Re: [BLUG] Improving the boot time

Yes, it helps with security.

When a machine is powered off it doesn't immediately clear the RAM. If
you cool the RAM and use an external boot device which copies all the
RAM to a file you can steal hard drive passwords which were cached in
memory. Yes, this includes any other passwords also cached in memory at
the time.

With the quickboot BIOS option, this task can be done quickly via a USB
thumb drive without clearly drawing attention.

By disabling quickboot and having my RAM scanned, it clears my memory at
boot time. While this doesn't help if they have a compatible computer
they can drop the RAM in to, it does help if they have time constraints
and they're relying upon the fact that most systems are not set to scan
the RAM.

While I also password-protect my CMOS configuration, and encourage
people to lock out other boot options on laptops, it is about layers of
protection. Plus, my idea is to deter people quickly. There's no doubt
about what is happening or the time it will take when a machine starts
a RAM check. Make it clear that there are easier fish, and they're more
likely to walk away sooner.

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 05:32:38AM -0500, Scott Blaydes wrote:
> Does the RAM scan actually have anything to do with security, or just PC
> health?
>
> Thank you,
> Scott Blaydes
>
> Steven Black wrote:
>> It is interesting.
>>
>> On a personal note, I have all my machines configured in such a manner
>> so as to slow down the boot. -- As a security precaution I have all
>> the RAM on all my machines scanned at boot-time. I actively discourage
>> people from using the "QuickBoot" BIOS options.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Steven Black
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 10:11:14AM -0600, Abhishek Kulkarni wrote:
>>> Just stumbled upon some interesting stuff here
>>> http://www.fenrus.org/plumbers_fastboot.ppt
>>>
>>> I just clocked the booting time on my notebook (Dell Vostro 1400), it takes
>>> more than 90 seconds!
>>>
>>> -- Abhishek
>>>
>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> BLUG mailing list
>>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

Re: [BLUG] Improving the boot time

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Abhishek Kulkarni <abbyzcool@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just stumbled upon some interesting stuff here
> http://www.fenrus.org/plumbers_fastboot.ppt
>
> I just clocked the booting time on my notebook (Dell Vostro 1400), it takes
> more than 90 seconds!
>
Are you timing from just after the BIOS test? On a fresh
desktop-configuration install of Fedora 10 beta I'm getting less than
30 seconds; Fedora and Ubuntu tend to be in the 40-seconds range in
the average case (Ubuntu being a bit faster because their upstart
scripts are more optimized).

A good thing coming out from that demo is that now that a 5-sec boot
is shown to be doable, we could hopefully get 10-sec boots from a
general-purpose set-up within a release or two, from the major desktop
distros.

--
miʃel salim • http://hircus.jaiku.com/
IUCS • msalim@cs.indiana.edu
Fedora • salimma@fedoraproject.org
MacPorts • hircus@macports.org

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] scheme programming

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Brian Wheeler <bdwheele@indiana.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 09:35 -0400, Ben Shewmaker wrote:
>> I'm taking the intro to computer science course at IU and we are
>> learning to program with Scheme. I have no experience in programming
>> (well, if you don't count playing around with Basic in high school)
>
> Learned BASIC when I was young, and then played with C and Assembly. At
> IU did the scheme thing as well.
>
>
>> and was wondering what languages anyone on this list starting
>> learning on. I know it isn't the specific language you learn but the
>> fundamentals that matter, but I'm also wondering if Scheme is used
>> often in specific applications or where is it used in the wild?
>>
>
> I don't think scheme is actually used must in the wild on its own, but
> it is used in some gnu projects as an extension language via Guile.

Orbitz uses LISP, last time I checked.

>
> It is a neat language on a lot of levels.
Couldn't agree more!

>
>> Oh, and another thing I've been thinking about on this class. There
>> is a strict no sharing your code policy with anyone. Our first
>> assignment is really basic so I can see where sharing something like
>>
>> ;least compares 2 numbers and prints the smallest
>> (define least
>> (lambda (x y)
>> (min x y)))
>>
>
> I'm surprised they didn't ban the min function for that problem.
We do, actually -- language features not covered already cannot be
used. Reminds me of Guy Steele's paper where he limited himself to
only using terms he has already defined previously. One of the most
readable papers ever, especially in the programming language world!

>
>
>> would make it easy to cheat. But as we will get more complicated I
>> think that sharing code is a good way to learn how others solve the
>> same problem.
>
> Ah, but you're supposed to be learning how to solve the problem! Its
> not necessarily about the answer, so much as the process of obtaining
> the answer that's important.
>
Yup. We allow students to share algorithms too, just not actual
implementation. The collaboration policy used to be much more strict.

>
>> Maybe because I'm really into the open source community that I feel
>> that a University would surely want to encourage a more open approach
>> to coding? And we also use an implementation called Chez Scheme,
>> which is proprietary.
>
> Look at who does Chez Scheme (hint: author of the user guide) and look
> around computer science department. For good measure, look at the
> "Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme" That should solve
> the "why is IU using a proprietary scheme implementation" question!
>
Plus it's fast. Kent Dybvig's student, Aziz, is actually working on an
open-source implementation of the new Scheme standard, R6RS, and this
implementation, Ikarus, is available in both Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora.

You can use any other Scheme implementation for most of the class --
the only part that is Chez-specific is when we cover trees, later on
in the semester, because we use Chez's SWL widget library to do
visualization. But if you really want, talk to your AI (me!) and I can
cook you up an alternate tree-handling library. When the time comes.

>
>> Aren't there some good open source implementations? What do you all
>> think?
>>
>
> SISC is a java implementation of scheme. MIT has one.
>
>
> Doing a "yum info \*scheme\*" on my Fedora 9 box shows a few schemey
> things:
>
> Name : plt-scheme
> Arch : x86_64
> Version : 372
> Release : 1.fc9

Fedora's plt-scheme is a bit out-of-date (speaking as a Fedora
contributor). I'd recommend downloading the latest 4.x release
straight from plt-scheme.org, it works fine on Fedora. In my copious
(not!) spare time I'm going to try and get 4.x packaged properly;
right now the Unix-style compilation breaks a lot of things.

And to those who say Scheme is not useful, you can actually interface
with the JVM (using sisc, kawa, or Clojure if you want a
LISP/Scheme-ish language that's not exactly either). There's one for
.NET too.

Functional programming is a good programming paradigm to know, and
Scheme is one of the most flexible (and concise) language to learn
functional programming on. Teaching ML or Haskell (or Java!) as an
introductory language would involve talking a lot about types, etc.
and could be quite distracting.

One thing I'd like the C211 course to do is to talk about
non-functional paradigms a bit more -- that's probably for the second
half of the course, though, as recursion takes some time to sink in.

Best,

--
miʃel salim • http://hircus.jaiku.com/
IUCS • msalim@cs.indiana.edu
Fedora • salimma@fedoraproject.org
MacPorts • hircus@macports.org

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] BLUG at IU Linuxfest, Friday Oct 10

All-

This coming Friday (October 10) is IU Linuxfest in Alumni Hall inside
the Indiana Memorial Union. From what I've heard, it's likely this is
the last year for Linuxfest (at least in its current form) as the group
that sponsors it is going away.

BLUG will have a booth there. I'm taking the day off from work, and will
be there all day (10a-4p). Is anyone else free that day (or part of the
day) to join me?

I think our only goal at Linuxfest should be to spread awareness of BLUG
and tell people what we do (presentations, socializing, networking,
FLOSS advocacy, etc). I think I'll just borrow a table from my office,
and maybe print out some flyers or something to give to people. Anyone
else have any ideas (that can be pulled together in a week)?

If anybody would care to join me, I'd love it. Let me know when you can
be there, or just drop on in as you please. Sorry there's not more
notice, this all just came together sort of last-minute.

Here's a link to the IU Linuxfest Page:
http://rtinfo.indiana.edu/linuxfest/

--
Dave Cooley
dcooley@kiva.net

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] next meeting

Good call, Jeremy. That's a great idea. Like I said, I don't think I
can be there this month anyway.

Dave Cooley
dcooley@kiva.net

Jeremy L. Gaddis wrote:
> Ben Fulton has organized another Bloomington Geek Dinner[0] for Oct.
> 14th, which would coincide with the date for the BLUG meeting. If there
> is no BLUG meeting this month, folks could always check that out.
>
> [0]:
> http://www.bloomingtongeekdinners.com/2008/10/geek-dinner-oct-14th-malib
> u-grill.html
>
> --
> Jeremy L. Gaddis
> Network Administrator
> Ivy Tech Community College
> 812.330.6156 (w) 812.391.3971 (m)
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu [mailto:blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu]
> On Behalf Of Dave Cooley
> Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 12:20 PM
> To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
> Subject: Re: [BLUG] next meeting
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> right now I'm trying to figure out how I can plan the next meeting.
> This month is quite full, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make the
> normal second Tuesday meting myself. Does anybody know for sure that
> they can come? I also don't have anybody who wants to give a
> presentation, although I think we're all ready to hear one. :)
>
>
> Dave
>
> Dave Cooley
> dcooley@kiva.net
>
>
> Paul Proctor wrote:
>
> Hi,
> What is the time and locaton of the next meeting?
> Thanks,
> Paul Proctor
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

RE: [BLUG] next meeting

Ben Fulton has organized another Bloomington Geek Dinner[0] for Oct.
14th, which would coincide with the date for the BLUG meeting. If there
is no BLUG meeting this month, folks could always check that out.

[0]:
http://www.bloomingtongeekdinners.com/2008/10/geek-dinner-oct-14th-malib
u-grill.html

--
Jeremy L. Gaddis
Network Administrator
Ivy Tech Community College
812.330.6156 (w) 812.391.3971 (m)

-----Original Message-----
From: blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu [mailto:blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu]
On Behalf Of Dave Cooley
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 12:20 PM
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
Subject: Re: [BLUG] next meeting

Hi Paul,

right now I'm trying to figure out how I can plan the next meeting.
This month is quite full, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make the
normal second Tuesday meting myself. Does anybody know for sure that
they can come? I also don't have anybody who wants to give a
presentation, although I think we're all ready to hear one. :)

Dave

Dave Cooley
dcooley@kiva.net

Paul Proctor wrote:

Hi,
What is the time and locaton of the next meeting?
Thanks,
Paul Proctor

________________________________

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] next meeting

Hi Paul,

right now I'm trying to figure out how I can plan the next meeting.  This month is quite full, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make the normal second Tuesday meting myself.  Does anybody know for sure that they can come?  I also don't have anybody who wants to give a presentation, although I think we're all ready to hear one.  :)


Dave

Dave Cooley dcooley@kiva.net

Paul Proctor wrote:

Hi,

What is the time and locaton of the next meeting?

Thanks,

Paul Proctor

 
 _______________________________________________ BLUG mailing list BLUG@linuxfan.com http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug