Re: How many serial ports will work on Ubuntu?
On 10 May 2010 05:15, Jonathan Ben Avraham y...@tkos.co.il wrote: kernel param: 8250.nr_uarts=5 Thanks, Jonathan, that is exactly what we needed! -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
[HAIFUX LECTURE] Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Wired and Wireless Keyboards - presented by Roy Migdal
On Monday, May 102th (TODAY) at 18:30, Haifux will gather to hear Roy Migdal present the work of Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini, which won the best paper award at 18th USENIX Security Symposium (Usenix Security '09), Montreal, Canada, August 10-14, 2009: Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Wired and Wireless Keyboards Abstract Computer keyboards are often used to transmit confidential data such as passwords. Since they contain electronic components, keyboards eventually emit electromagnetic waves. These emanations could reveal sensitive information such as keystrokes. The technique generally used to detect compromising emanations is based on a wide-band receiver, tuned on a specific frequency. However, this method may not be optimal since a significant amount of information is lost during the signal acquisition. Our approach is to acquire the raw signal directly from the antenna and to process the entire captured electromagnetic spectrum. Thanks to this method, we detected four different kinds of compromising electromagnetic emanations generated by wired and wireless keyboards. These emissions lead to a full or a partial recovery of the keystrokes. We implemented these side-channel attacks and our best practical attack fully recovered 95\% of the keystrokes of a PS/2 keyboard at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls. We tested 12 different keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB, wireless and laptop). They are all vulnerable to at least one of the four attacks. We conclude that most of modern computer keyboards generate compromising emanations (mainly because of the manufacturer cost pressures in the design). Hence, they are not safe to transmit confidential information. = We meet in Taub (CS Faculty) building, room 6. For instructions see: http://www.haifux.org/where.html Attendance is free, and you are all invited! Future Haifux events include: 24/5/10 KDE 4 - the good, the bad, and the broken - Dotan Cohen 07/06/10 The Ben Yehuda Project Software - Asaf Bartov 05/07/10 GarlicSim: An experimental tool for computer simulations - Ram Rachum 13/09/10 Secure File Systems: Orr Dunkelman (The gap between the lectures is intended for YOU to lecture about something interesting!) We are always interested in hearing your talks and ideas. If you wish to give a talk, hold a discussion, or just plan some event haifux might be interested in, please contact us at webmas...@haifux.org ___ -- Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda. http://ladypine.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Final Call for Participation: SYSTOR 2010---The 3rd Annual Haifa Experimental Systems Conference
SYSTOR 2010 The 3rd Annual Haifa Experimental Systems Conference https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/conferences/systor2010/index.shtml 24--26 May 2010 Haifa, Israel Registration deadline: May 22 The IBM Haifa Research Lab and the IBM Systems and Technology Group Lab, in collaboration with Caesarea Rothschild Institute (CRI) at the University of Haifa are organizing SYSTOR 2010, a successor to the highly successful SYSTOR conference and workshops on systems and storage held at the IBM Haifa Research Lab. The goal of the conference is to promote systems research and foster stronger ties between the Israeli and worldwide systems research communities and industry. Therefore, international submissions are specially encouraged. SYSTOR 2010 will be a three-day conference. The first day will begin with a keynote talk by Prof. David Kaeli, IEEE fellow from Northeastern University on Many-core Computing: A Disruptive Technology Enabling Low-cost, Low-power Desktop Supercomputing. The talk will be followed by sessions on storage and virtualization and workload-driven optimizations. In the afternoon, a student poster session with sweet refreshments will be held. The second day will begin with a keynote talk by Prof. Idit Keidar from the technion on Reliable Distributed Storage followed by sessions on parallel programs and virtualization. The morning talk and sessions will be held at the Hech Museum Auditorium in Haifa University. The day will end with an optional social event in a tour to Nazareth and a dinner near the Sea of Galilee. The third day will include sessions on storage and communication and low-level optimizations and a panel about cloud computing: Cloud Computing: A New Direction or a Passing Trend? The full program for all three days is available on the conference website: https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/conferences/systor2010/program.shtml We look forward to seeing you at SYSTOR 2010! -- Muli Ben-Yehuda | m...@il.ibm.com | +972-4-8281080 Manager, Virtualization and Systems Architecture Master Inventor, IBM Research -- Haifa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Common problems with Ubuntu
I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any *informative*list of problems. (Obviously, this is *not *ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame war) about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems typical to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions) ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On May 10, 2010, at 5:05 PM, Elazar Leibovich wrote: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative list of problems. You need to go to the UBUNTU site and look at their problem databases. They are very good at tracking problems, less good at fixing them. The problems I think you will encounter are: 1. They have a very strict release cycle with deadlines. Problems found after the freeze date for a distribution are not fixed until after the distribution. This meant in 9.04 IDE optical drives did not work, ATOM processors did not boot and a lot of minor bugs. The ATOM problem was fixed with the netbook respin, but AFAIK a new boot disk of the regular version was never released. 2. They take about a month after a release to to fix things and then often break them. For example, I have a system where gnome stopped working, and I have tried reinstalling gnome, deleting prefs, etc and it still does not work. It's too involved to reinstall from scratch. 3, They moved things around and are not like any UNIX or Linux based distro. While it's debian based, they forked off a long time ago, and debian packages often won't work, nor will any of the administration things you know. 4. They set things up the way they want them and it's darned near impossible to make them work properly if it is not what they wanted. Ask anyone with a Mac running MacOS 10.5 or 10.6 who wanted to use netatalk. 5. Long term support is a relative term. Fixes that you would think are applied are not carried back. Only the obvious critical ones. 6. Packages are not updated. Many of them are never updated, some are updated daily. I'm still faced with the same bugs in the UBUNTU version of Asterisk that were there since the original one that came with the release. In short a great desktop system for simple users, not a good one for someone to maintain or do anything beyond it. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Monday 10 May 2010 07:05:03 Elazar Leibovich wrote: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any *informative*list of problems. I once had a white Ford Fiesta that was giving me engine trouble. Can someone send me an *informative* list of problems in Ford cars (preferably white) and how they solved it? That's pretty much what you wrote. Every Ubuntu release has a wiki page with known issues. Ubuntu has a bug tracking system that you can also use to see what problems currently exist and are open - *for your hardware*. If you want an informative list, that's the one. Everything else is personal experience from a tiny sample size that might be completely different from your own use case. To get some meaningful response, it would help if you specify your hardware (or should we guess?) what version of Ubuntu you were trying, what kind of problems you were having and most importantly, what is your alternative to Ubuntu. (Obviously, this is *not *ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame war) about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems typical to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions) Ubuntu has been around for almost 6 years. I doubt there is something like problems typical to Ubuntu. - Aviram ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
2010/5/10 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative list of problems. (Obviously, this is not ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame war) about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems typical to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions) I use and recommend Ubuntu. This is my current deal breaker bug, though: Video problem: External monitor wavy, unreadable. ati radeon https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/537640 -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I once had a white Ford Fiesta that was giving me engine trouble. Can someone send me an *informative* list of problems in Ford cars (preferably white) and how they solved it? Sure, here's my list from my Ford. It's a Focus, though, not a Fiesta: • Front seats recline with dial: cannot be moved quickly. • Cannot lock doors from inside when leaving car. When trying to manually lock with the driver's door open, the doors automatically unlock. Apparently this is a case of Microsoft-type engineering: the car assumes that the user is an idiot and prone to locking his keys in the car. Thus, the car can only be locked with the key, from outside. Forget the fact that there are many valid reasons for locking the doors with the driver's door still open. I often have many packages to carry, so it's easiest for me to lock the doors, grab the packages, and then shut the door with my foot. Not with the Ford Focus. With the Ford Focus, one can never carry two armloads of packages away from the car. One must always leave a hand free to lock the doors. • When the passenger||driver puts the passenger window down, and the driver||passenger pushes the button after him, the window stops going down. • The radio's volume knob is so shallow and slippery that it is impossible to operate. Also, pressing CD || Radio does not turn the radio on. This is in contrast to the UI of the air conditioning unit, in which any button will start it. Even off. • The trunk is so small that the baby stroller would not fit until I ripped the plastic moulding off. The light is tucked away in the far right corner, and does not illuminate the middle of the trunk even when the trunk is empty. • No map lights in the back! No lights at all in the back! • The gas gauge was strategically placed behind the steering wheel. There is no compromise between comfortable seating position and a visible gas gauge. Same for the temp gauge, the tach between 3000 and 5000 RPM, and the speedometer between 90 and 150 KPH. • The trunk must be slammed down to close. Even then, it often seems closed when it is not. • The trunk release is electric only. No manual override. How are you going to open that when the battery dies? I hope that you don't keep your jumper cables in the trunk... • Huge glove compartment. Too bad it's one dimensional. It seems deeper than my arm is long, yet so narrow that one's fist barely gets in. Yes, I'm exaggerating here, but the glove compartment really seems to have been designed by some burrowing creature. To make matters worse, it seems to go in the up direction, so every time it is opened the contents spill out onto the passenger's feet. • The stiff plastic lanyard on the filler cap is too short. The cap must be twisted _just_right_ so that the cap hangs on the loop and does not drip gas on the paint. That's difficult for those of us with manual disabilities. • The fuel filler door cannot be opened when the doors are locked, nor can it be closed when the doors are locked! This means that one must refuel with the doors unlocked, which is a potential security hazard. • Need the key to open the engine lid. That makes a lot of problems: 1) One cannot open the lid with the engine running without a spare key. 2) One cannot open the lid with one hand. One hand must be twisting the key while the other hand lifts. • Washer fluid: The washer fluid reservoir was probably the most over-engineered component in any Ford vehicle. It sits inside the passenger side fender, completely hidden from view. This presents several challenges to those tasked with maintaining the vehicle. For one, there is no way to determine how much fluid is inside the reservoir. Secondly, in order to replenish the supply, fluid is poured down a pipe with such a sharp bend, so close to the mouth, that all fluid poured in immediately splashes out. Liquid must be poured in at about the rate one would fill an ice cube tray. Without knowing if it will be 100 ml, a full liter, or maybe five. As the liquid splashes in all directions at the (unexpected) moment that the reservoir is full, either panther-like reflexes are required, or an apron. • The vehicle is very, very loud. I know that this is not a luxury car, and I know that instead of a timing belt it has a durable timing chain, however the vehicle is unacceptable noisy. At highway speeds, the passengers must scream at each other to be heard. At rest and idle, the exhaust is so loud that it too disturbs conversation near the trunk. • The turn signals have a feature where a light tap on the stalk sets the signal to flash three times. There is no option to disable this feature, and no way to stop the blinking once it starts. At 100 KPH (60 MPH) those three flashes mean that I'm signalling for about 15 car-lengths of distance. That means that one must often signal left when one intends to travel right, and vice-versa. • The power window switch has two operational positions: a light tap for manually guiding the window up or down,
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I have been using Ubuntu for 2-3 years or longer and find them very suitable for the desktop (and as good as any on the server). The programs for most part work as expected, updates are provided regularly and mostly do not break anything. Granted, I do not use all 1134 installed applications, but the ones that I do use work just fine. You will have problems if you do one of the following: 1. Use the latest hardware. Support for the latest video card, sound card, etc. may not be as stable as support for older technologies. 2. Use a 64 bit version on 64x processors. Some applications and drivers - mostly third party vendors - are not available for Linux. I can't remember what drove me to switch to 32 bit Ubuntu on my 64x Intel, but there was something. It think it had to do with some video formats embedded in firefox but I am not sure any more. 3. Some annoying glitches affect me - network manager is semi-functioning and I had to manually edit the configuration file to give my box a static address (but there are alternatives), the power saving feature which idles the monitor has a mind of its own, etc. 4. It is possible in all varieties of Linux to seriously mess things up by editing configuration files without full understanding. Often, there is no easy way to roll back the problems. I am pretty sure I caused that to my network manager during an upgrade, etc. That said, these problems are nothing compared to my experience with Windows installations - 2000, XP - and what others experienced with Vista. I have programs that crashed the computer as soon as they were run, programs that disabled or crippled other programs, stability problems, virus problems, you name it. Good luck! Zvi. On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:03 AM, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/5/10 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative list of problems. (Obviously, this is not ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame war) about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems typical to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions) I use and recommend Ubuntu. This is my current deal breaker bug, though: Video problem: External monitor wavy, unreadable. ati radeon https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/537640 -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Check out my web site - www.words2u.net ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Nao the humanoid robot
** If anyone is interested in representing the Nao manufacturer in Israel I'll hand over the contact details I have in the company. They're interested. http://www.aldebaran-robotics.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM81Zi0Tff8 Israel ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Actually I once have had an Ubuntu at home and it did not give me any trouble. I'm looking for a distribution for my workplace to 4 developers seats with minimal maintainance needs. After we'll install a distribution we're unlikely to change it, so I prefer to ask around for some general impressions. Your example about cars is an excellent example for what I'm seeking. For example, it is a common knowledge (although I'm not sure it is really true), that Japanese cars are very reliable. While French cars has expensive parts, thus has a big maintainance fee. Why is that? Why does the brand name matters? Why won't we look at the fact sheet of each car model? The reason is, that the engineers at a certain company, are likely to have a certain engineering attitude, and thus many models are likely to suffer from similar faults. For example, Microsoft is now known for excellent security review practices. Whichever MS software I choose, I can rest assured that it will be relatively on the high end of security. Moreover, some people in this list wrote things like stay away from Ubuntu, anything but Ubuntu, so I wanted to know what exactly were the problems they've had. Geof's answer is *exactly* what I had in mind when asking the question. An example problem which according to Geof is specific to the Ubuntu *brand* is lack of fixes to a certain bugs even after a long time. That's the brand, not the specific issue. I can't tell that from reading a long list of specific problems with a certain version. On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Aviram Jenik avi...@jenik.com wrote: On Monday 10 May 2010 07:05:03 Elazar Leibovich wrote: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any *informative*list of problems. I once had a white Ford Fiesta that was giving me engine trouble. Can someone send me an *informative* list of problems in Ford cars (preferably white) and how they solved it? That's pretty much what you wrote. Every Ubuntu release has a wiki page with known issues. Ubuntu has a bug tracking system that you can also use to see what problems currently exist and are open - *for your hardware*. If you want an informative list, that's the one. Everything else is personal experience from a tiny sample size that might be completely different from your own use case. To get some meaningful response, it would help if you specify your hardware (or should we guess?) what version of Ubuntu you were trying, what kind of problems you were having and most importantly, what is your alternative to Ubuntu. (Obviously, this is *not *ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame war) about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems typical to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions) Ubuntu has been around for almost 6 years. I doubt there is something like problems typical to Ubuntu. - Aviram ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Mon, 2010-05-10 at 22:10 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: For example, Microsoft is now known for excellent security review practices. Whichever MS software I choose, I can rest assured that it will be relatively on the high end of security. Hidden sarcasm? - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: Sure, here's my list from my Ford. It's a Focus, though, not a Fiesta: • Front seats recline with dial: cannot be moved quickly. • Cannot lock doors from inside when leaving car. When trying to manually lock with the driver's door open, the doors automatically unlock. Apparently this is a case of Microsoft-type engineering: the car assumes that the user is an idiot and prone to locking his keys in the car. Thus, the car can only be locked with the key, from outside. Forget the fact that there are many valid reasons for locking the doors with the driver's door still open. I often have many packages to carry, so it's easiest for me to lock the doors, grab the packages, and then shut the door with my foot. Not with the Ford Focus. With the Ford Focus, one can never carry two armloads of packages away from the car. One must always leave a hand free to lock the doors. • When the passenger||driver puts the passenger window down, and the driver||passenger pushes the button after him, the window stops going down. • The radio's volume knob is so shallow and slippery that it is impossible to operate. Also, pressing CD || Radio does not turn the radio on. This is in contrast to the UI of the air conditioning unit, in which any button will start it. Even off. • The trunk is so small that the baby stroller would not fit until I ripped the plastic moulding off. The light is tucked away in the far right corner, and does not illuminate the middle of the trunk even when the trunk is empty. • No map lights in the back! No lights at all in the back! • The gas gauge was strategically placed behind the steering wheel. There is no compromise between comfortable seating position and a visible gas gauge. Same for the temp gauge, the tach between 3000 and 5000 RPM, and the speedometer between 90 and 150 KPH. • The trunk must be slammed down to close. Even then, it often seems closed when it is not. • The trunk release is electric only. No manual override. How are you going to open that when the battery dies? I hope that you don't keep your jumper cables in the trunk... • Huge glove compartment. Too bad it's one dimensional. It seems deeper than my arm is long, yet so narrow that one's fist barely gets in. Yes, I'm exaggerating here, but the glove compartment really seems to have been designed by some burrowing creature. To make matters worse, it seems to go in the up direction, so every time it is opened the contents spill out onto the passenger's feet. • The stiff plastic lanyard on the filler cap is too short. The cap must be twisted _just_right_ so that the cap hangs on the loop and does not drip gas on the paint. That's difficult for those of us with manual disabilities. • The fuel filler door cannot be opened when the doors are locked, nor can it be closed when the doors are locked! This means that one must refuel with the doors unlocked, which is a potential security hazard. • Need the key to open the engine lid. That makes a lot of problems: 1) One cannot open the lid with the engine running without a spare key. 2) One cannot open the lid with one hand. One hand must be twisting the key while the other hand lifts. • Washer fluid: The washer fluid reservoir was probably the most over-engineered component in any Ford vehicle. It sits inside the passenger side fender, completely hidden from view. This presents several challenges to those tasked with maintaining the vehicle. For one, there is no way to determine how much fluid is inside the reservoir. Secondly, in order to replenish the supply, fluid is poured down a pipe with such a sharp bend, so close to the mouth, that all fluid poured in immediately splashes out. Liquid must be poured in at about the rate one would fill an ice cube tray. Without knowing if it will be 100 ml, a full liter, or maybe five. As the liquid splashes in all directions at the (unexpected) moment that the reservoir is full, either panther-like reflexes are required, or an apron. • The vehicle is very, very loud. I know that this is not a luxury car, and I know that instead of a timing belt it has a durable timing chain, however the vehicle is unacceptable noisy. At highway speeds, the passengers must scream at each other to be heard. At rest and idle, the exhaust is so loud that it too disturbs conversation near the trunk. • The turn signals have a feature where a light tap on the stalk sets the signal to flash three times. There is no option to disable this feature, and no way to stop the blinking once it starts. At 100 KPH (60 MPH) those three flashes mean that I'm signalling for about 15 car-lengths of distance. That means that one must often signal left when one intends to travel right, and vice-versa. • The power window switch has two operational positions: a light tap for manually guiding the window up or down, and a hard tap for full close
