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Michael R | 9 Feb 17:18
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LDAP authentication process sanity check


When a client app uses LDAP for authentication . . .

Must it
request user attributes (for example email addr / mail ) from the server?
  or
Does the server push those attributes?

My sniffing
says if you asked for authentication all you get is a result code showing
success or failure.  But in the context of what we've done I cannot yet
rule out some caching of information by the application.  

So
which is it?

--

-- 
     Michael Rasmussen

http://www.jamhome.us/
 Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
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Richard C. Steffens | 8 Feb 20:13
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Resetting the WordPress admin user password

Back in early December, 2011, I installed WordPress on my home Apache 
web server. Then I got busy and didn't use it. I carefully logged the 
password for the admin user in the notebook I use to track changes I 
make to the machine. That's not where I usually write down passwords, so 
when I had some time the other day to fiddle with WordPress again I 
couldn't find the password. The log in screen offers to reset the 
password and send it by e-mail but it appears that's on option that I 
have to turn on. Of course, I didn't turn it on, and I need the password 
to get to the place where I can turn that feature on. Sigh.

So, I Googled the problem and found this page:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Resetting_Your_Password

I followed the instructions in the section "Through MySQL Command Line" 
but I still can't get in. I do remember my MySQL password and I can 
successfully step through all the steps in that method of resetting a 
password. I tried both the one where I manually run md5sum on a file 
with just the new password in it, and the version of the method that 
takes advantage of the MD5 function in newer versions of MySQL. Both 
looked like they worked, and both produced the same md5 string. But 
neither of them got me past the login screen for WordPress.

At this point I'm willing to drop the wordpress database and start the 
installation over since I don't have anything of significance invested 
in it, but that doesn't seem like the UNIX way. So I ask the assembled 
wizards if there's something else I can try.

Thanks for any and all ideas.
(Continue reading)

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Scott Garman | 8 Feb 05:46
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Anyone use the Blue Snowball USB mic w/ Linux?

Hello,

I'm getting serious about developing some screencasts at work, and I'd 
like to get a decent microphone for voice recording. I have some friends 
who have done podcasting before who rave about the Snowball USB 
microphone by Blue:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Snowball-Microphone-Aluminum/dp/B002OO333Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328676180&sr=8-2

My searches are coming up with conflicting reports on whether this 
microphone works with Linux. As I'm trying to sort this out, I thought 
it wouldn't hurt to ask on this list if anyone has experience with this 
mic under Linux.

Alternate recommendations for something good quality known to work very 
well with Linux at under $75 are also welcome.

Thanks,

Scott
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Rich Shepard | 7 Feb 18:00
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Upgrading BIOS: Dell Latitude E5410

   After a half-hour on the phone with a tech rep from Dell I learn that Dell
builds some portables (including some Latitude models) so that the BIOS can
be upgrade with linux (i.e., they provide the firmare as .hdr files), and
others can _only_ be upgraded via Windows or DOS. My E5410 (and its
replacement, the E5420) will run linux perfectly but the BIOSes cannot be
upgraded with this OS.

   If someone has a FreeDOS bootable USB stick on which I can copy the two
.exe files (because the BIOS version needs to be upgraded first to A10, then
A11) I would like to borrow it.

   Alternatively, if someone can teach me how to make a bootable FreeDOS USB
drive with a vfat file system rather than an iso9660 file system
(read-only) from fd11src.iso, that would work, too.

   I'm quite upset that Dell would support linux on only some models and not
others. But, since I've a lot of money invested in this laptop I want to
upgrade the BIOS so it will use all 8G of RAM and fix a few other glitches.

Rich
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Roderick A. Anderson | 6 Feb 20:19
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Bad coding samples/examples

I'm looking for some examples of bad coding.  Specifically programs that 
  ignore their children (creating zombie processes) and that do not exit 
cleanly (creating orphans) for init to adopt.

Though that may sound like I know what I'm talking about I don't 
completely.  I was asked during an interview about the kill command 
which led to getting rid of zombie process.  I made a complete fool of 
myself with my answer (who frets about no-human zombies theses days?) so 
went a-lookin' and found the _right_ (more correct?) answer(s).  Now I'd 
like to test them.
    The example code I've found so far has been pretty simplistic -- 
create a bunch of zombie processes then exit cleanly, cleaning up after 
itself.  Plus the program didn't run long enough to even test using 
'kill -s SIGCHLD <ppid>'.
    Finally I'd like it to exit without cleaning up causing the 
zombie(s) to become an orphans.

Not asking much am I?  :-)

TIA,
Rod
--

--
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Rich Shepard | 5 Feb 22:56
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Extracting Contents From .exe

   I'm trying to update the BIOS on my Dell Latitude E5410. The only firmware
files I can download from Dell come in .exe format. I have installed
'dellBiosUpdate-compat' which works with a .hdr file, not an .exe file.

   I've installed Wine on that machine (aside: despite the disclaimer on the
SlackBuilds.org web site, Wine builds, installs, and runs using the multilib
and 32-bit-compat libraries), but it won't run the .exe file and neither
will dellBiosUpdate-compat.

   I thought that perhaps the .exe was a self-extracting archive, but it's
not and will not produce the .hdr file with a Windows version of unzip.exe
under Wine.

   For those of you working in a multi-boot environment and knowledgeable of
Windows, is there a way to extract a .hdr file from these .exe files, or do
I need to beg Dell for the proper format?

   Dell does have a directory of .hdr files, but not for the ID 0x0429 that
is my machine; they have 0x0420 and 0x043c files.

Rich
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Rich Shepard | 5 Feb 22:18
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Using wget/curl to download all files in directory

   I've read the man pages for wget and curl and tried various command line
syntaxa (syntaxes? syntaxim?) but none worked. Perhaps these are not the
proper tools (I installed a firefox add-on called DownThemAll but could not
find instructions how to use it.)

   What I'd like to do is specify a URL and download all files in that
directory, or a wildcard-specified set such as *.t?z.

   I'd appreciate learning how to use wget, curl, or another tool to do this.

Rich
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Mike Connors | 5 Feb 07:35
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Re: PLUG Digest, Vol 89, Issue 5

>
> If you are running a DHCP client, then when your dynamic ipaddr
> changes your ping will continue to succeed and you won't be able to
> tell that anything has changed.  The better answer is to take control
> of the software running on the gateway and just have a script *there*
> watch for a ipaddr change.  OpenWrt FTW!

In reality the assigned DHCP ip address on a DSL modem shouldn't change
that often. In fact most providers will tie a the MAC Address of the DSL
modem to a specific ip address in the DHCP pool via a mac address
reservation for better record keeping.

The only circumstances that the assigned DHCP ip address might change is if
the there's a loss of ip connectivity between the DSL modem and the DHCP
server that originally assigned the leased ip address and if there's an ip
network reconfiguration / reassignment at the ISP. If you disconnect the
DSL modem from the network and the reconnect it as long as it talks to the
same DHCP server the originally assigned DHCP ip address should be
reallocated according to how the DHCP life cycle works.

If the assigned DHCP ip address does change, the ping should fail because
the originally assigned DHCP ip address will be pulled back into the pool
and very likely not reassigned within a few minutes. DLS modems are not
requesting new IP addresses at the rate you would expect laptops connecting
to a WIFI AP at an airport.

If I were doing this, I'd spend a bit of time studying how often and under
what circumstances the DHCP assigned ip address of your DSL modem changes
before  writing one line of code...
(Continue reading)

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Rich Shepard | 3 Feb 00:21
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Preparing for DSL DHCP IP Address

   I want to write a shell script to run as a cron job that checks the
Frontier-assigned IP address of my DSL line against the current IP address
and, if changed, uploads the changed address to namecheap.com's DNS servers.

   I can see the address (at least while it's static) on my Netgear VFS318,
but there's not a specific URL for that field on the admin web page. There
are a bunch of web-based lookup sites; while they immediately display my IP
address I don't see a way to extract that information from the web page
(perhaps in the page source code?) for local storage and upload to
namecheap.com.

   Many of you folks are professional network administrators and may already
have such a script. Or, you can advise me how to proceed.

Rich
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Daniel Hedlund | 2 Feb 18:23
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SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT: February PLUG Meeting

                    MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

                   The Portland Linux/Unix Group
                                  will meet
                     7 PM Thursday Feb 2, 2012
                                      at
                     Portland State University
                                   in the
                          Fariborz Maseeh
         College of Engineering & Computer Science Building
                            Room FAB 86-01
                      (This is in the basement.)
      The building is on SW 4th across from SW College Street.
   See location H-10 on map at http://pdxLinux.org/campus_map.jpg

 *******************************************************************

            Intro to Salt / Salt Stack (saltstack.org)
                                    by
                            Daniel Hedlund
                        <daniel <at> digitree.org>

Salt is a distributed configuration management and remote execution
platform built on top of ZeroMQ and Python. Simple, fast, powerful and
extensible.

Daniel will give a presentation on the architecture of Salt and how it
leverages ZeroMQ to provide a simple but highly scalable and parallel
method of software deployment.
(Continue reading)

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jgw | 1 Feb 18:03
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Best File Format for OOo Writer <=> MS Word Collaboration?

Greetings PLUGers,
I'm trying to help out a first-time author using OOo Writer 3.2.0 on Ubuntu
10.4 who needs to collaborate with a book editor using MS Word, probably
the 2007 version on Windows 7.  Ideally, the book editor would be using
the "Record Changes" feature in Word, then forwarding it back for the author
to run "Edit>Accept or Reject Changes" on. Probably several rounds of this
sort of thing on an approx. 400 page book.  Alternately, it appears both
programs can also merge differences via the "Compare Files" feature which
avoids having to deal with externally-generated "diffs" as with "Record
Changes".

Anyways, my simple single page tests using the .rtf format were a mixed
bag, sometimes resulting in file corruption.  The .doc format seems to be
more robust over several rounds of changes.  However, there are several
Word versions available under "File>Save As>File Type" and I'm wondering
which is most likely to be best for this project?

OOo "Save As>File Type" choices:

MS Word 6.0 (.doc)
MS Word 95 (.doc)
MS Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)
MS Word 2003 (.xml)
MS Word 2007 (.docx)  ## I think this is read-only so a non-starter

I've not tested OpenDocument Text (.fodt) or DocBook (.xml).

I am aware of the ODF Converter module for MS Office however it didn't
perform well in my tests which featured frequent MS Word (earlier 2000
version) crashes whenever an .odt file was opened.
(Continue reading)

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Gmane