We just had another Jaunty Installfest. For this event we teamed up with the University of Arizona's Computer Science Department for a co-hosted installfest. The CS Dept. has just recently made the change over to an all "Ubuntu" Operating System Dept. w00t! We did dual boot, VMware, and parallel for MAC installs during the day.

The folks seemed enthusiastic about Ubuntu, and we've already had several folks in our team channel who got Ubuntu installs at the event!!

A big thank you to the CS Dept of the U of A for co-hosting this event. Also to team members: lenards, azmike, todd, soldats, hutchnate. Great work team.

Wiki with summary and pics here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam/Installfest/Jaunty-Tucson

Our team will be running at table at the upcoming Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) 2009.

 The Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) is a small, low-cost, one-day conference about all things Open Source. It will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2009.

In order to make this happen, we need to raise $100 to sponsor the table there, team contact Bret Fledderjohn will be collecting donations and handling securing the table.Can you help sponsor our table at CPOSC 2009?

Thank you!

Ubuntu Pennsylvania team member Elizabeth Krumbach will also be presenting at this conference on “Contributing to Open Source Projects.”To see other speakers and topics see their speakers page. We have created a wiki page for this event:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/EventsTeam/CPOSC2009

You can also check out Bret’s blog post about the event!

It is generally recommended to create separate partitions for your root (/) and home (/home) directories.  This gives you the ability to do a clean install of your distro, or another distro, without putting your personal data at risk.  Usually this works out pretty well.

There can, however, be a downside.  Suppose you didn’t allocate enough space to your root partition, or you’ve installed way more apps than you thought you would.  Suddenly your down to your last 100 MB, and apt-get upgrading to the newest release needs to download* 2GB of packages!  What to do?

Don’t Panic, there’s an easy solution.  All you have to do is tell Apt to download those packages to your home partition instead.  Here’s how:

1. Run: sudo apt-get clean to delete cached packages from their current location (most likely /var/cache/apt/archives)
2. Create a new directory at /home/apt/cache, owned by root.
3. Create a new file at /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02homecache with the following contents:
   Dir::Cache::Archives "/home/apt/cache";
4. Run: sudo apt-get update again, just to make sure you don’t have any syntax errors.
5. Run: update-manager to begin your upgrade!

* Note, you will be given two sets of space requirements, one is for the difference in disk space after the upgrade is complete, the other is for the amount of diskspace that is needed to download and store all the new packages while the upgrade is taking place.  This hacklet only helps with the latter of the two, if you don’t have enough space on your root partition for the new installation, you’ll have to delete some files or resize your partition.

Welcome to the Ubuntu-Arizona Weekly Newsletter, Issue #105 for the week August 17, August 23.

* Arizona Loco Newsletter
* One Hundred Fifth Edition
* Powered by Ubuntu
* Wednesday-August 26, 2009
* Arizona Loco Team Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam

* Next meeting: Sunday August 30, 2009 9:00 PM
* Server: Freenode: IRC Channel #ubuntu-us-az

In This Issue

* Announcements: Fourth Ubuntu Developer Week! August 31st - September 4th, 2009. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-August/0006... . Karmic Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) packages are now open for translation. https://translations.launchpad.net/unr . The Ubuntu Global Jam is an incredible opportunity for the Ubuntu community to unite together around the weekend of 2nd - 4th Oct 2009 to work together to improve Ubuntu. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam .

* Discussion on the Tucson installfest: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1244718

* PLUG announcements: PLUG west side is this Wednesday. It will be a different temporary location. http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/node/352 . Phoenix Installfest also this Saturday for those who don't go down to Tucson. http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/node/135 . ABLEconf has added a FOSS dev camp on Friday and a FOSS LAN party on Sunday. Work on those will start in a few weeks. The Call For Presentations went out last week. Early bird proposals are due in two weeks. Short version for including in emails, etc.: http://www.ABLEconf.com/node/30 . Long version when only providing a link: http://www.ABLEconf.com/2009/Phoenix/cfp . TEDx is coming to Phoenix and looking for presentation input. http://www.tedxphoenix.com/2009/08/who-do-you-want-to-see-at-tedxphoenix... . Software Freedom Day is coming up in a few weeks.http://www.SoftwareFreedomDay.org/ . Mark Shuttleworth was interviewed Monday for Gutsy Geeks. It should be broadcast two weeks from yesterday [Ed. Note: That would be 2 weeks from Saturday, August 22, 2009]. http://www.GutsyGeeks.com/

Read the whole thing at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam/Newsletters/09August26

Welcome to the Ubuntu-Arizona Weekly Newsletter, Issue #104 for the week August 10, August 16.

* Arizona Loco Newsletter
* One Hundred Fourth Edition
* Powered by Ubuntu
* Wednesday-August 19, 2009
* Arizona Loco Team Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam

* Next meeting: Sunday August 23, 2009 9:00 PM
* Server: Freenode: IRC Channel #ubuntu-us-az

In this issue

johnc4510, began with an announcement:

"Greetings team! I hope everyone is looking forward to the installfest at the U of A on Sat. August 29th. You can find the details in the body of the newsletter below. I want to encourage all team members to attend if possible. This is a great chance to get in with the Computer Sciences Dept. at the University. They are thinking of doing this as a co-hosted event on a regular basis, which would be a real coup for our team. Of course anyone from Phoenix or any other place in the state is welcome to come to...the more the merrier!!!! If you need further help on the day of the event finding the location, I'll have my cell phone on...the number is 520-400-3040. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there and catching up face to face, or meeting some of you for the first time. See you there!! johnc4510 "

* Further announcements: Karmic Alpha 4 has been released: Pre-releases of Karmic are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha4 . Another manufacturer is adding Ubuntu to it's netbook lineup. ZaReason is now offering it's Terra A20 Netbook for $349 with ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed. http://www.zareason.com/shop/product.php?productid=16216 . I received the two free books that our loco was entitled too. One is on Ubuntu Desktop and the other is on Ubuntu Server. I'm planning on using these as give aways at the ABLEcon in Phoenix. I've also sent for our conference pack from Ubuntu.

* Discussion on the Tucson installfest: We now have a location for the install fest: Gould-Simpson Building 9th floor atrium (http://iiewww.ccit.arizona.edu/uamap/staticLarge/77.html ). That's at 1040 East 4 Street in Tucson. We'll have access to the building from 11 am to 5 pm. The flier for the install fest is now available at http://tinyurl.com/r5bx5j in .jpg format. This is a full page flier, but may need to be adjusted to center up on your printer. A further discussion was held on the issue of parking availability and how to find where we need to go. (scott-ev has since come up with a map of potential parking lots. See http://tinyurl.com/pr75md )

PLUG announcements:

* Both Phoenix Stammtische are this week: Tuesday in Tempe, Wednesday in Avondale. http://www.LuftHans.com/Free_Software_Stammtisch . Phoenix Installfest is _not_ this Saturday, it's next week. The Installfest is the _last_ Saturday of the month. MCC classes start in a week. We really need students for the shell scripting and OpenOffice.org classes. The OpenOffice.org class is online, so can be taken from anywhere that has a network connection. http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes . ABLEconf has a call for presentations going out this week. We added LinuxJournal as a media sponsor. Meetings in IRC every Sunday at 20:00, the hour before the loco meeting. http://www.ABLEconf.com/participate

Read the whole thing at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam/Newsletters/09August19

On August 5th Alex Launi did a presentation on Bazaar (bzr) for the Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG).

As you may be aware, bzr is the version control system used by Ubuntu and many other projects. The talk follows in the series of version control system talks we’ve been having a PLUG, and was well-received by the audience.

Well done Alex! Slides here:Bazaar version control system

In other member news, Ubuntu Pennsylvania member Elizabeth Krumbach will be presenting on Women in F/OSS at PLUG Central in September. She also had a talk on Contributing to Open Source Projects accepted for the upcoming Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference.

Ubuntu Florida Logo

Hot off of a successful Youth Build Day collaboration with the makers of the Qimo distribution for kids, the Ubuntu Florida LoCo team will be meeting once again, to discuss world domination.  Or Ubuntu.  Or both.

There are many events coming up in September and October.  Ubuntu Developer Week, Atlanta Linux Fest, Florida Linux Show, and the Ubuntu Global Jam, just to name a few.  Join us via our team chat, or your favorite IRC client in channel #ubuntu-us-fl on Freenode to find out how you can partake in the activities, or help us out.

You can always find the latest agenda here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam/Meetings#Agenda

Every now and then, I see people make the following claim:

Ubuntu has a root password; they just don't tell the user what it is.

Rubbish. Some versions claim it is a randomly generated one. Rubbish. There is no root password, and this statement mustn't be confused with "the password is carriage return" (a usage RMS tried to popularize at MIT). Take a look at /etc/shadow, if you will (sudo less /etc/shadow). On a default install, the first few lines will look something like this:

root:*:14438:0:99999:7:::

daemon:*:14438:0:99999:7:::

bin:*:14438:0:99999:7:::

sys:*:14438:0:99999:7:::

sync:*:14438:0:99999:7:::

Contrast this with the line containing your user's name.

test:$6$.XQFA5P3$JYH9CpZS00DUAPDXcxc5qzP2vaNLrGj2TB5dlLj6rEVCOMpTt5XmFH7eL2TiDtXGApTknWhO6phpGyuac3DCU.:14470:0:99999:7:::

What is different? The second field (the part after the first ":") is a "*" for those system users and a long jumble of numbers and letters for the human users. The "*" means that the user cannot login using a password. The long jumble of numbers and letters? That is a hash of the user's password. In this test user's case, that is a hash of the string "password". If you're interested in the other fields, see man 5 shadow. This password has been encrypted with SHA-512, as evidenced by the $6$ at the start of the hash. See man crypt for a list of other possible prefixes. Note that $1$ means MD5, a hash which has been rather thoroughly broken. Since 8.10, SHA-256 and SHA-512 are available and will be used if you reset your password. If you've still got an MD5 hash in there, it's likely a good idea to do so, if only because it means you haven't changed your password recently enough.

This rumour usually comes up in the context of someone pointing out that if you are a remote attacker, you can guess that root has all the power and so all that is needed is to brute force root's password. In Ubuntu's default setup, this won't work because there is no password that would succeed, regardless how long you spent generating new passwords to try. Instead, the attacker would need to guess the correct combination of user-who-has-sudo-access and password—something exponentially harder. Well-meaning but misguided folks, attempting to protect us Ubuntu users from a false sense of security, then warn us that no, we're wrong, Ubuntu does have a root password. Well, the evidence is in /etc/shadow for all to see. Ubuntu has a locked root account, just the same as if one were to run sudo passwd -l (see man passwd).

From http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com

Welcome to the Ubuntu-Arizona Weekly Newsletter, Issue #103 for the week August 5, August 9.

* Arizona Loco Newsletter
* One Hundred Third Edition
* Powered by Ubuntu
* Wednesday-August 12, 2009
* Arizona Loco Team Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam

* Next meeting: Sunday August 16, 2009 9:00 PM
* Server: Freenode: IRC Channel #ubuntu-us-az

In this issue

* supergeekdave was introduced and welcomed to the team

* Announcements: Karmic Alpha 4 freeze ahead: The fourth Karmic alpha release is planned for next Thursday, August 13. Landscape will now be available in two architectures: installed on-site or hosted as software as a service (SaaS) by Canonical. Migrating to an Encrypted Home Directory: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/06/migrating-to-encrypted-home-direc... . Full Circle Magazine #27 - the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-27/ . Ubuntu-UK Podcast: Day of Reckoning - http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/ . Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue154

* Discussion on the Tucson installfest: Possibility of location at the U of A. Still trying to figure out the setup for a game server. Flier will be produced when we have a location.

* We have about 3 or so members in Flagstaff now...so he'd like to see us get an installfest going up there to down the road.

* PLUG announcements: Classes start in two weeks: http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes . Intro GNU/Linux class, CIS126DL: http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes/CIS239DL.html . OpenOffice.org and shell scripting classes: http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes/BPC110.html . Prescott Free Software Stammtisch is Tuesday night: http://www.LuftHans.com/Free_Software_Stammtisch and http://www.lugy.net/. PLUG east side meeting this Thursday: http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/node/134 . BlenderCAD in person and online meetings this Saturday: http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/node/1148 . Both Tempe and Avondale Stammtische are next week. Hope everyone in the Valley shows up for at least one or the other. ABLEconf will have a call for presentations out this week. Social networks for ABLEconf were updated this week: http://www.ABLEconf.com/networks

Read the whole thing at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArizonaTeam/Newsletters/09August12

From the official website:

The Atlanta Linux Fest is a free grassroots conference for the GNU/Open Source Software/Free Software community to gather and share information about fun and exciting existing and upcoming Linux and Open Source Software.

Attendees of all skill levels are invited to share their experiences to benefit all users of Linux/Free and Open Source Software. Atlanta Linux Fest is the place to learn, make new friends, and have fun!

Ubuntu DC LoCo member Daniel Chen will be presenting.

Jim Fisher (The Awesome!) received confirmation that we’ll be the stars of this upcoming Software Freedom Day at the Philadelphia Area Computer Society on September 19th from 8:30AM to 3:15PM. PACS meetings are held in the  Community Center at the Super Giant Food Store in Willow Grove PA 315 York Road, Willow Grove, PA 19090.

So far we have a presenter lined up who will give a talk about MythTV. We’re also looking to duplicate what we’ve done in the past with tables doing demos and such, but we need more ideas!

What will dazzle these primarily Windows and Mac users? Jim will be bringing along some of his older laptops to show how Linux can bring old hardware back to life, and has suggested we put together some information and have our experts available to discuss how free software works (who writes it? who packages it? who fixes it?).

We have a wiki page where you can add your ideas too,  and sign up for attending and volunteering with us that day:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/EventsTeam/PhillySFD2009

Also check out our Forums and Mailing List thread about the event:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1219350

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-pa/2009-July/000859.html

The Ubuntu Florida LoCo team will be having a Packaging Jam on Augst 8th, 2009 at Cup O Soul http://tinyurl.com/ktlxrd in Winter Park between 2 – 6 pm. The Packaging Jam will be held in the back room within Cup O Soul. The back room has a table, chairs, projector and dvd player. Cup O Soul offers coffee, tea, beer, wine, snacks, food and more.

This will be the 1st Packaging Jam for the Florida LoCo Team. The Packaging Jam will consist of a packaging 101 by Cary Haynie and packaging in general by everybody involved. This event will serve as a stepping stone for people in general and/or from the Florida LoCo to get further involved in packaging applications for Ubuntu and in general.

If you’re interested check out the Packaging Jam page on the team wiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam/Projects/PackagingJam and use https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam/Projects/PackagingJam/Signup if plan to attend.

Canonical Systems Management and Monitoring Tool
Adds Dedicated Server

‘Landscape Dedicated Server’ Now Available For Pre-Order

LONDON, August 4, 2008 – Canonical, the founder
of the Ubuntu project, announced today a new architecture and
installation option for its systems management and monitoring system
for Ubuntu machines - enabling enterprises to have greater local
control over their deployments.

Canonical’s Landscape Dedicated Server will be available to be
installed on the customer's site running on their local network.

read more

Canonical
to Offer Ubuntu Desktop Support and Services

New
offerings to individuals and small businesses to
ease transition to fastest growing Linux desktop

London,
July 31, 2009: Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project,
announced today it has launched new support services for individuals
using Ubuntu desktop – and small businesses looking for cost
effective alternatives to Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac.

read more