Libya Linux Users Group

Two days ago list for Linux day in Libya ( Tripoli ) sponsors listed :

Youth Society Association ” جمعية رعاية الشباب ” + Free /Open Source Software in Libya ( organizing )

Libya Telecom & Technology ( LTT )

Libyan Spider Network ( LSN )

Al-Ma’arif

International IT company

Dlibya ( advertising )

Finally Linux day in Libya !!!, Linux day in Libya-Tripoli in 24 Jan 2009 will be held at the ALiemad tower, Ubuntu will send CD’s and sitcker for this day ” Thanks Ubuntu- Jono Bacon ” for his help .

for more info about the day visit F/OSsiL website http://fossil.ly

Two days ago F/OSsiL website goes online, I want to thank all colleagues in Libyan Spider Network for their generous help, FOSsiL will be the official board for this group and all activity will realease on it, FOSsiL preparing for Linux Day in Libya. for more info go to FOSSIL.LY

There are many times that client are having dynamic ip address (assigned by DHCP server) and in this cases it’s hard to set any rules on bases of ip address as, you would not know what ip address the client machine be getting, in such case we could use mac based ACL’s to set up any rules on that particular machine.

# vi /etc/squid/squid.conf

Look for acl section and append ACL as follows:

acl mac1 arp 00:11:22:70:44:90 acl mac2 arp 00:11:22:33:44:55 http_access allow mac1 http_access allow mac2 http_access deny

all Save and close the file. Restart squid server:

# /etc/init.d/squid restart

Ever needed to umount a device or file system or needed to umount your portable USB drive
but you can’t as you keep getting a “Device is busy” error.

You cannot umount a file system that has open files, file handles, or if the file system is currently in use. not knowing what is using the device or what is keeping it busy can be extremely frustrating.
fuser to the rescue.
fuser will tell you what processes are using a file system and keeping it busy, fuser will also allow you to kill the processes that are preventing you from umounting the filesystem or device.
Lets say it is your usb memory stick on /dev/sda1 that you cannot umount.
Type
fuser -v /dev/sda1will show you what and who is locking your device.
Then type
fuser -km /dev/sda1
to kill all the processes that are locking up and keeping your device busy.
then you will be able to umount your device without any errors.

fuser will also tell you what process or user is accesing a specific file.
Type fuser -v /filename eg
fuser -v /home/gbloody/filename.txt
and if you wanted to kill the process that is locking up the file, simply type
fuser -km /home/gbloody/filename.txt

For those of you who don’t know, Vyatta is an open source network appliance that functions as a router, firewall, and VPN device, all running on a customized version of Debian Linux. I have been following the progress of Vyatta for over a year now, and things are looking very promising. The latest release is called VC4 (Vyatta Community edition) and it includes a bunch of useful new features:

• New command shell allows you to modify Linux settings and network settings from one common interface
• Redesign of routing protocol offers greatly improved stability and performance
• Role-based user access
• Equal-cost multi-path routing
• Remote access VPN
• Support for IP tunneling protocols
• PPPoE support, commonly used with DSL connections
• WAN load balancing of outbound traffic across two or more WAN-facing interfaces
• Quality of Service policies provide congestion management and traffic conditioning

As you can see, a lot of exciting changes have been made in the short six months since the previous release. The routing improvements are related to the change from XORP to Quagga. The added QoS capabilities will make Vyatta a good fit for VoIP deployments. The only negative to this release is that Vyatta had to temporarily remove the GUI web-interface until they can integrate it, which is scheduled for July, 2008. Overall, Vyatta is becoming a a compelling option for replacing some of your over-priced network equipment. Read the rest of this entry »

Ultimate Edition 1.8, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a variety of user-friendly enhancements, has been released.

Ultimate Edition 1.8 is built based off Ubuntu Hardy Heron, unlike previous builds which were created by a tool called reconstructor the development team built this one by hand. it is by far their best work. The team releasing both a 32 bit & a 64 Bit edition. Hotrod is a fitting name for it, if you have a 64 bit processor it highly recommend the 64 bit edition.

Devil-Linux is a CD-based Linux distribution for firewalls and routers. The goal of Devil-Linux is to have a small, customizable and secure Linux. The future of Devil-Linux will go far beyond an ordinary router, it will provide a lot of other services, but the distribution will still be easy and fast to maintain.

Features:

* Boots from CD
Traditionally Devil Linux boots from a CD-ROM which is read-only by nature. This means an intruder will not be able to install i.e. an “ordinary” root kit.

* Boots from USB pendrive
As all movable parts in your computer, the CD-ROM is prone to failure. This is the reason why we provide a script to install the entire system on an USB pendrive. Note: You need a computer which is able to boot from USB harddisks, in order to use this feature.

* Configuration is saved on a floppy disc or on a USB Flash Media
Due to the read-only nature of CD-ROMs, you need a place to save your configuration files. This can either traditionally be on a floppy disc or on a USB flash media (like a pendrive), to increase the reliability.

* Configuration can be burned on CD
There are cases when you have to ensure that the configuration can’t be modified. This is the reason why we provide the feature for loading the configuration archive from the (read-only) CD-ROM.