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Identify services

follow up to issue58/tag/7.html

Mon, 2 Oct 2000 13:38:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mathew A Johnston (johnston@megaepic.com)
I'm not sure that I'm sending this to the right address, but...
I find the most useful tool in the attempt to identify services and their parents to be netstat -ple (process, listening, extended info). This provides a table of listening sockets, the processes that own them, and the uid of the process.
If you're making an emergency read only anti-hack disk, put this on it - you cant trust your installed version always.
Mathew Johnston


Checking Passwords in Custom Apps

Sun, 08 Oct 2000 14:14:04 -0700

Hi,

I need to authenticate a user entering a linux os.

I get from the user a username and a password and need to cross it with the /etc/passwd file.

How do I cross the password with the existing one ? (How can I enctypr the password the user entered ?)

Thanks you,
Gil.

I presume what you're trying to ask is something like: "how can my custom script or application determine if a user has given me the password as would be checked by the system?"
The short answer is that your program should use the getpwent(3) and the crypt(3) library calls.
That is a bit of an oversimplification but here's a bit more detail:
Technically you don't "encrypt" the password, you "hash" it and compare your result with the one that's stored in the /etc/passwd, or the /etc/shadow file, or the one that's returned by NIS, etc.
Here is a link to a simple example I found using Google:
http://oloon.student.utwente.nl/~remco/linux-c-programming/9902/msg00017.html
Glyn Clements is one of the most active and knowlegeable contributors to the linux-admin mailing list.
-- JimD


Printing under Linux

Tue, 10 Oct 2000 09:52:20 -0600
From: Jim (JBRANDV@pnm.com)
In your answer to Gaurav you didn't mention TurboPrint. I found the current version has full support for my Epson Photo 700 and most other Epson printers as well. I now have full photo quality printing under Linux. Support for other printers is growing daily so keep checking back if you don't see it the first time. The URL: http://www.turboprint.de
It is beta (0.61) but seems to work great!
Jim


subnet needed

Tue, 10 Oct 2000 19:45:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Buddy Newton (blu3plat3@yahoo.com)

--- "Arne C. Johnson" wrote: what does this subnet does this network give you

192.168.160.0 /20

Thanks

192.168.160.1-192.168.175.254 4094 hosts
that's a 255.255.240.0 mask
The trick is that each "255" octet is 8 bits. The number on the end of the slash is a number of bits set on. So, 8 + 8 = 16, still not enough, need 4 bits 4 more! See it's really just that many 1's counted from the left... which is to say from the top of the values, so within the third octet, that's 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 = 240. The netmask 1's allow bits to "leak through" and establish the network address... the 0's block or "mask" all the local addresses off. For a lot more detail what this is all about, see Jim Dennis' fairly verbose "routing and subnetting 101" in issue 36. -- Heather


companies

Sun, 15 Oct 2000 11:46:11 EDT

what are some of the companies that makes "LINUX" operating systems?

There are so many, it is hard to count them... and groups which are not companies also produce their own setups of Linux, so we call them "distributions".
Linux Weekly News (http://www.lwn.net) has a section dedicated to following this question, and a sidebar that has links to a long list of distro's - so you should check it out.
-- Heather


Keyboard keys/buttons...

Tue, 17 Oct 2000 09:04:19 -0700
anthony buckland wrote:

I live in Japan and would like to replace the Japanese keyboard (buttons) of my NEC laptop with the English keyboard (buttons)--if you know what I mean? Now, do you happen to know of a supplier(s) in the US or elsewhere that I could possibly contact for those English buttons? I thank you, again.

I would contact NEC support via one of the links at http://www.nec.com/support/index.html and see if they can help. Perhaps they can send you the keytops or at least tell you who manufactures them.
-- Mike


How to read Cisco Documentation CDROM on Linux platform

Tue, 17 Oct 2000 08:41:39 -0700
From: Andrea Montefusco <andrew@montefusco.com>
Are you interested to such micro-howto ?
Regards
Andrea Montefusco

How to read Cisco Documentation CDROM on Linux platform

  1. mount the cisco cdrom ( mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom )
  2. start httpd apache daemon.
  3. define a virtual server by mean of a listen on a port of your choice id:
    Listen 127.0.0.1:8080

    You must include a Listen for your virtual servers in your virtual host configuration (specialized file or httpd.conf file); add the following instructions:

    <Virtualhost localhost:8080>
    Options Indexes FollowSymlinks
    DocumentRoot /mnt/cdrom
    AddHandler gunzip .htm
    Action gunzip /cgi-bin/CiscoDoc
    </Virtualhost>
    
  4. put in your CGI directory /home/httpd/cgi-bin the following file: (text version)
    #!/bin/sh
    #
    #
    echo Content-type:text/html
    echo
    
    
    FULL_PATH="$DOCUMENT_ROOT""$PATH_INFO"
    
    ROOT_FILE="$DOCUMENT_ROOT""/home/home.htm"
    
    if [ -f "$ROOT_FILE" ]; then
    
       bunzip2 -t "$FULL_PATH"  1> /dev/null 2>&1
    
       rc2=$?
    
       if [ "$rc2" = "0" ]; then
          bunzip2 --stdout "$FULL_PATH"
       else
          gunzip -l "$FULL_PATH"   1> /dev/null 2>&1
          rc=$?
    
          if [ "$rc" = "0" ]; then
          	gunzip --stdout "$FULL_PATH"
          else
          	cat "$FULL_PATH"
          fi
       fi
    
    else
       echo "<HTML><BODY>"
       echo "<H1>Root file (" $ROOT_FILE ") not present</H1>"
       echo "<H2>Did you forget to insert the CD-ROM ? </H2>"
       echo "</BODY></HTML>"
    fi
    
    #echo "<HTML><BODY>"
    echo "<HR>"
    echo "<H4>"
    echo "Cisco Documentation CDROM Reader ver. 0.3 -- A.Montefusco A.Passariello"
    echo "</H4>"
    #echo "</BODY></HTML>"  
    
    
  5. Make it executable with the command
       chmod -c 755 CiscoDoc 
    
  6. Now you can access Cisco Manuals using URL: "http://localhost:8080/home/home.htm"


A note conserning the article "Making a Simple Linux Network Including

Mon, 11 Sep 2000 12:05:12 +0000
From: Samuli Seppänen (samuli.seppanen@kolumbus.fi)
Instead of doing an "echo 7 > /proc/parport/0/irq" you can put following line to modules.conf:
options parport_pc io=0x378, irq=7
where io / irq should be replaced if necessary. With this you should be able to insmod plip without any problems.


Wanted: articles about non-LILO boot loaders. -- Heather

Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:50:54 -0400
From: "Hoyt" (hduff2@att.net)
Neil Koozer of Roseburg, Oregon has created nuni, a boot loader for a Linux system that uses the ext2 file system and IDE drives.
nuni handles various ext2 block sizes and handles both small and large kernels.
www.linuxforum.org/plug/articles/nuni.html
Hoyt Duff


Grep

Sat, 30 Sep 2000 17:36:39 +0530
From: Rakesh Tiwari (rakesh_tiwari@jasubhai.com)
From what i understand, u only want to know users begining with "potatoe" in the "Login" coloumn.
$finger | cut -f1 -d" " | grep potatoe
Regards
Rakesh Tiwari
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.


2 cent tips - re: Reflections Replacement

Mon, 16 Oct 2000 23:53:00 -0500
From: Rick Cook (rcook@hex.net)
Toshiro,

Hi! I would like to access my graphics Linux desktop from my Windows box; I was able to do it using a software called Reflection (I guess you know it), is there any (free) software with the same capabilities of Reflection?

You could also try VNC. If you run a VNC Server on your Linux Machine and a VNC client on your Windows box, you can get a graphical Login (xdm, gdm, kdm) on your Windows Box. See:
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc
The Linux version comes included with several distributions, including Debian.
Good Luck,
Rick Cook


Modems

Tue, 3 Oct 2000 21:12:17 -0400
From: "Barry" (BarryJJ@ATTGlobal.Net)
I bought the ActionTec Internal Call Waiting PCI - not to be confused with the "56K PCI Pro" which is labelled as a WinModem - 'coz it was the only one that mentioned Linux support on the box and was PCI. From this I assumed it to be a "real" modem.
I haven't actually tried it under Linux yet, but I was impressed to find the instruction book had more pages (10) devoted to getting it to work under Linux than for the Windows variants. And there is no mention of having to install special software ... at least none that I can find.
There are separate headings for PPP, GNOME Dialer Applet, KPPP, linuxconf Dialer, and even a paragraph on minicom. It cites the instructions as having been verified under Red Hat 5.2 and 6.0, although I found references to my current distribution of choice - SuSE - on their web pages.
I was impressed! Their web site is www.actiontec.com
HTH ... BJ


authentication pam and kde

Mon, 23 Oct 2000 08:25:49 -0700
From: Breen Mullins <bmullins@asante.com>
At 11:42 AM +0200 10/23/00, Dean Buhrmann wrote:

Hello,

Kapil Sharma gave in the Oktober issue a few security tips. One is blocking users from doing su and only allowing the users from group wheel to do so. [snip]

It works well in virtual terminals. In KDE however it is now impossible to su. Authentication rejects now always the root password.

Hi Dean -
This also fails in Gnome if I use the default terminal. Try opening a vanilla xterm - I can su if I do it there.
Breen


Printing in Netscape

Wed, 25 Oct 2000 12:15:56 -0700
In issue 57 (http://linuxgazette.net/issue57/lg_tips57.html), Matthew Willis suggested using psnup to print two pages per sheet in Netscape.
psnup -c -n 2 | lpr -pprinter
I had to change this slightly to get it to work for me. I use:
psnup -c -n 2 -pletter | lpr
The "-pletter" option says you're using letter-sized paper (the normal page size in the US). Otherwise it will default to the European A4 size. If you print A4-formatted pages on letter paper, the rightmost part of the content runs off the edge of the page.
The "-pprinter" option didn't work for me. I assume Matthew was trying to select the printer device. According to my lpr manpage, the option would be "-P printer". "-p" filters the input through pr, which isn't what we want. (The pr command formats text files.)
-- Mike Orr


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Published in issue 59 of Linux Gazette November 2000
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