Re: Weird ICQ problems

1999-09-15 Thread Eric Zeller 

I was having some wierd crashing problems too, mostly on kernel compiles
(got to the point where I had to compile kernels for my firewall on
another machine). I was averaging 2 day uptimes (still better
than most W95 machines) Suspecting a hardware problem, I swapped my sound
card, video card, IDE driver, serial port driver (It was also crashing
whenever I tried to access the serial ports), until I finally swapped a
486 motherboard for my pentium motherboard and my memory failed the boot
check. I now have two 16 meg simms sitting on my desk and check out my
uptimes

$ ud -d
- Uptime for myrouter.home.ericzeller.com -
Now  : 26 day(s), 01:07:08 running Linux 2.0.36
One  : 26 day(s), 01:05:14 running Linux 2.0.36, ended Tue Sep 14 22:48:35
1999
Two  : 16 day(s), 11:05:48 running Linux 2.0.36, ended Wed Jul 28 23:52:06
1999
Three: 16 day(s), 02:13:28 running Linux 2.0.36, ended Sat Aug 14 09:34:03
1999

the last time I rebooted was because my sound module had got stuck
wouldn't unload, and the time before that was when I realized I had
installed the parallel cable backwards on the motherboard (note: the red
stripe does not always point to pin 1)

Eric Zeller A Happy Oacis Employee  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ericzeller.com   
The Ships hung in the air in exactly the same way bricks don't - HHGTTG

On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, Phil Brutsche wrote:

 On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, Robert Rati wrote:
 
  I'm having problems getting any icq client to stay up.  I was running LIcq
  just fine, but recently, it crashes very shortly after I get online.
  GTK-ICQ is the same way.  I've had my machine be unstable for some reason
  or another and would crash long compiles (qt, kernel, etc) and more than
  ^  ^^
  once fsck on bootup wouldn't be able to fix it and I'd have to fsck the
  drive manually.  After these crashes is when the ICQ clones started
  crashing after it logs on.  What I'm wondering is if one of the fscks
  could've deleted or damaged something the ICQ clones use?  If so, does
  anyone have any idea what?  I am considering re-formatting and
  re-installing Debian, but I don't really want to seeing as how I've spent
  so much time configuring this already.  Does anyone have any ideas of
  things to try?
 What specifically does the kernel (or qt, etc) compile 'crash' with?
 
 -- 
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 Phil Brutsche [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 There are two things that are infinite; Human stupidity and the
 universe. And I'm not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstien
 
 
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Re: Wvdial for not-root access. How?

1999-09-15 Thread Eric Zeller 

Here's my cheating way of allowing non-root users access to certain root
programs.

put a line in /etc/passwd that says something like 

halt:passwdhere:0:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt

The zero uid allows the login to be root, but instead of running a shell,
it runs runs /sbin/halt and shuts down. (this particular line came from
my wife's laptop).

I've been meaning to ask people if this opens a security hole that I
haven't thought about, I guess this is as good as time as any.
(actually can you send responses to [EMAIL PROTECTED] as I can't
afford to read 100 messages a day on this list, I'll try and keep up on
the archives also).

I also used to have similiar logins for ppp-up and ppp-down, but now that
I have a working router/firewall with diald, I commented them out.

I guess I should also point out (security wise) that the laptop is mostly
hooked up to the internet behind my firewall which does not have any of
these lines in the passwd file. Occasionally it gets taken to work and is
hooked up behind that firewall. So I'm a little lax on security for it.



Eric Zeller A Happy Oacis Employee  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ericzeller.com   
The Ships hung in the air in exactly the same way bricks don't - HHGTTG

On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, David Kanter wrote:

 Wvdial only works with root access. Currently, I su root, and then type 
 wvdial.
 
 Is there a way so that I, when a non-root user, can start wvdial securely? 
 I've read that suid will work, but is an insecure way of doing it. I want to 
 do this the right way. Perhaps just su-ing root is the best?
 
 Thanks,
 Dave
 
 
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