Linux Gazette

   ...making Linux just a little more fun!

August 2004 (#105):

     * [1]The Mailbag
     * [2]More 2 Cent Tips!
     * [3]The Answer Gang
     * [4]News Bytes, by Michael Conry
     * [5]Fvwm, by Thomas Adam
     * [6]How To Enable Desktop Icons for Lightweight Window Managers, by John
       Murray
     * [7]White Box Linux Kickstart Tricks, by Mark Nielsen
     * [8]Securing a New Linux Installation, by Barry O'Donovan
     * [9]RDF and the Semantic Web, by Jimmy O'Regan
     * [10]RSS and Feed Readers, by Jimmy O'Regan
     * [11]Q & A: The difference between hard and soft links, by Lew Pitcher
     * [12]Dude, Where's my System?, by Lew Pitcher
     * [13]Using Samba to join a Windows NT domain, by Rich Price
     * [14]Inter-Process Communication - Part II, by Hiran Ramankutty
     * [15]Design Awareness, by Mark Seymour
     * [16]Fine-tuning SpamAssassin, by Neil Youngman
     * [17]Ecol, by Javier Malonda
     * [18]Qubism, by Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem
     * [19]The Linux Laundrette
     * [20]The Backpage, by Ben Okopnik

The Mailbag
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   Submit comments about articles, or articles themselves (after reading
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     _________________________________________________________________

     * [24]encryption kills my connection in linux but works in win98
     * [25]Probing from ISP?
            ____________________________________________________

encryption kills my connection in linux but works in win98

   Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:13:27 -0700
   David Rich ([26]dsrich from ieee.org)
   Question by Denis Miller (denis.miller from sympatico.ca)

   I have a wireless connection to my landlords internet connection. Under
   win98 it works fine but using xandros the encryption does not work. Using
   no encryption it works fine. 

   128 byte, infrastructure mode, netgear am111 usb, signal strength over 68%.
   Is there some trick to using encryption I am missing. 

    1. Are you actually using encryption under Win98?
    2. Is your landlord's Access Point set up to allow encryption? From the
       fact that it works without encryption, it cannot be set up to require
       it, so it may not be set up to allow it at all.
    3. Where  did  you find a landlord so kind as to allow you to use his
       bandwidth?

     Okay, okay, kudos to any landlord who's a kind enough soul to offer #3.
     Wireless is becoming a popular topic - people are welcome to give a good
     solid shot at this question, but we'd also enjoy seeing an article about
     something wireless. Tripping over cords all the time makes Linux or in
     fact any networking OS just a little less fun... -- Heather
            ____________________________________________________

Probing from ISP?

   Mon, 5 Jul 2004 11:16:05 -0500 (COT)
   John Karns ([27]jkarns from etb.net.co)

   Hi gang,

   I noticed some weirdness in my logs yesterday. They're filling up with
   events which appear to be probes to various ports on my machine, averaging
   one every 2 - 3 secs. The source ports (SPT in log) are above 1024, to lower
   numbered destination ports (in most cases) I'm using a Linksys WRT54G wlan
   router (runs Linux!!), flashed to a 3rd party mod of the OS called samadhi2.
   I  have  the router firewall enabled. I'm not sure what to make of the
   situation, but I'm guessing that the ISP (an MS W2k shop) has been cracked
   with a virus that is probing all IP's in their pool.

   I'd be most interested in any comments.

     That was pretty close to the beginning of the month, things have been
     dealt with since then. We'll just give a taste of this - it's a sad fact
     of modern network life that the destructive forces of virus and worm
     blitzes affect every OS, just by chewing our bandwidth up like a big dog
     chews up the master's old shoes.

     We'll protect the privacy of his shop here, suffice it to say that his
     system  logs showed a lot of traffic to destination ports 135 (hmm,
     something in the mswin/Smb packet family?) and 445, though other ports are
     sometimes seen... with a few to higher numbered ports (9898, 443, 1433...

     Other nodes seem to be getting traffic either to or from 34240 or other
     ports around that range. (viewed with iptraf -- Heather)