Tip of the Trade: Bastille Linux (ServerWatch)
ServerWatch <a
href="http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3631431">looks
at</a> using Bastille Linux for hardening a Linux system. "<span>Every
wise old system and network administrator knows that security is a
multilayer process. You have your firewalls and other border security,
perhaps some internal network segmentation, and application and operating
system security. However, locking down the operating system is probably the
most crucial link in this chain. An excellent utility to help you probe,
assess, and harden your Linux system is Bastille Linux.</span>"
Open scientific software (Linux.com)
Linux.com <a
href="http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/06/1548258">looks at a few
scientific programs</a> of general utility. "<span>Linux is used on
supercomputing clusters, embedded scientific equipment, as a programming
environment for scientific programming and a myriad of other
uses. Scientific Linux is a clone of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
distribution and is a baseline Linux distribution for a variety of physics
laboratories around the world.</span>"
Security updates for Tuesday
<b>Fedora</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199208/">bind</a> (denial of
service).
<p>
<b>rPath</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199217/">xorg-x11</a>
(privilege escalation).
<p>
<b>Red Hat</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199219/">wireshark</a>
(several vulnerabilities), <a href="/Articles/199220/">ncompress</a>
(buffer underflow), <a href="/Articles/199221/">xorg-x11</a> (privilege
escalation), <a href="/Articles/199222/">xfree86</a> (privilege
escalation).
A letter from Terra Soft's CEO, "One year later ..."
Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats looks at how business has been for Yellow Dog
Linux. "<span>In retrospect, we enjoyed our position as a unique Apple
Proprietary Solutions Provider, Value Added Reseller. In the same respect,
I realize now we had become comfortable there, not pursuing our full
potential as an HPC Linux engineering firm. Through a number of
introspective team meetings, we redefined our core competencies,
rediscovered what we enjoy doing, and then determined how best to profit
from the marriage of these two. As such, we are moving ahead with focus on
Board Support Packages, provision of Integrated Solutions, and application
development.</span>"
Sun, Ruby, and Java: An Interesting Turn of Events (Linux Journal)
Pat Eyler <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000091">covers</a>
Sun's new JRuby hires. "<span>Wow! Sun has hired Charles Nutter and Thomas
Enebo to work on JRuby full time. This is a pretty momentus event, and is
already sending shockwaves around the Ruby world.</span>"
CLI Magic: Kismet sniffs out Wi-Fi access (Linux.com)
Linux.com <a
href="http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1419256">looks at</a>
Kismet for discovering access points and diagnosing problems. "<span>For
example, while configuring your own access point, you can use Kismet to see
which channels are being used in your area. Start Kismet and let it run for
a few minutes with channel-hopping enabled, so Kismet can scan the entire
range of Wi-Fi channels, and it will find all the access points within
range. You can then set your access point to an unused channel, thereby
minimizing potential interference from all the other ones. Once your
wireless network is configured, Kismet can check that you're on your chosen
channel and that encryption is working.</span>"
Windows will beat Linux threat, say academics (TechWorld)
TechWorld <a
href="http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsID=6841&pagtype=all">covers</a>
a study authored by two Harvard faculty members. "<span>The two based
their research on a simplified economic model attempting to recreate the
dynamics of Windows' competition with Linux, where Windows has market share
and profitability on its side, while Linux benefits from a faster
development cycle and lower cost. Casadesus-Masanell and Ghemawat found,
to their surprise, that Linux's advantages by themselves didn't mean Linux
would ultimately oust Windows, because of Windows' initially dominant
market share.</span>"
The Linux killer app: KDE's Konqueror (DesktopLinux)
DesktopLinux <a
href="http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT4753761802.html">takes a
look</a> at Konqueror. "<span>One of Konqueror's curious and powerful
traits is that it is at once both a file manager and a web browser. You
could think of it as a computer navigation device. It will quickly take you
to any folder and file on your hard drive, or to anywhere on the
Internet. It does either one, or both of those, so seamlessly that I marvel
at how the KDE people did it.</span>"
Monday's security advisories
<b>rPath</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199063/">mailman</a> (several
vulnerabilities), <a href="/Articles/199064/">bind</a> (denial of
service).
<p>
<b>Mandriva</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199066/">bind</a> (denial of
service).
<p>
<b>Debian</b> has updated <a href="/Articles/199067/">bind9</a> (denial of
service), <a href="/Articles/199068/">openssl</a> (insufficient signature
checking), <a href="/Articles/199085/">openssl096</a> (insufficient
signature checking).
linux.conf.au 2007 Call For Participation - Five days to go!
There are only five days left to <a
href="http://lca2007.linux.org.au/cfp">submit your proposal</a> for
linux.conf.au 2007. "<span>Heed our words, procrastinators -- your time
has come! Remember to check the 'travel assistance' box if you can't get to
Australia under your own steam... If your submission rocks, we'll sort that
out for you. :-)</span>"
KOffice 1.6 Beta 1 Released (KDE.News)
KDE.News <a href="http://dot.kde.org/1157906170/">reports</a> the release
of KOffice 1.6 beta1. "<span>This release incorporates a number of new
features, mainly from the Google Summer of Code projects, as well as a
great number of bug fixes. It also signals the start of the feature freeze
that always preceeds a release of a major new version, thus giving the
developers exactly a month to fix outstanding bugs. We urge everybody that
is interested in KOffice to install and test this version to make sure that
the final 1.6 has a high quality.</span>" More details are available in
the <a
href="http://www.koffice.org/announcements/announce-1.6-beta1.php">announcement</a>
and the <a
href="http://www.koffice.org/announcements/changelog-1.6beta1.php">full
changelog</a>.
The first RHEL5 beta
Red Hat has <a
href="https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv5-announce/2006-September/msg00000.html">released</a>
the first beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. "<span>This is the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux release that includes Xen
based open source virtualization technology. The Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5 Beta 1 release contains virtualization on the i386 and x86_64
architectures as well as a technology preview for IA64. We are
particularly interested in your feedback on the Xen technology.</span>"
Jim Bublitz Talks About PyKDE (KDE.News)
KDE.News <a href="http://dot.kde.org/1157841422/">interviews</a> PyKDE
maintainer Jim Bublitz. "<span>PyKDE allows you to access most of the
essential classes and methods of kdelibs from Python. I use it myself
because it allows me to develop good-looking graphical applications that
are KDE compatible, and allows me to do it from Python, which I find to be
a much quicker and easier development environment than C+&.+lt;/span>"
The first Mandriva 2007 release candidate
The first release candidate for Mandriva 2007 is available; see <a href="http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/MandrivaLinux2007Mona">the release notes</a> for details. "<span>WARNING: Some One CDs have non-free (proprietary) drivers included, if you do not want to use non free software, be careful to only use the ISO images with the 'free' keyword included in their name.</span>"
Stable kernels 2.6.17.12, 2.6.17.13 released
The <a href="/Articles/198925/">2.6.17.12</a> stable kernel is out. There
is a fairly long list of fixes this time around, but none are associated
with specific security problems. But most people are more likely to be
interested in <a href="/Articles/198927/">2.6.17.13</a>, which adds the
remaining patches needed to actually build a working kernel.
