.3 fixes multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | hylafax |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2001-1034
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | October 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
The HylaFAX team has
released version 4.1.3 fixing
denial of service, elevated system privilege and possible
remote code execution vulnerabilities.
HylaFAX is a mature (est. 1991) enterprise-class open-source software
package for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending
alpha-numeric pages. It runs on a wide variety of UNIX-like platforms
including Linux, BSD (including Mac OS X), SunOS and Solaris, SCO, IRIX,
AIX, and HP-UX.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
UW imapd remotely exploitable buffer overflow
| Package(s): | imap |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0379
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | December 20, 2002 |
| Description: |
UW imapd versions 2000c and prior allow remote authenticated users to execute code via a buffer overflow. A malicious user can craft
a request to run commands on the server under their UID and GID.
(First LWN report: May 23). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
KDE 3.0.3 fixes X.509 certificate check vulnerability
| Package(s): | kde |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | September 4, 2002 |
Updated: | September 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
The SSL implementation used by previous version of KDE
accepted, without alerting the user, any X.509 certificate signed
by any entity under specific conditions.
This bug allows
"for undetected MITM attacks ("man in the mittle"), which
could compromise an encrypted HTTPS session."
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Kernel update for RedHat 7.3 i810 video
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 28, 2002 |
Updated: | September 4, 2002 |
| Description: |
Red Hat has issued a kernel update that fixes an "i810 video oops".
"Updated kernel packages are now available which fix an oops in the i810 3D
kernel code. This kernel update also fixes a difficult to trigger race in
the dcache (filesystem cache) code, as well as some potential security
holes, although we are not currently aware of any exploits."
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Kerberos 5 unauthorized root access to KDC host vulnerability
| Package(s): | krb5 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | October 29, 2002 |
| Description: |
A bug in the Kerberos 5 remote
administration service, "kadmind", could be
exploited to gain unauthorized root access to a KDC host.
It is believed that the attacker needs to be able to
authenticate to the kadmin daemon for this attack to be successful.
Felix von Leitner, discovered this
potential division by zero bug in
code derived from the SunRPC library which is used
in many places, including the Kerberos 5 administration system.
Updating now is recommended.
CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#192995 Integer
overflow in xdr_array() function when deserializing the XDR stream
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
LPRng accepts jobs from any host.
| Package(s): | LPRng |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0378
|
| Created: | June 12, 2002 |
Updated: | October 31, 2002 |
| Description: |
Matthew Caron pointed out that LPRng's default configuration accepts job submissions from any host.
This could be an especially annoying vulnerability for adminstrators
with systems exposed to the general public.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Mailman 2.0.12 closes cross-site scripting vulnerability
| Package(s): | mailman |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0855
|
| Created: | August 28, 2002 |
Updated: | September 4, 2002 |
| Description: |
Mailman 2.0.12, released on July 2nd, closed a minor
cross-site scripting vulnerabilty and implemented
"a guard against some reply loops and 'bot
subscription attacks."
Upgrading to Mailman 2.0.13, which also
fixes
some Python 1.5.2 incompatabilities, is recommended. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities in mantis
| Package(s): | mantis |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 20, 2002 |
Updated: | September 4, 2002 |
| Description: |
The Mantis project has reported a number of bugs in the Mantis bug tracking
system, including:
Needless to say, upgrading to a version later than 0.17.3 is recommended. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
PHP Remote Compromise/DOS Vulnerability
| Package(s): | mod_php4 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 22, 2002 |
Updated: | February 18, 2003 |
| Description: |
PHP 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 have an error in the handling of POST requests which
can lead to the corruption of memory, and the usual bad consequences. According to this alert, the vulnerability can only be used for denial of service on x86 systems - there is no way to get it to run exploit code. SPARC/Solaris systems are apparently vulnerable to full remote compromise.
According to the CERT Advisory,
almost every Linux distributor, it seems, ships older (and thus not vulnerable) versions of PHP.
Note that, sometimes, systems thought to be safe from remote compromise turn out to be vulnerable to a modified attack, so x86 users should not relax too much. The solution, for those systems with PHP
4.2.0 or 4.2.1 installed,
is to upgrade to PHP 4.2.2.
For more information see the alert from
the discover of the vulnerability, Stefan Esser of e-matters GmbH,
or the security
advisory from the php team.
CERT Advisory: CA-2002-21 Vulnerability in PHP |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Mozilla XMLHttpRequest file disclosure vulnerability
| Package(s): | mozilla |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0354
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | October 18, 2002 |
| Description: |
This XMLHttpRequest security
bug impacts all Mozilla-based browsers. "The bug is found in versions of
Mozilla from 0.9.7 to 0.9.9 on various operating
system platforms, and in Netscape versions 6.1 and
higher."
(First LWN
report: May 2).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
String format bug in pam_ldap logging
| Package(s): | nss_ldap |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0374
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | October 29, 2002 |
| Description: |
The nss_ldap package includes the pam_ldap module for
authenticating a user with an LDAP database.
Pam_ldap versions prior to 144 have a string format
bug in the logging mechanism. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
OpenSSL remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | OpenSSL |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0655
CAN-2002-0656
CAN-2002-0657
CAN-2002-0659
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | September 24, 2002 |
| Description: |
Four remotely-exploitable buffer overflows were found in OpenSSL versions 0.9.7 and 0.9.6d and earlier by a DARPA sponsored security audit.
Both client and server applications are affected.
The vulnerabilities are described in this security alert from the OpenSSL team.
A nasty exploit for one of the vulnerabilities is described in
CERT Advisory CA-2002-27 Apache/mod_ssl Worm.
Compromise by the Apache/mod_ssl worm indicates that a remote attacker
can execute arbitrary code as the apache user on the victim system. It
may be possible for an attacker to subsequently leverage a local
privilege escalation exploit in order to gain root access to the
victim system. Furthermore, the DDoS capabilities included in the
Apache/mod_ssl worm allow victim systems to be used as platforms to
attack other systems.
If you haven't already, applying an update is a very good thing
to do today.
Mitel Networks has an update available which
closes this vulnerabilty for their SME Server software.
CERT Advisory CA-2002-23 Multiple Vulnerabilities In OpenSSL |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Safemode vulnerability in PHP
| Package(s): | PHP |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2001-1246
|
| Created: | August 20, 2002 |
Updated: | October 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
PHP versions 4.0.5 through 4.1.0 fail to properly cleanse a parameter to the mail() function, allowing arbitrary command execution by local and (possibly) remote attackers. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Remotely exploitable vulnerability in pine
| Package(s): | pine |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0014
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | November 27, 2002 |
| Description: |
Pine has an
unpleasant
vulnerability in URL handling vulnerability which can lead to
command execution by remote attackers.
(First LWN report: January 17th).
This vulnerability is remotely exploitable; updating is a good idea.
Note: If an update isn't yet available for your distribution,
setting enable-msg-view-urls to "off" in pine's setup will
avoid the vulnerability. (Thanks to Greg Herlein).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Buffer overflow vulnerabilities in PostgreSQL
| Package(s): | PostgreSQL |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 21, 2002 |
Updated: | January 27, 2003 |
| Description: |
PostgreSQL 7.2.2 has been released in response to a number of buffer
overrun vulnerabilities which have been identified recently. "...it
should be noted that these vulnerabilities are only critical on 'open' or
'shared' systems, as they require the ability to be able to connect to the
database before they can be exploited."
Buffer overflow vulnerabilities fixed include those reported by
"Sir Mordred The Traitor" in the cash_words,
repeat, and lpad
and rpad functions. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
PXE server denial of service vulnerability
| Package(s): | pxe |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0835
|
| Created: | September 4, 2002 |
Updated: | November 11, 2002 |
| Description: |
The PXE server can be crashed using DHCP packets from
some Voice Over IP (VOIP) phones. Maliciously formed
DHCP packets could be used by a remote attacker to effect a
denial of service attack.
The PXE package contains the PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment)
server and code needed for Linux to boot from a boot disk image on a
Linux PXE server.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Local arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Python
| Package(s): | python |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-1119
|
| Created: | August 28, 2002 |
Updated: | October 1, 2003 |
| Description: |
Zack Weinberg discovered that
os._execvpe from os.py uses a predictable name which could lead
to execution of arbitrary code. According to the Debian
advisory, the problem
was present in Python versions 1.5, 2.1 and 2.2.
CAN-2002-1119 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Scrollkeeper temporary file vulnerability
| Package(s): | scrollkeeper |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0662
|
| Created: | September 4, 2002 |
Updated: | September 4, 2002 |
| Description: |
There is
a tempfile vulnerability in ScrollKeeper versions between 0.3 and 0.3.11.
The scrollkeeper-get-cl command generates temporary files
with predictable names and follows symbolic links.
"These files are created when a user logs in to a GNOME session and are
created as the user who logged in. This means an attacker with local
access can easily create and overwrite files as another user."
For more information see this security advisory
from Spybreak.
ScrollKeeper is a cataloging system for documentation on open
systems. It manages documentation metadata (as specified
by the Open
Source Metadata Framework(OMF)) and provides a simple
API to allow help browsers to find, sort, and search
the document catalog.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Sharutils potential privilege escalation using uudecode
| Package(s): | sharutils |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0178
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | October 31, 2002 |
| Description: |
According to the CVE entry,
"uudecode, as available in the sharutils package before 4.2.1, does not
check whether the filename of the uudecoded file is a pipe or symbolic
link, which could allow attackers to overwrite files or execute commands."
(First LWN
report: May 16).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities fixed in Squid-2.4.STABLE7
| Package(s): | squid |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 8, 2002 |
Updated: | November 15, 2002 |
| Description: |
Here is the security advisory for the Squid proxy server reporting several vulnerabilities in versions up to and including 2.4.STABLE7.
Several of the bugs are believed to allow remote code execution.
The security advisory lists the following
changes:
- Several bugfixes and cleanup of the Gopher client, both
to correct some security issues and to make Squid properly
render certain Gopher menus.
- Security fixes in how Squid parses FTP directory listings into
HTML
- FTP data channels are now sanity checked to match the address
of the requested FTP server. This to prevent theft or injection
of data. See the new ftp_sanitycheck directive if this sanity
check is not desired.
- The MSNT auth helper has been updated to v2.0.3+fixes for
buffer overflow security issues found in this helper.
- A security issue in how Squid forwards proxy authentication
credentials has been fixed
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Tcl/Tk local root vulnerability
| Package(s): | tcltk expect |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2001-1374
CAN-2001-1375
|
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | September 24, 2002 |
| Description: |
Tcl/Tk searches for its libraries in the current working
directory before other directories.
A local user could
execute arbitrary code by inserting a Trojan horse library
in the current working directory.
Versions of the expect application prior to 5.32, search for its libraries
in /var/tmp before searching in other directories.
A local user could
gain root privleges by inserting a Trojan horse library
in /var/tmp and then getting the root user to run mkpasswd.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Malformed NFS packet buffer overflow vulnerability in tcpdump
| Package(s): | tcpdump |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0380
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | October 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow in tcpdump can be triggered by a bad NFS packet when
tracing the network. Unmodified tcpdump versions 3.6.2 and earlier are vulnerable.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
| Package(s): | telnet Telnet netkit-telnet-ssl kerberos telnetd netkit-telnet nkitb/nkitserv/telnetd krb5 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | October 5, 2004 |
| Description: |
This vulnerability,
originally thought to be confined to BSD-derived systems, was first covered
in the July 26th Security
Summary. It is now known that Linux telnet daemons are vulnerable as
well.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities in SNMP implementations
| Package(s): | ucdsnmp ucd-snmp |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0012
CAN-2002-0013
|
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | September 17, 2002 |
| Description: |
Most SNMP
implementations out there have a variety of buffer overflow vulnerabilities
and should be upgraded at first opportunity. See this CERT advisory for more. (First
LWN report: February 14).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Local root vulnerability in chfn
| Package(s): | util-linux |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0638
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | October 31, 2002 |
| Description: |
chfn (change finger information) is one of the utilities in
the util-linux package.
The BindView RAZOR Team has discovered a local root vulnerability
in chfn which is described in the Bindview Advisory.
Under certain conditions, "a
carefully crafted attack sequence can be performed to exploit a
complex file locking and modification race present in this utility,
and, as a result, alter /etc/passwd to escalate privileges in the
system." The conditions include a password file, /etc/passwd, over 4 kilobytes and locating the attacker's account record in any
but the last 4 kB chunk of the file.
CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#405955 util-linux package vulnerable to privilege escalation when "ptmptmp" file is not removed properly when using "chfn" utility |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
webalizer: reverse DNS buffer overflow vulnerability
| Package(s): | webalizer |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | January 27, 2003 |
| Description: |
The cause is a buffer overflow bug.
This one sounds nasty.
If reverse DNS lookups are enabled in webalizer,
"an attacker with control over the victims DNS may spoof responses thus
triggering a buffer overflow, potentially leading to a root compromise."
Webalizer 2.01-10 "fixes this and a few
other buglets that have been discovered in the last month or so".
(First LWN report: April 18th, 2002).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Webmin/Usermin vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | webmin |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | January 10, 2003 |
| Description: |
Webmin is a web-based interface for
system administration for Unix.
Webmin has cross-site scripting and
session ID spoofing vulnerabilities
which are fixed in the May 6, 2002 release of version 0.970.
(First LWN
report: May 9).
This one is scary. The session ID
spoofing vulnerability allows the "possibility that arbitrary
commands may be executed with root privileges."
Upgrading is strongly recommended. At a minimum avoid the
"preconditions for a successful exploit" by disabling
password timeouts under Webmin->Configuration->Authentication.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Problems with libgtop_daemon
| Package(s): | wuftpd libgtop |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 21, 2002 |
Updated: | May 7, 2003 |
| Description: |
The libgtop_daemon package is a GNOME
program which makes system information available remotely.
LWN reported the remotely exploitable format
string and buffer overflow vulnerabilities in that package
on December 6th.
On November 28th
disabling the libgtop_daemon on systems where it is running until
an update is available.
Many Linux systems do not run
libgtop by default, but applying the update is a good idea anyway.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Wwwoffle remote privilege escalation vulnerability
| Package(s): | wwwoffle |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0818
|
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | October 1, 2003 |
| Description: |
The wwwoffle web proxy incorrectly processes HTTP PUT and POST requests
with negative Content Length values.
"It is believed
that an attacker could exploit this bug to gain remote wwwrun access
to the system wwwoffled is running on."
CAN-2002-0818 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xchat IC server based dns query vulnerability
| Package(s): | xchat |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0382
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | September 24, 2002 |
| Description: |
A malicious IRC server may
return a response to a /dns query that executes arbitrary commands
with the privileges of the user running XChat.
Versions of XChat prior to 1.8.9 are vulnerable. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Denial of service vulnerability in xinetd
| Package(s): | xinetd |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | August 14, 2002 |
Updated: | December 3, 2002 |
| Description: |
A file descriptor leak into services started from xinetd
may be used, by programs it stats, to crash xinetd.
Xinetd is a replacement for the BSD derived inetd. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Resources
This Linux Journal article
explains
IPSec, different levels of security and how to be safe sending and
receiving packets over the network. "
Several different solutions
exist that allow us to cope with this problem, each operating at a
different level of abstraction. In this article, we will discuss the
differences between and purposes of application-level security,
socket-level security and network-level security."
This article continues with part 2 which
moves on to encapsulating security payloads and key exchange mechanisms.
Comments (none posted)
The
Linux Advisory Watch and
Linux Security Week newsletters from
LinuxSecurity.com are available.
Comments (none posted)
The Honeynet Project has announced an update to its "Know Your Enemy:
Honeynets" paper. "
This
update includes far greater detail in explaining how to deploy 1st and 2nd
generation Honeynets. Even more exciting, we have released a significant
amount of new code, especially for GenII (2nd generation) Honeynets! This
should make deploying these technologies much easier, with different
options and different operating systems."
Full Story (comments: none)
Events
| September 19 - 20, 2002 | SEcurity of Communications on the Internet 2002(SECI'02) | Tunis, Tunisia |
| September 23 - 26, 2002 | New Security Paradigms Workshop 2002 | (The Chamberlain Hotel)Hampton, Virginia, USA |
| September 23 - 25, 2002 | University of Idaho Workshop on Computer Forensics | (University of Idaho)Moscow, Idaho, USA |
| September 26 - 27, 2002 | HiverCon 2002 | (Hilton Hotel)Dublin, Ireland |
| September 27 - 29, 2002 | ToorCon 2002 | (San Diego Concourse)San Diego, CA, USA |
| October 16 - 18, 2002 | Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection 2002(RAID 2002) | Zurich, Switzerland |
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Kernel development
Brief items
The current development kernel is 2.5.34,
released by Linus on September 9. People
who had trouble with 2.5.33 may want to give this one a try; it has some
important per-CPU fixes, and the floppy driver is said to
really
work this time. Also included is a bunch of block I/O work from Al Viro,
memory management work from Andrew Morton, a JFS update, and quite a few
other fixes and updates. The
long-format
changelog is available, as usual. Note that this kernel has a bug
which can cause IDE partitions to disappear.
Linus's BitKeeper tree, which may be 2.5.35 by the time you read this,
contains a large set of patches including a new sys_exit_group() system call (more
thread work by Ingo Molnar), a major merge of IDE code from the 2.4-ac tree
(which, according to Alan Cox, works "better
than expected," but one should still be careful), yet more VM changes via
Andrew Morton (see below), and a number of other fixes and updates.
The current 2.5 status summary from Guillaume
Boissiere came out on September 10.
The current stable kernel is 2.4.19. Marcelo released 2.4.20-pre6 on September 10; it
adds a number of updates and a couple of bugs which make it fail to compile
or boot for a number of users.
Alan Cox's current prepatch is 2.4.20-pre5-ac5, which is given over mostly to
new IDE code. "You can now load ide pci drivers at boot time or as
modules. Don't try unloading the modules yet"
Comments (none posted)
Kernel development news
People sending mail to Linus may want to cut back on their LINES OF
YELLING, keep an eye on vulgar words in their code comments, and so on. It seems
that Linus has started using SpamAssassin, and it is
causing him to lose a few patches due to false
positives. The number of false positives is small enough that he intends
to continue using the filter. And, in the end, most developers probably
agree that kernel development benefits if Linus spends less time wading
through spam.
Comments (2 posted)
Ever since Rik van Riel's reverse mapping VM implementation was merged into
the kernel, people have wondered how it could be made to work more
quickly. The rmap code accelerates many memory management operations, but slows down
others. It would be nice to get to the point where the performance
regressions have been mitigated (or eliminated) while keeping the benefits
of the rmap code. Linus's current BitKeeper tree contains one patch from
Andrew Morton which is a big step in that direction.
As described here last
January, the rmap code works by keeping track of which page tables
reference every physical page on the system. This is done by adding a
linked list of rmap entries to the page structure; each entry in
the list points to one page table entry referencing the page. The
maintenance of this list is the source of the bulk of the rmap code's
overhead. The many thousands of these pte_chain
structures require a lot of processing to keep current, are inefficient
(the structure contains two pointers; the one which points to the next
pte_chain entry is pure overhead), and put lots of pressure on the
memory allocation subsystem.
Andrew's solution to this problem is simply to expand the
pte_chain structures to hold multiple page table pointers.
Anywhere between seven and 31 PTE pointers can be stored in a single
pte_chain entry, depending on the architecture. The
chain overhead is reduced accordingly, and the system's cache behavior is
improved. This change, it is claimed, takes 10% off that all-important
kernel compile time - at least on Andrew's wimpy little 16-processor NUMA
system.
One other optimization, which has been in the kernel for a while, is to
eliminate the PTE chain entirely for pages which are only mapped into a
single process - of which there are many on a typical system. In that
case, a flag is set in the page structure, and the pointer for the
PTE chain points, instead, directly at the page table entry of interest.
The rmap code still has its performance costs, especially in the
fork system call. But those costs are shrinking - as are
inefficiencies throughout the kernel.
Comments (none posted)
Lest one think that tweaking rmap is all that is happening in the memory
management world: a great deal of code is currently circulating which makes
big changes, and it has been finding its way into Linus's kernel.
For example, 2.5.34 includes Patricia Gaughen's discontiguous memory patch,
which is aimed at the needs of large, NUMA systems. On such systems, you
no longer just have a simple array of memory; instead, the system's RAM is
broken up into zones, each of which is attached to a particular NUMA node.
Memory accesses within a node are faster than cross-node references, so the
kernel needs to know where any given page resides. Memory on these systems
can also have address holes between each node's zone.
The discontiguous memory patch does away with the classic mem_map
array, which contained one struct page structure for each
page on the system. The memory map is now split into separate, per-node
maps, and all references to mem_map in the kernel have
been changed. Rather than dealing with simple indexes into mem_map,
the kernel now works with page frame numbers; an old reference to
mem_map+i is now pfn_to_page(i). For the most part, code
which did not access mem_map directly will likely require no
changes in response to the discontiguous memory patches. But there will be
exceptions...
Andrew Morton's "-mm" patches have become the staging area for memory
management changes. The current patch as of this writing (2.5.34-mm1) contains a long list of other
changes, including:
- Directory indexes for the ext3 filesystem (by Daniel Phillips).
Calling this one "memory
management" is a bit of a stretch, of course, but it is a definite
performance improver when large directories are used.
- A patch by William Lee Irwin which lets the i386 architecture
maintain page tables in high memory.
- A change to the readv and writev system calls
(by Janet Morgan) which submits all segments for I/O in parallel; this
patch greatly speeds up direct disk I/O operations.
- Rohit Seth's large page patch for the i386 architecture (covered here
last month).
- A patch which allows copy_from_user and copy_to_user
to be called in atomic (non-blocking) situations. If the copy
operation encounters a page fault, it simply fails.
- ..and many other changes.
One interesting side result from work like the atomic copy_*_user
functions and the preemptible kernel is a formalization of just when the
kernel is performing an atomic operation. Code in the 2.4 (and prior)
kernel could check for certain situations where atomic operation was
required, such as when servicing an interrupt. In 2.5, other atomic
situations (i.e. holding a spinlock) are tracked, and it is easy for code
with a need to say "don't interrupt me or sleep now." The result should be
more explicit code and fewer bugs.
Comments (2 posted)
Paolo Ciarrocchi recently posted
an article
giving some benchmark results on his laptop; these results generally show
that 2.5.33 performs a little more slowly than the 2.4 kernels. Given that
much of the work in 2.5 has been oriented around performance, what is
happening here? Daniel Phillips
summarized
things as follows:
I suspect the overall performance loss on the laptop has more to do
with several months of focussing exclusively on the needs of 4-way
and higher smp machines.
The fear that large systems performance work would slow things down on the
hardware that most of us actually use has been present for years. Could it
be that the big iron is finally taking over the kernel?
The answer, for now, is probably "no." 2.5 development efforts have indeed
emphasized large systems performance so far. The small-systems performance
has not been impaired so much as simply passed over for now. As Andrew
Morton put it:
It's on the larger machines where 2.4 has problems. Fixing them up
makes the kernel broader, more general purpose. We're seeing
50-100% gains in some areas there. Giving away a few percent on
smaller machines at this stage is OK. But yup, we need to go and
get that back later
Small-systems tuning, of course, is work that can mostly happen after next
month's feature freeze. Expect some serious efforts in that direction -
small and embedded systems, after all, are a huge part of the Linux user
base. It wouldn't do to leave them out in the cold.
Comments (none posted)
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
Build system
Core kernel code
- Andrew Morton: readv/writev rework. "<span>This is Janet Morgan's patch which converts the readv/writev code
to submit all segments for IO before waiting on them, rather than
submitting each segment separately.</span>"
(September 11, 2002)
Development tools
Device drivers
- Jens Axboe: 2.5.34 IDE. "<span>I've updated 2.5 IDE code to match what is currently in 2.4.20-pre5-ac4,
since is much nicer and better structured.</span>"
(September 11, 2002)
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
- Ed Tomlinson: slabnow.
(September 10, 2002)
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
Distribution News
This week's Debian Weekly News tells us, "
The most interesting news
for this week probably is the removal of Qmail from Debian's [1]list
server. Thanks to the admin and listmaster team, the [2]server now happily
runs Postfix." Of course there are several other topics as well.
Full Story (comments: none)
Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7 has been
released. "
Libranet
is based on Debian's stable woody release with upgrades to major packages
like KDE and the addition of Libranet's custom installer, Libranet
Adminmenu, desktop configuration and the excellent OpenOffice
suite."
Comments (1 posted)
MandrakeSoft
announced the second Release
Candidate of the upcoming Mandrake Linux 9.0. This RC2 is the last
chance to influence 9.0's development by contributing reports and
suggestions.
The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter --
Issue #58 contains information about the 9.0 Release Candidate and much
more.
Open for Business
interviews Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past,
present, and future. "...I think the commercial dynamics around
Mandrake Linux, and the creation of MandrakeSoft, have been key factors
for its development and long-term success. But as you know, Mandrake is
much like a Free Software project that is financed by a commercial
company. This approach makes great difference when compared to other
Linux distributions!"
Last week's update to
cdrecord had a few problems. In some situations, noteably with
xcdroast, the mkisofs utility creates pseudo-empty filesystems. The
filesystem is the proper size, but the contents of the filesystem are not
available. New xcdroast packages are
available that are compatible with this version of cdrecord.
Comments (none posted)
Several changes were made to the
Slackware current tree this week. There
is a security fix, and numerous bug fixes in Xfree86. Other packages have
bug fixes as well. Click on Full Story to see the changes for this week,
or go to the
changelog
for complete details.
Full Story (comments: none)
New Distributions
The DebianEdu subproject is a new project aimed at making Debian the best
distribution available for educational use. Still in its early stages,
this subproject is actively looking for volunteers.
Full Story (comments: none)
The
OpenZaurus project
aims to build a kernel and filesystem for the Sharp SL-5000d and SL-5500
which will retain binary compatiblity with the existing Sharp system.
OpenZaurus will not use proprietary packages, but instead will emphasize
GPL licenced packages, such as replacing the Opera browser with
Konqueror/Embedded. The ultimate goal is to have a Sharp PDA with
enhanced usablility, particularly for developers and power users.
Comments (none posted)
Simply
GNUstep is a Linux/GNU distribution aimed at providing an OpenStep
feeling from bootup on. This is a stripped down distribution for ease of
use. (Think OS X for x86). Version
1 is now available. This
release is the first version that installs to the hard disk. It is
recommended for installation on a dedicated machine or a virtual
machine. Configuration is not complete, the user must manually configure
X11 and networking.
Comments (none posted)
Minor distribution updates
herbix has released
v1.0-36. This release has
been rewritten from scratch and has major bug fixes.
Comments (none posted)
uClinux has released
v2.5.34-uc0 with major
feature enhancements.
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
The first beta release of the new
Jabberwocky integrated development environment for LISP has been announced.
Jabberwocky supports CLISP versions 2.27 and 2.28 and CMUCL versions
18c and 18d. Support for SBCL and GCL is planned.
Jabberwocky works under Linux 2.4 and Windows, and has been released
under the GNU GPL.
Jabberwocky's list of features include:
- A lisp-aware editor with syntax coloring and code completion.
- An interaction pane for display of the LISP process.
- A browser for viewing source code, functions, and macros.
- A source level debugger.
For more information on Jabberwocky, see the following documentation:
As time marches on, the list of IDEs for Linux continues to grow,
Jabberwocky looks to be a useful addition to the Lisp developer's toolbox.
Thanks to author Marc Mertens.
Comments (none posted)
System Applications
Audio Projects
The September 5, 2002 edition of
Ogg Traffic
covers the latest developments in the Ogg Vorbis audio compression project.
Comments (none posted)
Education
Issue #78 of the
Linux in education report covers a K-12 educational panel
at an upcoming conference, the open-sourcing of
the e-education course management system by Jones Knowledge Inc.,
a Linux documentation CD from Belize, The Rapla resource management and scheduling system, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Electronics
A new version of the
Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler has been
released. See the
release notes for a list of new features and bugs that have been fixed.
Comments (none posted)
Embedded Systems
Cort Dougan
shows how he used RTLinux/Pro to write an embedded Linux cat-watching
camera panning device.
"
In this article, I'll present software for viewing live images and controlling a servo-motor-driven, dual-axis mounted camera via a web page. I built this system to watch Kepler, my sick cat, while I was at the office".
Comments (none posted)
Networking Tools
Oktay Altunergil
shows how to install Nagios, a network monitoring system.
"
'Nagios is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and when they get better' (from nagios.org). This is the same tool that used to be called NetSaint until recently. Although the NetSaint site is still up, all future development will be done on Nagios."
Comments (none posted)
Printing
A new developer release of AFPL Ghostscript
has been announced.
"
The major new code here is the DeviceN implementation, recently mearged in to the main development tree. People interested in DeviceN should take a look and help us iron out the remaining issues."
Comments (none posted)
Web Site Development
The latest
Zope Members News
items include Persistent Translation Service 0.1,
a Forms4ZPT preview, ReplaceSupport 1.0.0, ZopeTestCase 0.5.2,
MonZope 1.0, the first public alpha of Z Message Queue,
ZShell v1.50, and more.
Comments (none posted)
mnoGoSearch-php-3.2.0.beta6, the PHP frontend to the mnoGoSearch
web site search engine
has been released.
MnoGoSearch-php-extension-1.65 is also available.
Comments (none posted)
Uche Ogbuji
introduces Apache 2.0 filter modules on IBM's developerWorks.
"
Apache became the most popular Web server in part because of the rich availability of third-party extensions for the server, and because its open architecture made it quite easy to roll your own extensions. Of course, nothing is ever just easy enough, so in developing Apache 2.0, one of the main goals was to improve the Apache API to make it even easier to develop extensions."
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
A new experimental version of the Conexant HSF (softmodem) driver for
Linux has been released. The internal HP Omnibook xe4500 series laptop
modems are now supported.
Full Story (comments: none)
Cameron Laird
writes about a multi-language satellite control system at JPL.
"
How do you harness a satellite control system written in three languages, on four development platforms, and deployed to multiple client environments? With open source, naturally. When one wrong move can cost millions, rely on teamwork, smart design, and open standards to keep the project -- if not the satellite -- from going down in flames."
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
Version 1.4.4 of the
WaveSurfer
sound visualization and manipulation tool has been released.
Changes
include a new video plugin, bug fixes, and minor improvements.
Comments (none posted)
Progress continues on the
Ardour
multi-track audio system. New features include plugin parameter automation,
GUI usability tweaks, drag-n-drop redirect re-ordering,
on the fly computation of peakfiles, and a "verbose" mouse cursor.
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Environments
The latest additions to the
FootNotes
site include Sodipodi 0.25, libGDA, libGnomeDB, Mergeant 0.8.193,
the GNOME 2.0.2 Desktop Release Candidate 1, GNOME System Tools,
Beast/BSE 0.4.1, GEP, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Games
The August-September 2002 edition of
the Chopping Block is out with the latest WorldForge game development
news. Topics include Lagrangian Mechanics,
Debian packaging, Kai's pirate tale, the Cronos Project, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Version 1.5.3 of the
Pygame game modules for Python
has been released.
The
WhatsNew document
lists new CD utilities, movie rendering capabilities, and bug fixes.
Comments (none posted)
Interoperability
Issue #134 of the
Wine Weekly News
is out. Topics include the new Wine-20020904, the Quartz multimedia DLL,
Native vs. Builtin DLL's, Windows Printer Drivers, Character Sets,
Splitting Up Unit Tests, Mono / Winforms + Winelib, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Multimedia
The Blender Foundation Newsletter for September 10, 2002 is out.
News includes the successful purchase of the Blender code from the
previous owner, which will allow Blender to be released under the GPL,
and the project plan for Open Blender.
Full Story (comments: none)
Office Applications
The OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 Alpha Software Development Kit (SDK),
has been released.
Comments (none posted)
Issue #107
and
Issue #108 of the AbiWord Weekly News are out, with the latest developments on the AbiWord word processor project.
Comments (none posted)
KDE.News has
an announcement
for version 1.2 of KOffice.
"
What with a truly great
new (English-only) thesaurus, enhanced scriptability of suite components,
WYSIWYG on-screen display, bi-di text, KWord mail-merge and footnotes,
KSpread database connectivity, enhanced printing and new sorting functionality,
who's to argue?"
Comments (1 posted)
Web Browsers
Version 1.0.1 of the
Mozilla web browser has been
released. The
release notes
state:
"
Mozilla 1.0.1 contains over 650 bugfixes including approximately 25 security fixes, and over 130 stability and dataloss fixes. In addition to these important security and crash fixes, 1.0.1 has many more fixes for standards support, UI correctness and polish, performance, and site compatibility."
Comments (none posted)
The
Mozilla Independent Status Reports for September 6, 2002 are out.
Updated packages include XULmine, CaScadeS, Securita, and Beonex.
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Version 2.0 of Fontconfig, a library for configuring and customizing font access, has been released.
Full Story (comments: none)
KDE.News
covers
the release of version 3.0 PR2 of the Quanta Plus web site
development tool for KDE, and other Quanta developments.
"
So what's new with Quanta? Well, we've released 3.0 PR2, so you're encouraged
to check it out for yourself! You'll find auto-completion for HTML and tag
attributes, PHP
built-in function auto-completion, a revised document structure tree that
recurses
PHP structures and embedded HTML, and more. One exciting bit of work in
progress is the ability to set different DTDs as well as offer tagging
functionality
in the form of pseudo DTDs to script languages."
Comments (none posted)
Languages and Tools
Caml
Check out
The Caml Hump
for this week's Caml-based software developments. New additions
include the O'Caml X Game library, Syndex, the Zen toolkit,the
Baire data structure library, and enhanced Ocaml documentation.
Comments (none posted)
Java
The September 7 edition of the
Kaffe Weekly News
is out with news from the Kaffe open-source Java community.
Comments (none posted)
Giuseppe Naccarato
illustrates the use of
nonblocking sockets in Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4.
"
As of Java 1.4, a programmer can use a brand-new set of APIs for I/O operations. This is the result of JSR 51, which started in January 2000 and has been available to programmers since Java 1.4 beta. Some of the most important new features in Java 1.4 deal with subjects such as high performance read/write operations on both files and sockets, regular expressions, decoding/encoding character sets, in-memory mapping, and locking files. In this article, I will discuss one particular new concept -- the new I/O API: nonblocking sockets."
Comments (none posted)
Emmanuel Proulx
discusses EJB inheritance in part 1 of a series on O'Reilly.
"
Entity beans are objects that represent data coming from a persistent store, such as a database. The key word here is objects. Entity beans encapsulate the data and business logic. But what about the two other principles, inheritance and polymorphism?
The bad news is that entity beans do not easily enable the use of these principles. The good news is that if you follow certain restrictions and tricks, it can be done. This series of articles describes some techniques to put inheritance and polymorphism back into entity beans."
Comments (none posted)
Lisp
The first Beta version of the
CLISP Oracle Interface,
a GNU CLISP module for accessing Oracle databases, has been released.
Comments (1 posted)
The first public version of
LambdaTensor, a Common Lisp library for symbolic and numeric Lie algebra and Lie group calculations, has been released under the LGPL.
Comments (none posted)
Perl
The September 2-8, 2002
Perl5 Porters Digest
covers the CLONE method, v-strings, pseudo-hashes, and more Perl topics.
Comments (none posted)
The September 1-8, 2002 edition of
This Week on Perl 6 looks at Parrot 0.0.8,
approximate string matching in regexes, regex stack manipulations,
ARGDIR, making Parrot non-Perl centric, implementing Scheme pairs,
class aliasing, and much more.
Comments (none posted)
Sam Tregar
covers thread programming with Perl on O'Reilly.
"
Perl 5.8.0 is the first version of Perl with a stable threading implementation. Threading has the potential to change the way we program in Perl, and even the way we think about programming. This article explores Perl's new threading support through a simple toy application - an elevator simulator."
Comments (none posted)
PHP
PHP 4.2.3
has been released.
This version is a bug-fixing maintenance release, see the
ChangeLog
for all of the details.
Comments (none posted)
Issue #102 of the
PHP Weekly Summary
is out. Here's the quick summary of topics:
"
PHP 4.2.3 is out, Win32 ZE2 preview, PHP.net e-mail, ext/sysvmsg, Ext/audio?, User-agent: built-in, Not one, but two conferences, Ext/pcre, ./configure enable-all, Internals zend_stack, Ext/overload, Mysql_db_query() (continued)."
Comments (none posted)
Joao Prado Maia
introduces Smarty on O'Reilly's OnLamp site.
"
Smarty is a somewhat new development in the PHP world, and it brings several new and unique features. One of these unique features is that Smarty 'compiles' the parsed templates into PHP scripts, and then reuses the compiled template when appropriate. Obviously, this brings a huge performance improvement over other template solutions, as the main PHP script doesn't need to parse and output the same template on every request."
Comments (none posted)
Python
After a long absence, the Python-dev summary has returned with Brett Cannon
as the author. This issue looks at type categories, lessons from the
tempfile.py rewrite, and a number of other topics.
Full Story (comments: none)
Here is this week's Python-URL, with news and links for the Python communtity.
Full Story (comments: none)
This week, the Pythonware
Daily Python-URL
looks at SemanText 0.72.1, Building an RSS Newsreader, Straw 0.8,
SiPy: a small discrete event simulation package for Python,
secure protocols and data encryption, shell utilities, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Ruby
This week's
Ruby Garden
shows how to allow *array expansion anywhere in a list.
Comments (none posted)
Topics on this week's
Ruby Weekly News
include RJudy-0.1: Judy Arrays for Ruby, a new home for the Ruby/Tk demos,
GridFlow 0.6.1: a multi-dimensional dataflow processing library,
Ruby-GNOME and Ruby-GTK 0.30, the YAML.rb 0.40 structured data format,
ZenWeb 2.13.1, RDE 0.9.7.0, RubyCocoa 0.2.7, the FreeRIDE IDE, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Scheme
The September 9, 2002 edition of the Scheme Weekly News covers
a number of new versions of several Scheme-based projects.
Full Story (comments: none)
Tcl/Tk
The September 9, 2002 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
is out with the latest Tcl news.
Full Story (comments: none)
XML
Joel Rivera and Len Taing
introduce XForms on IBM's developerWorks.
"
Traditional HTML forms violate many of the tenets of good markup language design, frequently mixing presentation and data. In this article, Joel Rivera and Len Taing introduce you to XForms, an extension of XHTML that represents the next generation of Web forms. Though XForms is still in an embryonic state, it holds great promise: For instance, a form written with XForms can be written once and displayed in optimal ways on several different platforms."
Comments (none posted)
Bob DuCharme
explains
XML declarations on O'Reilly.
"
The XML declaration at the beginning of an XML document is not necessary, but it's the best way to say "this is definitely an XML document and here's the release of XML it conforms to."
Comments (none posted)
Debuggers
The GNUstep Weekly Editorial for September 8, 2002 is out
with the latest GNUstep development news.
Full Story (comments: none)
A new 5.3 branch has been created for the
GDB debugger.
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Joe Barr
writes a small application using
Kylix 3 Open Edition (K3OE).
"
This week, I'll be describing my experiences actually using K3OE, particularly its brand-spanking-new C++ IDE. Previous versions of Kylix have been for Delphi only.
I know, I know true Linux geeks never use RAD tools, or even IDEs. Not unless you consider Emacs to be an IDE, that is. For the rest of the world, RADs and IDEs are very handy tools that provide real productivity gains. Management likes that."
Comments (2 posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Linux in Business
Business News
The Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group (AUUG, Inc.) announced the
winners of the inaugural Australian Open Source Awards. The awards
encourage and recognise the excellence and dedication of Australians
contributing in the Open Source arena.
Full Story (comments: none)
This newspaper article mentions Sun's plans for using StarOffice and
Linux to challenge Microsoft's desktop dominance.
"
Sun intends to combine its own software such as StarOffice with the free
open-source operating system Linux to offer business-users a cost-effective
alternative to Microsoft Office, which recently became more expensive. It is
also likely that Sun will expand its Linux server offering to compete with
Microsoft." More detailed announcements will come out during
Sun's annual network event on September 18-20, 2002.
Comments (none posted)
The Trustix Newsletter for September 2002 looks at what the company has
been doing in the past month.
Full Story (comments: none)
Press Releases
Open Source Announcements
Distributions and Bundled Products
Software for Linux
Products and Services Using Linux
Hardware with Linux support
Linux at Work
Java Products
Books and Documentation
Trade Shows and Conferences
Partnerships
Financial Results
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Wired
takes a
look at how bills like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have
caused some PC manufacturers to build PCs with hardwired copyright
protection. "
Today, manufacturers seem more likely to produce
computers that operate more like VCRs or DVD players than the PCs people
are accustomed to. These machines have copy-protection embedded in the
hardware, much like home recorders that keep people from making copies of
videos they have purchased."
Comments (2 posted)
News.com
covers
Red Hat founder Bob Young's latest venture, the Lulu Tech Circus.
"
"Attendees that go to trade shows feel somewhat used...like so much cattle fodder for the vendors," Young said. The Circus is about "empowering consumers. It's about knowledge and understanding."
Unlike other trade shows, which focus on a common--and often times narrow--theme, Lulu Tech Circus will be a menagerie of all things technology, Young said. The conference is structured around five tracks, called "experiences," which will each have a specific focus."
Comments (1 posted)
News.com
examines subtle details of the DMCA that allows a copyright owner
to subpoena subscriber information from an ISP when a copyright violation
is suspected.
"
"What the RIAA is really seeking, at the end of the day, is to shift the burden of copyright enforcement from its own members--who apparently would prefer not to alienate potential customers by suing them outright--to an ISP that does nothing more than provide an Internet connection to the customer," the brief says."
Comments (1 posted)
News.com
reports
that the law school at Duke University has received a $1 Million grant, to
be used for challenging recent expansions of the U.S. copyright laws.
"
The school, which plans to announce the gift at a conference in Washington on Thursday, is using the money to fund a center focused on finding "the correct balance" between intellectual property rights and material that should be in the public domain.
James Boyle, a Duke law professor and co-director of the school's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, says that the center is likely to look skeptically at recent laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and a measure that extended duration of copyrights by 20 years."
Comments (none posted)
Companies
TechWeb
reports on the release of the JRockit 7.0 Java VM from BEA
Systems, which is targeted at Linux and Windows.
"
The problem, said Stahl, is that those three vendors have bigger priorities than optimizing Intel platforms for Java. Microsoft is pushing it's own .NET framework, Sun focuses on Solaris, and IBM has a slew of legacy platforms to support (though it arguably has done much to advance Java on Linux and Windows)."
Comments (none posted)
ZDNet
looks at bigger issues behind Dell's sale of a Linux-based cluster
to SUNY.
"
This is yet another episode in the continuing saga of the fall from grace of proprietary technologies, the commoditization of processing power, and the difference between the must-haves and the nice-to-haves in budget-constrained times. It's also a signal that the high-end technical computing space is no longer a sanctuary for vendors of premium-priced boutique systems."
Comments (none posted)
News.com
covers
Bruce Perens' departure from HP. "
He has worked with HP to broaden
its Linux and open-source efforts, but has also occasionally come into
conflict with the company. Perens had planned to show attendees at a
midsummer open-source convention how to circumvent controls on DVD
players, but backed off under pressure from HP."
Comments (none posted)
The NY Times
covers
Bruce Perens' departure from HP. "
After the merger with
Compaq, Hewlett also became the largest vendor of Linux-based server
computers, ahead of Dell Computer and I.B.M. Yet Hewlett's bet on Linux
still pales compared with its reliance on Microsoft. And after the
merger, it was mainly former Compaq executives who took senior positions
overseeing the Linux business." (Registration required)
Thanks
to Jim Turley
Comments (none posted)
ZDNet
looks at a new
project by Intel and Philips: The Pronto++ reference platform.
"
The platform runs on Intel's PXA250 processor, which uses ARM-based
XScale technology. A representative said that the platform will initially
use a third-party embedded Linux distribution, although the vendor has not
been named."
Comments (none posted)
News.com
covers
dual boot computers from QliTech Linux Computers. "
The company is
offering Macs, with standard Apple warranties, pre-loaded with Linux
software from SuSE, Mandrake, Debian or Gentoo, with Mac OS X installed
on a separate partition. The machines are sold at Apple's typical retail
prices."
Comments (none posted)
This article
from the Register covers the recent use of Linux by SGI.
"
Earlier this summer, SGI launched a tour to reassure customers that its heart
and soul remained with MIPS and Irix. Today it touted impressive memory
benchmarks for its Itanium2 hardware, due to be launched next year, and it's
running Linux."
Comments (none posted)
Business
Several readers have pointed out this
NY Times
article which introduces open source software, and Linux, as an
alternative to Microsoft. "
As open source software, especially
Linux, has spread, countries in other regions have also come to regard it
as both a model of software development and perhaps an engine of economic
growth. The government proposals and projects are efforts to position
their nations to exploit a promising trend in technology." [The
NY Times is a registration required site]
Comments (none posted)
The San Diego Union-Tribune
reports on a partnership between Lindows.com and
Microtel Computer Systems, the companies will be assembling
ultra-inexpensive PCs that will be sold at Wall-Mart stores.
"
How can a new computer be so inexpensive? For one thing, it doesn't come
with the Microsoft Windows operating system, which sells for about $199 itself.
Instead, the computers are based on the Linux computing platform and use the
Lindows operating system. They are being sold on Walmart.com, the Web site
of the Wal-Mart discount store chain. They also don't come with monitors,
which sell separately for as little as $75."
Comments (none posted)
ZDNet
has
a baseball analogy for the open source model, involving a recent
issue with Major League Baseball (MLB) logos on the web. "
MLB may
not understand the Web model. But if it wants to recruit new followers
(as well as win back those it has already lost), it needs to think of its
intellectual property in the same way as the W3C. Unlike Disney, for
which visuals are its main selling proposition, logos are not MLB's main
product."
Comments (none posted)
The International Herald Tribune
examines why businesses are
choosing Linux. "
Where governments deal with issues of
open-source culture and monopoly-busting, small companies indicate three
main reasons for taking the plunge: reliability, security and
cost."
Thanks to Martijn Dekkers
Comments (none posted)
Interviews
Shashdot
answers Perl questions on Slashdot.
"
Not only did Larry Wall answer your questions, but he said they were excellent questions. You've got to love Larry Wall, not just because he's a nice guy and created Perl, but also because he is the first Slashdot interview guest ever to send his answers preformatted in squeaky-clean HTML."
Comments (none posted)
OfB
interviews Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past,
present, and future. "
...I think the commercial dynamics around
Mandrake Linux, and the creation of MandrakeSoft, have been key factors
for its development and long-term success. But as you know, Mandrake is
much like a Free Software project that is financed by a commercial
company. This approach makes great difference when compared to other
Linux distributions!"
Comments (none posted)
Resources
The September 5, 2002 edition of the LinuxDevices
Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the latest embedded Linux news.
Full Story (comments: none)
Here's a
Linux
Journal article on the use of in-memory database systems (IMDS) in
embedded products. "
In-memory databases have emerged specifically
to meet the performance needs and resource availability in embedded
systems. As the name implies, IMDSes reside entirely in memory--they
never go to disk."
Comments (none posted)
For those not scared off by the preceding article, the Register
provides a
tutorial on installing SuSE 8.0 on an Xbox. "
First you need a
mod chip, the XBE bootloader and patched SuSE kernel downloaded from the
Project, a SuSE nforce driver from the nVidia site, the correct USB adapter
for the Xbox and (easy-peasy this bit) a USB keyboard. Oh, and a SuSE 8.0
compatible PC."
Comments (1 posted)
News.com
reports
that Microsoft may backtrack on an earlier pledge not to use its Xbox Live
online gaming service to crack down on "mod chips". "
The 14-page
user agreement and privacy notice included with the first Xbox Live kits
sent to beta testers specifies that Microsoft reserves the right to revoke
Xbox Live privileges for anyone with a hacked Xbox and to scan consoles on
the network to enforce its rights."
Comments (none posted)
IBM developerWorks
shows
how the open source model helps satellite engineers with the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "
How do you harness a satellite
control system written in three languages, on four development platforms,
and deployed to multiple client environments? With open source,
naturally. When one wrong move can cost millions, rely on teamwork, smart
design, and open standards to keep the project -- if not the satellite --
from going down in flames."
Comments (none posted)
Reviews
LinuxDevices.com
looks at
Intel's new "Digital Media Adaptor". "
The device, which is based
on an XScale microarchitecture PCA210 'applications processor' and runs an
embedded Linux operating system, receives digital media from the PC via
802.11 wireless networking and UpnP technologies, and connects to TVs and
stereos using standard audio/video cables -- much like a DVD
player."
Comments (none posted)
Linux Journal
reviews the
Linux Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Trent
R. Hein. "
So many of the available books about Linux are either too
generic to be of much use for doing serious systems administration or so
specific that they are useful only for one version of one Linux
distribution. This book is an exception. First, it is heavy on concept, so
you actually learn how things work instead of learning how to be a
technician. The specifics are then addressed by showing what you do on Red
Hat 7.2, SuSE 7.3 and Debian 3.0."
Comments (none posted)
Linux Journal
reviews
Linux Routers - A Primer for Network Administrators, 2nd
Edition. "
Each chapter on router configuration begins with an
introduction of what tasks the router needs to accomplish, followed by
the specific kernel options or software packages required for that task.
Any hardware needed for the router also is introduced. Next come
step-by-step instructions for configuring the Linux kernel and
discussions of troubleshooting procedures. Illustrations and tables are
provided to clarify the material presented. There is also information on
utilities or diagnostic applications useful in specific situations."
Comments (none posted)
News.com
reviews
Sony's new Cocoon, a hard disk video recording device that runs Linux.
"
Sony on Wednesday gave a fresh peek into its strategy for linking consumer electronics to the Web, unveiling a Net-connected video recorder that can seek out and record TV programs it thinks its owner would like.
The device, which uses a hard-disk drive to record, instead of optical discs or magnetic tapes, will be the first of Sony's "Cocoon" line of products that aim to become an alternative to the PC for accessing Internet content."
Comments (2 posted)
Miscellaneous
Linux Journal has
an article
that describes a Windows user's experience with the switch to Linux.
"
Did I want to switch because I longed for the good old days
when you knew, or at least
could have a good idea about, what making a change to your computer would
cause that computer to do? Was it because I suspected some better
operating system was out there? Was I concerned, after reading my End User
License Agreement, that use of
the operating system implied a right for the vendor to gain access to my
machine and apply unnecessary or unwanted updates? In a nutshell, the
answer to all these questions was yes."
Comments (none posted)
GNU-Friends
reports on the use of the Koha library system by a library in Ohio.
"
Nelsonville Public Library, in Athens County, Ohio has recently decided to migrate to Koha, a free software integrated library system. While reviewing it, they decided that they felt that it needed three additional features to meet their needs. Instead of dropping it from consideration, they decided to take the money that they would otherwise spend on licensing fees and pay someone to implement these features."
Comments (1 posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Announcements
Resources
Several GNU manuals
are now available
in printed form. Available titles include the
GNU Scientific Library Reference Manual, the GNU Octave Manual, and
An Introduction to R.
Comments (1 posted)
The Linux Standards Base has
announced the
public review of the Itanium Architecture "archLSB-IA64" ABI
specification. The public review begins Friday Sept. 6th, 2002 and will
end Friday Sept. 27, 2002. Your reviews, opinions, and contributions are
welcome.
Comments (none posted)
Upcoming Events
The Singapore Linux Conference, currently scheduled for October 14 - 16,
2002, is looking for sponsors to help pay speakers.
Full Story (comments: none)
PHPCon 2002, a conference on the
PHP web scripting language, will be held in Millbrae, California on
October 24 and 25, 2002.
Full Story (comments: none)
Early planning is in the works for the Python UK Conference, 2003,
to be held on April 2 and 3, 2003 in England.
Comments (none posted)
Registration
is now open
for the Ruby Conference 2002, to be held in Seattle, WA on September
1-3, 2002.
Comments (1 posted)
Doc Searls has written
a review
of the Gnomedex conference.
Comments (none posted)
Use Perl has
an announcement for the first Perl Meetup, to be held in London, England
on September 19, 2002.
Comments (none posted)
| September 12 - 13, 2002 | Open source GIS - GRASS users conference 2002(GRASS) | (Centro Servizi Culturali S. Chiara)Trento, Italy |
| September 12 - 13, 2002 | Perl 6 Mini::Conference | (ETF, E1, ETH Zurich)Zurich, Switzerland |
| September 16 - 20, 2002 | 9th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference | Vancouver, BC, Canada |
| September 18 - 20, 2002 | Yet Another Perl Conference Europe 2002(YAPC::Europe 2002) | Munich, Germany |
| September 25 - 27, 2002 | The Second Open Source Content Management Conference(OSCOM) | (Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California)Berkeley, CA |
| September 27 - 29, 2002 | Lulu Tech Circus | (State Fairgrounds Complex)Raleigh, North Carolina, USA |
| October 11 - 13, 2002 | V Congreso Hispalinux | San Sebastian-Donostia, Spain |
| October 14 - 16, 2002 | The Singapore Linux Conference 2002 | (Le Meridien Singapore)Singapore |
| October 14 - 15, 2002 | The Open Group Conference | (Hotel Martinez Palace)Cannes, France |
| October 17 - 18, 2002 | Open Source for E-Government | Washington, DC |
| October 24 - 25, 2002 | PHPCon 2002 | (The Clarion Hotel SFO)Millbrae, California |
| October 28 - 31, 2002 | International Lisp Conference 2002 - The Art of Lisp | San Francisco, CA |
| October 30 - 31, 2002 | Think-Linux, The Solutions Show | (The Pinnacle)Toledo OH |
| November 1 - 3, 2002 | 2nd Annual Ruby Conference(RubyConf 2002) | (Washington State Trade and Convention Center)Seattle, Washington |
| November 3 - 6, 2002 | International PHP 2002 conference | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 3 - 8, 2002 | 16th System Administration Conference(Lisa '02) | Philadelphia, PA |
Comments (none posted)
Software announcements
Here are the software announcements, courtesy of
Freshmeat.net. They are available in
two formats:
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Letters to the editor
| From: |
| Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org> |
| To: |
| gnu@gnu.org |
| Subject: |
| Releasing old software into public domain. |
| Date: |
| Thu, 5 Sep 2002 18:42:56 -0400 (EDT) |
| Cc: |
| letters@lwn.net |
Hello!
Reading recent discussions in the online media, it is clear that many
people have an issue with the copyright laws that make copyrights remain
in force for many decades.
I believe that the Free Software Foundation should release into the public
domain all the software currently under GPL, that is at least 15 years
old, and for which FSF is the sole copyright holder.
GPL is a great license because it uses the copyright law to make software
free. However, 15 years should be enough for software to enjoy copyright
protection. Even when our goals are noble, we should not be using the
copyright law beyond the fair limit that we would like it to have.
In my opinion, FSF could make a good point by releasing its old software
into the public domain. That would be an example for other copyright
holders, even those who produce non-free software.
Possible damage to the free software would be negligible. I cannot
imagine software companies craving for Emacs or gcc sources from 1987.
In fact, I could not even find gcc that old on the GNU FTP site - the
oldest version is dated 1988.
You see, 15 years is like eternity for software. One cannot make money
from 15 years old software without twisting the law and doing immoral
things. I cannot imagine the Free Software Foundation suing somebody for
embedding 15 years old software into proprietary applications. Then let's
make it clear to everyone that we won't ever do it.
I really hope that FSF will use this opportunity to influence copyright
law and set a good precedent for other software copyright holders.
--
Best regards,
Pavel Roskin,
free software developer
Comments (3 posted)
| From: |
| Tres Melton <class5@pacbell.net> |
| To: |
| letters@lwn.net |
| Subject: |
| [new] Koha for libraries and ??? for ABA and ??? for HMOs |
| Date: |
| Fri, 06 Sep 2002 03:59:45 -0700 |
Dear LWN readers,
I recently posted this to gnu-friend.org in response to a <a
href="http://lwn.net/Articles/9255/">link</a> that I followed from LWN
and thought that a wider audience might be more appropriate. The
following is my comment:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an awesome thing to do. I'm glad that a single library took the
plunge but it might have been easier and cheaper for a number of them to
invest together.
What would be cool is if the American Bar Association, a hugh consumer
of office software, were to spearhead the development of a free software
word processor. They could start with Abiword or one of the many other
packages available. they could then fund the addition of features like
citing legal information, legal templates, a spell checker that
understood the latin terms that are used in legal briefs, etc.. If this
took off then most legal firms (not that they are my favorite entities
in the world) could save millions of dollars on office packages. Further
all of the legal papers that get filed are in the public domain (unless
a judge seals them) so why not use a public format for the documents so
that the public can truly access them. This would certainly make it
easier for non-laywers to get information that they may need.
This idea could also be used for the entire health care industry. If
congress wanted to cut costs in the health care industry imagine how far
they could go by making the forms standardized for all parts of the
industry. Insurance should like this as well. If the entire industry
used the same software then all of the documents would be in the same
format - both from the disk storage point of view and from the page
layout point of view. This would make it easier for anyone in the
industry to process information since common fields would always be in
the same place in the document. Everyone in the industry would have
access to the software for free and could thus save millions. The
documents could be exchanged between pharmacies, hospitals, doctors,
patients, insurance companies, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
without the need to reformat or re-enter the information. There are
literally thousands of different forms that are required by different
insurance carriers and all but one could be eliminated.
These are just two examples where free software could benefit entire
industries. Both of these projects are too big to be taken on by a
single lawyer or doctor but the Bar Association is big enough to handle
the leagl word processor and any of the government agencies that I
mentioned could take care of the medical one. Further the government is
large enough that if they mandated that all reports that are submitted
to them be in the new format that everyone else would just kinda fall in
line.
The real place that Free Software would be of value is if it simply
eliminated the need for proprietary software in most of the industries
that don't really need it. Obviously I'm not advocating running a
radiation machine on Free Software but the reports that it generates
could certainly be in a common format. Almost all industries could start
to develope their own software: Banking, Investment Houses, Accountants,
etc.. Some software could be used across many industries. Take
scheduling for example: you make appointments at the doctor's office
just like you do to get your hair cut. I think that there would be a
business model in a software development company getting a bunch of
companies from the same industry together and say "Software is an
expense to you. For some upfront money now we can eliminate a large
portion of you software spending in the future." Companies that do not
write software to sell but to run their business on do not compete with
their software (for the most part) so why not level that part of their
playing field so that they can focus their energies in areas where they
do compete.
Construction companies and architects are another one that comes to
mind. Let them compete on the price and style of the homes that they
build and eliminate the cost of software. There are many programming
libraries that will run equally well on Winblows as they will on Linux.
We can't expect them to ditch what they are familiar with until we can
prove that everything that they need to run their business will run on a
free OS: GNU/Linux
Best Regards,
Tres Melton
class5 (at) pacbell.net
Comments (none posted)
| From: |
| "Anand Srivastava" <Anand.Srivastava@ascom.ch> |
| To: |
| letters@lwn.net |
| Subject: |
| Make BAD Patents costly |
| Date: |
| Thu, 5 Sep 2002 14:13:45 +0200 |
Hi,
Today, I realized what is wrong with the Patent system. There are not
enough balances. It doesn't penalize people who create bad patent. We
can't expect Patent Office to know whether a given Patent is about a real
breakthrough. So we should modify the Patent Law in such a way that
creating bad patents would be costly. Basically make it so expensive to
create non-defendable patents that it becomes profitable to challenge bad
patents in court.
If a holder loses in court not only does he/she/it loses the ability to use
it but also has to pay for the expenditure of the court case. Since Patents
are used for making money, it must be deemed that the Patent holder was
benefitting illegally, so must be told to pay an amount which depends on
the income of the holder for the duration the patent was in effect. This
must be reduced by the no. of patents the holder has. This fine must be
increased if the patent was done in bad faith. Also the patent should be
made invalid if any point in the patent is found to be invalid. This will
force applicants to make their patents as narrow as necessary.
Ofcourse there will need to be some balances to this as well. If a holder
loses on the basis of prior art then the holder should be required to only
pay the case fees, not the fines, if the holder can prove that he/she/it
had no idea that the solution already existed. Also if the holder wins then
the loser must pay the holder the case fees. This will act as a deterrent
to suing without much reason.
Also Patent lifetime must be short for software, something like 5yrs should
be fine.
-anandsr
Comments (3 posted)
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