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Hide other users' processes in Linux

7th February 2012
And at last we have the equivalent of security.bsd.see_other_uids in Linux without the need to mess around with grsecurity! This is a security feature I've waited to land in Linux for a LONG time.
This characteristic can be enabled if you have kernel 3.3 (EL6/rhel/centos users can get it from here - thanks ajb!), but hopefully RedHat and other distributions will backport this feature in their kernels, too. The required patches are here and here.

So, how it works? Simple:
- mount /proc with the option "hidepid=1" to stop a regular user to see other processes but his when doing `ps` or `top`
- mount /proc with the option "hidepid=2" to not only stop the user from seeing other processes, but also disables the user's capacity to list /proc/$PIDs that are not his
- mount /proc with the option "hidepid=0" to go back to standard behaviour, all users can see all processes - this is the default
- there is also the "gid=xxx" mount option that lets the specified gid see all processes, even when hidepid is set to 1 or 2

You can read more about it here.

Enjoy!
Tags: centos, elrepo, kernel, linux, security.bsd.see_other_uids. | No comments

Stella - a Centos desktop remix

29th January 2012
Hello everybody, I'm doing a Centos 6 desktop oriented remix called Stella. This has been brewing since the summer and it's starting to get ready.
I've backported a lot of packages from Fedora and Rpmfusion and bundle several other repos, too, resulting in a big range of software available, including but not limited to:
LibreOffice, VLC, MPlayer, Shutter, Arista, Java, Flash, GParted etc

You can read (just slightly) more about it here: li.nux.ro/stella.
I'd love to receive any feedback.


Cheerio!
Nux
Tags: centos, desktop, el6, linux, stella. | 8 comments.

How about making it work first?

21st January 2012
I stumbled upon this recently: http://doublespeed.virginmedia.com:

All I have to say about it is:

WHAT A FUCKING PILE OF MARKETING DONKEY DUNG!

Hey Rich, since you're so willing and able, how about making my lousy 10 Mbps Virginmedia pipe stay at 10 Mbps and not go down at 2 Mbps whenever I download something for more than 20 minutes?


And since you're at it PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE LATENCY AND THE PACKET LOSS 'CAUSE EVERYTHING'S FUCKING BUFFERING!

Kthxbye
Tags: fail, fuck this shit, internet, isp, shit, virginmedia. | 1 comment.

This video is not available in your country

21st January 2012
Today I was browsing "The big bang theory" IMDB page to see if there are any new episodes. And there were.
I noticed on some of the episodes you have a link: Watch on Amazon. Great, I said, but then, bam: "This video is not available in your country" (I'm in UK now).





Question: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY COUNTRY?


Anyway, they're bloody liars, the video is available in my country and any other country, cheers TPB for treating people equally and not being xenophobic or racist!

It's just that maybe they don't like my money, who knows.




I should also post about how random Youtube videos are not available in my country, lol. THIS WORLD IS RUN BY FUCKING RETARDS, I'm telling you - and we're letting them!

Cheerio

Tags: fail, fuck this shit, imdb, the big bang theory. | 1 comment.

EL6 deps for Oracle11g

18th January 2012
The pile of shit called Oracle data base (11g) needs a crapload of deps. This is for 64 bit OS:
yum install libgcc.i686 nss-softokn-freebl.i686 glibc.i686 libaio.i686 libstdc++.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 readline.i686 libICE.i686 libtool-ltdl.i686 libSM.i686 libuuid.i686 unixODBC.i686 libXau.i686 libX11.i686 libxcb.i686 libXext.i686 libXi.i686 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libXt.i686 libXtst.i686 libaio-devel.i686 unixODBC-devel.i686 glibc-devel.i686 kernel-headers libstdc++-devel elfutils-libelf-devel mpfr libXmu libXxf86misc glibc-headers libXxf86vm xorg-x11-xauth cpp libtool-ltdl unixODBC cloog-ppl ppl libmcpp mcpp xorg-x11-server-utils compat-db42 compat-db43 libdmx libXxf86dga libIDL ORBit2 GConf2 libbonobo gtk2-engines shared-mime-info libdaemon avahi avahi-glib gnome-vfs2 xorg-x11-utils compat-libstdc++-33 celt051 libXp ConsoleKit-x11 xorg-x11-xinit glibc-devel gcc compat-gcc-34 ncurses-devel gcc-c++ libgnome readline-devel compat-db libaio-devel unixODBC-devel compat-gcc-34-c++ libgcc nss-softokn-freebl glibc libaio libstdc++ ncurses-libs readline libICE libtool-ltdl libSM libuuid unixODBC libXau libX11 libxcb libXext libXi compat-libstdc++-33 libXt libXtst libaio-devel unixODBC-devel glibc-devel
Tags: el, el6, fail, oracle, rhel, rhel 6, rpm, shit, yum. | 3 comments.

Stop using Godaddy

22nd December 2011
There's more and more bad stuff I keep hearing about Godaddy. So please please take my advice and stop using them. Here's some reasons why:
- They're Microsoft arse lickers: link.
- The owner is an elephant MURDERER: link.
- They support SOPA, the infamous piece of legislature that's going to fuck up the Internet, at least a good part of it: link.

There's also a heated Reddit debate about Godaddy and Sopa: link.

If you're looking for an "honest" registrar, I've had a pleasant experience with Gandi.

Later edit - Here's a tutorial on how to move from Godaddy: http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy. This tutorial shows how to move to Namecheap - which oppose SOPA, but under the circumstances I'd really try not to host anything in the USA.

Tags: fail, godaddy, sopa. | 1 comment.

Libreoffice repo for EL6

17th December 2011
For those people who wanted to use Libreoffice on their EL6 workstations there weren't many options; basically you had to download a tarball from libreoffice.org and `rpm -ivh` the contained rpms manually - not the best way to have it installed and relatively painful to keep up to date.

But no more - I've been backporting Libreoffice for a while now from Fedora and you're free to use it!
Also, recently I noticed there are RHEL conditionals in the spec files. For those unfamiliar with RPM building this means Redhat is probably getting ready to include Libreoffice in their enterprise distro.

I don't know when we'll see Libreoffice in EL 6 officially but I know it won't be in v6.3. Until then you can use my repo - it should gracefully upgrade existing stock openoffice.org installations:

To install do the following as root:

rpm -ivh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/libreoffice/el6/i386/nux-libreoffice-release-0-1.el6.nux.noarch.rpm
yum install libreoffice

To upgrade from stock openoffice.org:

rpm -ivh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/libreoffice/el6/i386/nux-libreoffice-release-0-1.el6.nux.noarch.rpm
yum update

To replace Libreoffice installed from the official libreoffice.org rpms:

yum remove libreoffice\* libobasis\*
rpm -ivh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/libreoffice/el6/i386/nux-libreoffice-release-0-1.el6.nux.noarch.rpm
yum install libreoffice

If you run into issues feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line: rpm @ li.nux.ro

Tags: centos, el6, libreoffice, openoffice, rhel, scientificlinux. | No comments

RSA recommends to turn off Selinux

13th December 2011
From Dan Walsh's blog I got the LOLWTFFAIL of the day: famous security company RSA recommends to have Selinux turned off in order to use their product.
Really? Really??! Yup, really.
Let's not forget RSA and fuck-ups can go well together. Take this for example: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/052611-lockheed-martin-outage.html

Oh, and they still use "netstat" to generate entropy for their crap products... years after we've had /dev/urandom ... By now even the chickens are laughing.

Enjoy: http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/48571.html
Tags: fail, rsa, selinux. | No comments

You have not created a bootloader stage1 target device

27th November 2011
I was getting the error in the title when trying to create a custom partitioning layout in Fedora 16. Apparently it needs this partition to boot off GPT labelled disks.
What you need to do is simply create a 1 MB "BIOS Boot" partition at the beginning then continue with your desired layout. I hope Anaconda people will be able to make this error message more meaningful as all this GPT stuff is rather new for a lot of users. Ta ta
Tags: bios, bootloader, fedora, gpt, partitions, stage1. | No comments

Fix small fonts in NX

1st November 2011
I've just installed the NX server and client and on the remote server the fonts are too small; here's how to fix it - run this on the remote host:
echo "Xft.dpi:96" >> ~/.Xresources

Now disconnect and reconnect.
Source
Tags: fonts, nx, small. | No comments