by ezs | Nov 8, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, patching, Uncategorized
ZDNet and others are flagging a new Linux worm.
Quoting McAfee:
The worm blindly attacks web servers by sending malicious http requests on port 80. If the target server is running one of the vulnerable scripts at specific URLs and is configured to permit external shell commands and remote file download in the PHP/CGI environment, a copy of the worm could be downloaded and executed.
There are some well understood methods to minimise this risk.
Practice good security. A good robust perimeter firewall – I use IPcop; along with a good patch regime is vital. I (naturally) use ZENworks Linux Management to keep my Linux servers up to date.
One other addition is application hardening – I blogged a while ago about Novell AppArmor – I run this on my outward facing and internal Linux servers. If anything untoward happens – AppArmor is my final line of defence keeping my servers in good health.
[Edit – also to note – keep your applications themselves up to date; if they are RPM based – ZENworks Linux Management can deliver the updates. My blogging software is WordPress – they posted a note saying the updated versions are not affected.]
by ezs | Nov 8, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, Uncategorized
There has been a lot of discussion recently about Novell dropping KDE in favour of Gnome on its corporate desktop offering Novell Linux Desktop.
[Note – I really don’t think this matters on a server – clean up your servers; reduce the bloat; reduce the risk – remove X and a desktop from your servers 🙂 Believe me – ssh is your friend]
I’ve posted before on this – my personal opinion is that the real battle is not over KDE vs. Gnome. It’s about making a more productive, good looking, consistent desktop; one that you can “Just Use” (TM). It would be great to see components of KDE running nicely on Gnome, Gnome pieces running on KDE, common themes – can you see my paradise here?
This should not be a religious argument. There has been much work between the two communities – even as far back as the 1.0 versions (common menuing for example).
There have been some notable efforts in this space more recently. freedesktop.org tries to drive interoperability for all GUI/WM environments on X – with some success; even more recently last month the Tango Project was launched to try and deliver a common user experience.
These are all good efforts. I believe Novell has supported several of these initiatives; as well as promoting choice within (over 50% of Novell employees are using NLD as their primary production OS).
by ezs | Nov 4, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Novell recently announced an interesting change to its product licensing:
Device Licenses
Customers will now have the option to license qualifying products by device for their organization.
This optional counting method is available on select “User” licensed products. To implement this option, customers can simply begin counting User-licensed products according to the number of devices utilizing the software functionality, rather than the number of users.
No conversion forms or documentation are required. However, customers should track device licensing counts and products internally for usage and audit purposes. Customers must declare their counting method to Novell or their partner up front, and must adhere to this method for audit and payment purposes. If the customer does not declare device licensing, user is assumed to be the default on all user-licensed products.
This is a change that was included in ZENworks 7 – it makes licensing a lot simpler for some organisations.
by ezs | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized, ZENworks
Wow. There has been a flurry of activity with ZENworks Server Management in the last month or so.
Martin Irwin in WorldWide Support built a set of CPKs to deploy ZENworks 6.5 SP2 across your infrastructure; he is now working on delivering this with the standalone CPK engine (think of this as a small part of the ZENworks Server Management subscriber agent) to all customers. That is way cool.
Peter Lambrechtsen in New Zealand has almost finalised a CPK (hopefully soon with the standalone engine) that will let you deploy ZENworks 7 in your network.
All very cool – and showing real savings for customers deploying ZENworks in an enterprise.
Centralised deployment, across hundreds of servers – in hours. Now that’s value.
by ezs | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized
McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has fast free wifi.
The JW Marriott Resort in Las Vegas has a voucher-based wifi implementation – but it only blocks ports 8 (http/https) – not anything else. So if you don’t mind not having web browsing you can – hypothetically – do email (GW, POP, IMAP, SMTP), other stuff (SSH, RDP) and also things like IM. Oh well.
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