Linux Gazette

   ...making Linux just a little more fun!

October 2005 (#119):

     * [1]The Mailbag
     * [2]More 2 Cent Tips!
     * [3]The Answer Gang
     * [4]LG News
     * [5]Notes  from  Linux World 2005 - San Francisco: Linux World goes
       Enterprise, by Howard Dyckoff
     * [6]Book Review: Knoppix Hacks by Kyle Rankin, by Edgar Howell
     * [7]Optimizing Website Images with the Littleutils, by Brian Lindholm
     * [8]After the Summer of Code, by Jimmy O'Regan
     * [9]Learning to Program with DrScheme, by Pramode C.E.
     * [10]HelpDex, by Shane Collinge
     * [11]Ecol, by Javier Malonda
     * [12]The Linux Launderette

The Mailbag
     _________________________________________________________________

                        HELP WANTED : Article Ideas
   Submit comments about articles, or articles themselves (after reading
   [13]our guidelines) to [14]The Editors of Linux Gazette, and technical
           answers and tips about Linux to [15]The Answer Gang. 
     _________________________________________________________________

     * [16]reminder software
     * [17]Security implications of root login over SSH
            ____________________________________________________

reminder software

   Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:00:35 +0530
   J.Bakshi ([18]hizibizi from spymac.com)
   Answered By Thomas Adam

   Hi all, 

   I like to add a reminder software with my system. I have tested calendar and
   am not satisfied with it. now I have very sophisticated reminder tool called
   remind . its tkremind front end adds special weight to remind by making
   configuration as easy as Kalarm of [19]KDE. I am looking for a tool which
   can make the message (from remind) appear on my desktop. could any one give
   any idea ? 

     [Thomas] Assuming remind uses some transient form to store the reminder
     somewhere, then you can use 'osd_cat' or some other utility to have it
     "display" on the screen.

   I have found another tool called xmessage - :) 

     [Thomas] That has been around since the 80s.

   like 
xmessage -file  

   so you have to write your message in a file (ascii) first. 

     [Thomas] You don't even need to do that. xmessage can read from STDIN as
     well.
            ____________________________________________________

Security implications of root login over SSH

   Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:11:20 -0700 (PDT)
   Riza Aziz ([20]telefonixar from yahoo.com)
   Answered By Kapil Hari Paranjape

   Hi there, 

   I'm wondering if it's wise to allow a remote user within the LAN to log in
   as root, by adding that user's public key to root's "authorized_keys" for
   that machine. 

     [Kapil] There is an "sudo"-like mechanism within SSH for doing this. In
     the authorized_keys file you put a "command=...." entry which ensures that
     this key can only be used to run that specific command.

     All the usual warnings a la "sudo" apply regarding what commands should be
     allowed. It is generally a good idea to also prevent the agent forwarding,
     X11 forwarding and pty allocation.

     Here is an entry that I use for "rsync" access. (I have wrapped the line
     and AAAA.... is the ssh key which has been truncated).

from="172.16.1.28",command="rsync -aCz --server --sender . .",
no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty
ssh-dss AAAA..... rsyncuser

   I'm writing some scripts to back up data on our small business network here.
   One  option  is to get each machine to periodically dump its data on a
   specific  machine  using NFS. The option I'm interested in is to get a
   designated machine to remotely login to each machine and transfer the files
   over a tar-ssh pipe. 

   The only reason to be using root access is because some directories (/root,