[colug-432] February COLUG Meeting Announcement

[Rick Troth]

A disclaimer about tomorrow's talk:  I have never done Gentoo.  If
anyone has Gentoo media or a Gentoo system they could demonstrate,
bring it.  There should be ample time because I have way less than two
hours worth of material.  (Probably can fill-up the first hour just
fine.)  So this is not a Gentoo thing, more Linux From Scratch but not
exactly.  I am an impatient control freak, so I short-cut some of LFS
steps and leverage existing systems.

The talk will cover taking small steps to get where you need to go.
(And everyone needs to go a slightly different route.)  There are two
methods I use.  By the time we get to a running system, it is similar
to LFS (not Gentoo), and strongly follows FHS (if not always LSB).
Points 1, 2, and 3 in Steve's note ... those are supported by one of
the methods I'll present.  I'm pretty stuck on the idea that they are
mandatory.

I also have some troubled HW that I will bring.  Anyone do much with LIRC?

-- Rick; <><


On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 9:42 PM, Steve Roggenkamp <roggenkamps at acm.org> wrote:
> I'm not going to be able to make the meeting, but I thought I would
> throw some more wood on the discussion fire.
>
> Has anyone done much work with Nixos (www.nixos.org)?  It's a
> source/binary distribution with a twist.  It has its own packaging
> system, nix, that creates packages based on the source code as well as
> all of the dependencies required to build it.  It removes all of the
> standard directories U**X users have come to know and love over the
> years.  Gone is /usr/lib, /usr/bin, /sbin, etc., in favor of a
> directory /nix/store with each package having its own directory that
> uses a hash string to encode it, something like,
> /nix/store/r8vvq9kq18pz08v249h8my6r9vs7s0n3-firefox-8.0.0.1/.
>
> It's very confusing when you first encounter it, but it provides some
> advantages.
>
> 1. It provides a way to have multiple versions of a library without
> interference.
> 2. You can have atomic updates and rollbacks.
> 3. Non-privileged users can install software such as glibc without
> breaking things.
>
> This seems to be useful, but one thing I've not seen mentioned is
> security implications.  For me it would seem to offer an ideal method
> to obfuscate library locations so that it would slow an attacker down
> because there is no standard location for any given library, thus
> increasing the chances of being discovered.  Unless you're a very high
> value target, there should be much easier targets out there.
>
> My thoughts on this were triggered by a New York Times article a
> couple of weeks ago about the efforts people have to go to when
> visiting China to insure they are not the target of espionage.  Of
> course 90+% are probably using Microsoft OS which, as we know, have
> problems in this area, but I'm sure someone using Linux as their OS
> would not present an impenetrable system, just maybe a  bit more
> difficult that Windows.
>
> Sorry I'm not going to make the meeting, but I thought I would throw
> this out for discussion.
>
> Steve
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Bill Baker <bill_chris at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Glad you liked it! :)
>>
> ... rest deleeted
> _______________________________________________
> colug-432 mailing list
> colug-432 at colug.net
> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432



-- 
-- R;   <><