custom printed logo t shirt: March 2008

Monday, March 31, 2008

nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Linux Remains Unbeaten in pwn2own Hacking Contest

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 08:13 AM CDT

As reported earlier CanSecWest conference was designed to test zero day vulnerability against three leading desktop operating systems. The result is out:

[1] The MacBook Air went first

[2] Windows Vista was cracked (hacked) on the last day of the contest

[3] Linux remained undefeated

Although several attendees tried to crack the Linux laptop, nobody could pull it off, said Terri Forslof, a manager of security response with TippingPoint. “I was surprised that it didn’t go,” she said.

=> More information available at official web site (Via Yahoo news)

The Daily Tee

And I thought I was the only one.

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 12:23 PM CDT

So there really are other people out there that are in college and don’t have time to do homework! I know, it sounds ridiculous but somehow it always happens.

This shirt is from teeful, which I found through a facebook group.

Image: teeful.

Tags: college, college humor, homework, no time, paper, school, t-shirt, tee

Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Daily Tee

Music Tree Tee

Posted: 29 Mar 2008 10:54 PM CDT

Has anyone noticed that I’m a little obsessed with uneetee? I’m not sure what it is. But whenever I’m looking for tees to post about it just seems that I can always find something I like there.

I might prefer the notes being a different color… pink really isn’t my favorite. But the design is good enough for me not to mind!

Image: uneetee

Saturday, March 29, 2008

nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Wordpress 2.5 Released

Posted: 29 Mar 2008 12:12 PM CDT

Wordpress 2.5 has been released and available for download.The dashboard is cleaner, faster, less cluttered. From the release note:

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesnâ€™t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

(Fig. 01: My Dashboard)

(Fig. 02: Writing a post)

EKA - The world's 4th Fastest Super Computer

Posted: 29 Mar 2008 12:51 AM CDT

In November 2007 EKA was announced, which is privately funded supercomputer. Eka, built by CRL, Pune is the world’s 4th fastest supercomputer, and the fastest one that didn’t use government funding. This is the same supercomputer referenced in Yahoo!’s recent announcement about cloud computing research at the Hadoop Summit. This article describes some of the technical details of Eka’s design and implementation.

My town - pune is home to some of the best supercomputing research and development facility into the area of software and other related technology. C-DAC (a scientific society of the Department of Information Technology, Government of India) has developed and supplied a range of high performance parallel computers, known as the PARAM series of supercomputers. Now CRL - a tata group company build the EKa one of the top 10 supercomputers in the world, Eka is the only system that was fully privately funded. All other systems used government money, so all of them are for captive use. This means that Eka is the only system in the top 10 that is available for commercial use without strings attached.

The computing infrastructure itself consists of:

1800 blades, 4 cores each. 3Ghz for each core.
HP SFS clusters
28TB memory
80TB storage. Simple SATA disks. 5.2Gbps throughput.
Lustre distributed file-system
20Gbps infiniband DDR. Eka was on the cutting edge of Infiniband technology. They sourced their infiniband hardware from an Israeli company and where amongst the first users of their releases - including beta, and even alpha quality stuff.
Multiple Gigabit ethernets
Linux is the underlying OS. Any Linux will work - RedHat, SuSe, your favorite distribution.

=> Building EKA - The world’s fastest privately funded supercomputer

The Daily Tee

Creepy White Van T-shirt Helps Prevent Crime

Posted: 29 Mar 2008 11:56 AM CDT

While some tee shirts are designed to be as attractive as possible; Creepy White Van T-shirt (by Travis Pitts) was strangely designed with “crime prevention” in mind. Here’s how:

If there's one thing I know from experience- it's that windowless white cargo vans are always involved in crime; driven by child molesters, kidnappers, burglars, rapists, murderers, terrorists or shifty, illegal work crews. They're always beaten to shit- have chains, straps or rope hanging out the back, and look like they've been pried open from the inside. Is that rust…or dried blood? I swear I don’t know why they still make them…..If they’d just stop making them, I bet crime would drop, like, 85% overnight.

Good T-shirt not only makes its owner look awesome, but also creates conversion. Get this tee from Lucky Threadz for $16, the real white creepy van is not included

Thursday, March 27, 2008

nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Linux vs Mac OS X vs Vista - Who will get Hacked / Cracked First?

Posted: 27 Mar 2008 01:18 PM CDT

The most anticipated matchup in the cracker (or hacker) world is going on to take control of a computer using zero day vulnerability. Checkout official site for more information about the Pwn2Own contest. The prize is US $20,000, plus you get to keep the laptop.

Postfix and MS-Exchange Mail Server Affected by ORDB.org Spam Service

Posted: 27 Mar 2008 01:03 PM CDT

Since y’day I noticed one of our article related to ORDB.org spam blocker receiving lots of traffic. I received couple of calls from our clients because most emails was getting bounced via Exchange or Postfix mail server.

ORDB is now configured to return each IP as spam source

ORDB was a database of open relay email servers, provided until 2006 as a voluntary service to block spam. Now ORDB.org service has been re-activated and it is returning every IP address queried as being on its blacklist. I guess this was done to punish lazy sys admin / mail administrators

If you or your mail server / gateway / firewall querying relays.ordb.org; please stop it immediately. If you query relays.ordb.org - mail server will rejecting all incoming mails from that server.

Symantec Mail Security for MS-Exchange Server - Spam Filter

Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange configuration in the list of Anti-spam blacklist servers including relays.ordb.org. Immediately remove the entry.

Remove ORDB.ORG from MS-Exchange Server Spam Filter

In Exchange Server 2003 you can find the feature for blacklist support within the global settings of your organization. Visit MS-Exchange System Manager > Global Settings > Message Delivery Properties -> Connection Filtering tab > Remove relays.ordb.org

Remove Linux / UNIX - Postfix Mail Server - Spam Filter

Open postfix configuration file and remove the following line:
reject_rbl_client relays.ordb.org,
Restart postfix mail server:
# service postfix restart

History and Culture of Unix Programming - The Art of Unix Programming

Posted: 27 Mar 2008 03:35 AM CDT

The Art of Unix Programming by Eric Raymond is a book about the history and culture of Unix programming from its earliest days in 1969 to now, covering both genetic derivations such as BSD and conceptual ones such as Linux.

You should read this book if you are an experienced Unix programmer who is often in the position of either educating novice programmers or debating partisans of other operating systems, and you find it hard to articulate the benefits of the Unix approach.

You should read this book if you are a C, C++, or Java programmer with experience on other operating systems and you are about to start a Unix-based project.

You should read this book if you are a Unix user with novice-level up to middle-level skills in the operating system, but little development experience, and want to learn how to design software effectively under Unix.

You can read HTML version of “The Art of Unix Programming” online at Eric’s website.

Download of the day: Wackamolem ~ Making a Cluster Highly Available

Posted: 27 Mar 2008 03:23 AM CDT

Wackamole is an interesting application that helps with making a cluster highly available. It runs a service using multiple DNS RR records without the worry of one of the machines crashing — if the machine crashes, the virtual IP addresses it was responsible for will be managed by the remaining machines in the cluster. Wackamole is quite unique in that it operates in a completely peer-to-peer mode within the cluster. From the project home page:

Wackamole is an application that helps with making a cluster highly available. It manages a bunch of virtual IPs, that should be available to the outside world at all times. Wackamole ensures that a single machine within a cluster is listening on each virtual IP address that Wackamole manages. If it discovers that particular machines within the cluster are not alive, it will almost immediately ensure that other machines acquire these public IPs. At no time will more than one machine listen on any virtual IP. Wackamole also works toward achieving a balanced distribution of number IPs on the machine within the cluster it manages.

Download wackamole software

Visit the wackamole project:

=> wackamole web site

What Would Cause a Lot of ARP Broadcasts From One System / Machine

Posted: 27 Mar 2008 03:06 AM CDT

Q. I’m experiencing decreased network performance due to ARP broadcasts coming from one system. What would cause a lot of ARP broadcasts from one server / computer?

Answer to "What Would Cause a Lot of ARP Broadcasts From One System / Machine"