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Please Note: This is only relevant to single-user desktop installations of Linux. The issues I will discuss here don’t apply to servers. In fact, the exact opposite applies there.
“Don’t run as root” is an oft-repeated mantra of *nix security. While I agree 100%, it’s not as big on the desktop as some would think. I’d like to point out why here. I still believe you shouldn’t login as root, but I also believe that it’s up to each user to make their own decision.
Think about the data on your computer. What matters to you? E-Mail? Documents? Images? Most of us have things like family photos, financial records, personal communications, saved passwords, or other sensitive or irreplaceable data. This is what we want to protect. When I backup my desktop, I backup my home directory. I don’t backup my OS install, software, or anything else that is not private or difficult to replace. Think of this as the “important stuff.”
So, let’s talk about the important stuff. What users have access to YOUR important stuff? Most likely, your own user, and the root user. So, great, not running as root eliminates one of the possible users that can access your file. So what user do you run as? Your own user. So it’s pretty obvious that not running as root doesn’t restrict access to the important stuff.
Need proof that your data is no safer under your own user? Think about running “rm -rf /” as root or as your own user. What happens to your data either way? It’s gone. Don’t run this, just think about it.
So what do you gain by not running as root? Well, your system is a lot less likely to be the victim of an ongoing compromise. As root, an attacker can modify your operating system to their liking. Think that’s not much? Guess what: your ssh client now sends the username, host, and password for any system you connect to to a server in China. Or maybe new files you create are uploaded to an anonymous file-sharing site on the internet. Perhaps every key you touch is recorded to grab usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and your most personal conversations. Or maybe an attacker uses your computer as a middle man for downloading child pornography. That will be fun to explain to the FBI.
So, obviously some things need to run as root: system configuration tools, for example. However, running these using sudo limits your exposure to just these utilities, rather than the thousands (millions?) of lines of code in a full desktop environment.
In short, if you want to run as root on your desktop, go for it. But know the risks, and know the consequences. On the other hand, don’t chant “don’t login as root” as if it’s a magic bullet for security.

Due to the upcoming release of Dropbox 0.8 and its ability to support Application Indicators (and custom icons), many people have been creating icons for it to blend into the Ubuntu-Mono icon set.
However I have yet to find a set that is made in the Elementary style, so I decided to do it myself
(the initial idea is based on these icons)
Below is a link to the GNOME-Look page where you can download them. Once the ZIP file has downloaded, you need to extract the files into ~/.dropbox-dist/icons
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=128132
What do you think?

When walking in a big group of people you have to check every now and then for the slower ones so you don’t leave them behind and lose them. It’s the same in a community like KDE. Every now and then you have to check if everyone can still keep up and if not take the necessary steps. That’s why for the second time now I’ve asked KDE developers to tell me which parts of KDE they think really needs some new blood or more helping hands. This is the list of answers I got:
Quite the mix – surely there’s something exciting in there for everyone. So if you are someone who wants to contribute to KDE and looking for a place to start or an experienced contributor looking for a new project, this is where your help would be really appreciated. Choose your direction and get your hands dirty

I’m back from conference touring (which was awesome btw – more about that later) and Tom reminded me that the release parties for 4.5 are not planned yet. And the release is planned for August 4th, so in a bit more than a week. OMG!
Clearly it is time to fix this situation and give the world a chance to meet some cool KDE people. So go to the 4.5 release party planning page and check if there is one near you already. If there is one then sign up for it and have fun. If there is none yet it’s time to start one. Pick a date and time (preferably within 3 weeks of release) and reserve a place in a local restaurant, bar, meeting room, university, whateverelsefits. Add it to the wiki page, spread the word and then have lots of fun.
Of course it’s my pleasure to announce the first of hopefully many release parties: Stuttgart, Germany on 7th of August. Exact place and time is still to be determined. Check the wiki page every now and then for updates.
For those who have never planned or attended a release party: You can do pretty much everything you want from simply getting together for a beer and chatting to full day event with talks, workshops and so on. It’s up to you. You can find a few tips on the community wiki. Everyone is welcome from active contributor to interested user. Just let the person organizing it know you’re coming so they can plan better.

Dear readers,
I’ve uploaded Windows XP driver for Winbond W89C35 driver as it can enable the use of Winbond USB wifi dongle (VID:0416 PID:0035) under Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.
Follow the step-by-step instruction as outlined in the Ubuntu Wiki page, in order to use the driver with ndiswrapper.
p/s: I’ve uploaded this driver because I find a lot of websites out there that offers fake Winbond W89C35 drivers.
p/s 2: Of course I would recommend the rest of the users out there to buy a more Linux-friendly USB wifi dongle, such as from TP-LINK, Netgear or TrendNet which I found to be very portable across operating systems.


Apa itu MongoDB? Itu loh, engine basis data non-relational (atau lagi ngetren dengan sebutan NoSQL) yang schema-free dan: *
Lalu, apa yang membuat MongoDB istimewa? **
* & ** Dikutip dari presentasinya Mathias Stearn dari 10gen.
Saya sendiri belum pernah mencoba MongoDB ini, dan tertarik untuk mencoba setelah mendengar podcast TemanMacet.com eps #49. Karena MongoDB sudah ada di repo Ubuntu 10.04, caranya install juga jadi gampang. Kalau lebih suka GUI silakan pake synaptic tapi kalau mau sedikit bermain-main di terminal silakan buka terminalnya, lalu ketik:
sudo apt-get install mongodb
Instalasi selesai, mari mencoba mengakses shell mongodb dengan perintah:
mongo
Oops, malah errot
mongos: error while loading shared libraries: libmozjs.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Ternyata ada pustaka yang kurang, artinya kita harus install paket tambahan dan karena pustaka libmozjs ini adanya di pake xulrunner-dev, marilah memasang paket tersebut, kembali ke teminal
sudo apt-get install xulrunner-dev
Kemudian buat sebuah symbolic link ke /usr/lib:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.2.6/libmozjs.so /usr/lib/
Terakhir hidupkan ulang layanan mongodb:
sudo service mongodb start
Coba lagi akses shell si mongodb
mongo
Credit to sunng


Samba sebagai protokol file dan printer sharing antara komputer unix-windows dan unix-unix sangat membantu dalam berkomunikasi berbeda Sistem Operasi. Di sini ane mencoba membagi pengalaman printer sharing, setelah sukses menggunakan printer HP Laser Jet 1020 sharingnya W*****S XP, sekarang gantian ane sharing printer HP Deskjet F2100 di BlankON 5.0, gimana caranya?
Hilang tanda ; pada tulisan yang ditebalkan
#===== Share Definitions ======
Untuk kompi W*****S XP dapat mengakses printer sharing terlebih dahulu instal software driver HP Deskjet F2100. Unduh di sini
Pastikan proses penginstalan berhasil dan printer sharing dapat diakses lewat Control Panel -> Printer and Faxes bla bla bla…
sumber


Mastershaper adalah sebuah web-based bandwidth management yang cukup sederhana, cukup mudah digunakan apabila tidak punya cukup waktu baca-baca manual tc atau htb untuk management bandwidth dadakan
berikut adalah cara instalasi yang saya lakukan di ubuntu. pada kasus ini ubuntu yang saya gunakan adalah ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS.
install dulu lampp server
admin@gateway:~$ sudo su
root@gateway:/home/admin$ apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql php5-pear mysql-server
download dan ekstrak mastershaper versi 0.44
root@gateway:/home/admin$ cd /opt
root@gateway:/opt$ wget http://www.mastershaper.org/files/mastershaper_0.44.tar.bz2
root@gateway:/opt$ tar xvjf mastershaper.044.tar.bz2
root@gateway:/opt$ mv MasterShaper-0.44 mastershaper
install paket pendukung phplayersmenu
root@gateway:/opt$ cd /opt/mastershaper/htdocs
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs$ wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/phplayersmenu/phplayersme...
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs$ tar xvzf phplayersmenu-3.2.0-rc.tar.gz
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs$ mv phplayersmenu-3.2.0 phplayersmenu
install paket pendukung jpgraph versi comunity
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs$ mkdir jpgraph
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs$ cd jpgraph
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs/jpgraph$ wget http://hem.bredband.net/jpgraph2/jpgraph-3.0.7.tar.bz2
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs/jpgraph$ tar xvjf jpgraph-3.0.7.tar.bz2
buat file password akses apache untuk mastershaper dengan user administrator
root@gateway:/opt/mastershaper/htdocs/jpgraph$ cd
root@gateway:~$ htpasswd -c /opt/mastershaper/htdocs/.htpasswd administrator
virtualhost untuk akses mastershaper
root@gateway:~$vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/shaper
isi dengan
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName mastershaper DocumentRoot /opt/mastershaper/htdocs AllowOverride AuthConfig AuthName "Add your login message here." AuthType Basic AuthUserFile /opt/mastershaper/htdocs/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null require user administrator </VirtualHost>
berikan akses sudo untuk mastershaper
root@gateway:~$ echo “www-data ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:$/opt/mastershaper/htdocs/shaper_loader.sh” >> /etc/sudoers
berikutnya adalah membuatkan database dan user database khusus untuk mastershaper
root@gateway:~$ mysql -uroot -p
mysql> CREATE USER ‘shaper’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘pass’;
- silakan ganti pass sesuai keinginan
mysql> CREATE DATABASE shaper_db
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON shaper_db TO ‘shaper’@'localhost’ WITH GRANT OPTION;
selanjutnya anda tinggal menambahkan dns record untuk mastershaper sesuai nama virtualhost yang digunakan. dan akses via browser ke alamat http://mastershaper
selanjutnya akan ada menu configurasi sesuaikan dengan konfigurasi yang telah dibuat sebelumnya..
akhirnya mastershaper telah terinstall dan selamat bersenang-senang menjadi admin yang kejam

I usually use the websites for keeping up with both Twitter and Facebook but sometimes I want to post something to both services at once., For those times I fire up TweetDeck (TD), a great cross-platform microbloging solution that uses Adobe AIR to deal with the details for each operating system whether you’re on GNU/Linux, MacOS X or Windows. TweetDeck can be used for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and other social networking sites.
When I switched from GNOME to KDE I didn’t expect a problem but when I fired up TweetDeck last week I got error messages. (Sorry, I forgot to snap a screenshot of the errors.) Yesterday I was posting the first part of my posts on the migration to KDE and decided to try reinstalling TD to see if it would resolve the issue. It didn’t, but there was a URL (http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/492/cpsid_49267.html) in the error message so I entered it into my web browser. The page is about problems with their Encrypted Local Storage (ELS) and a little more than half way down the page I saw a section about Using ELS while switching desktops. This is exactly what I was looking for.
Currently ELS supports a single desktop environment either Gnome or KDE on a machine. If the desktop session is Gnome and an application stores some data in ELS, when the desktop is changed to KDE, the same application will not be able to access the data that was stored earlier when the desktop session was Gnome.
This is because AIR Linux supports GnomeKeyring on Gnome and KWallet on KDE, and there are no standard method to transfer data among these two password managers.
I needed to reset the ELS by deleting the directory where it’s stored, ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS, with ~/ standing in for your user directory (/home/[YourUserName]/). I deleted the folder in Dolphin but you can do it by very carefully running this command in a terminal:
$ rm -rf ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS
Once you delete that folder you should be able to run TweetDeck without a problem.

Ever been in a situation where you are trying to solve one problem but have
more hoops to jump than necessary!?
This rant has been building up this past week and it all started with
bzr: ERROR: Unknown branch format: 'Bazaar Branch Format 7 (needs bzr
1.6)\n'
Seems that bzr has to be upgraded on hardy {--And now this? --after I had
purged and re-installed bzr because the earlier installation was giving weird
errors and I didnt want to waste time going off on a tangent. argh, I was wrong
about wasting time with bugs!
I was suggested a PPA but for that was not
an optimal path for me. Besides, here I was trying to pull a MM revision from
LP, but instead have to build bzr and then work on MM..... ~fun.
Alan (thanks :)) suggested I edit the sources.list and add "deb" and then do an
http://ppa.launchpad.net/bzr/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade which would
upgrade bzr to the version in the ppa without all the compiling and building
hoop jumping.
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
bzr
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
What a killjoy !!
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
python-configobj
The following packages will be upgraded:
bzr
[.....................]
Setting up bzr (2.1.2-1~bazaar2~hardy1) ...
removing incorrectly installed bash example /etc/bash_completion.d/bzr
Finally.... I upgraded bzr which allowed me to pull the branch: $ sudo An hour later.......gee, where was I now? The
bzr branch lp:mailman/2.1.
download was still 'in progress' and was'nt all this supposed to be incidental
to testing Mailman...!? That was the night before. The next morning after
yet-another-regular-unscheduled-power-outage,
it was LaunchPad going down for an hour or so --some twit was DoSing their
server. What an incredibly productive activity!
LP returns and the development machine decides to die with a
"/dev/sda1 error : fsck died with exit status 4". Now I knew this
was my lucky day!!
Dug out a liveCD and ran 'fsck -f /dev/sda1' manually,
where:
-f = force fsck even if filesystem seems clean
-cc = run badblocks check with a non-destructive test
-k = write new list of badblocks to current list
-p = automatically repair errors if possible without requiring human
input
-v = verbose output
It found 5 inodes containing multiply claimed blocks and repaired it but for a
while everything was in slow-motion -- I panicked about it taking ages to
check a mere 40 gb of inodes and blocks. Colourless did the math on why it will
take ages "just consider the sustained transfer rate of the drive which will
probably be in the low 10s of mb/s. lets say you are getting 20mb/s second
transfer, that is still going to be 2000 seconds to scan the disk, or 33
minutes".
Ah, talk of collective agida!
Earlier today fsck.ext1: No such file or directory while trying to open
-- the hdd would not be detected and system refused to boot,
/dev/hda1. The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem
refused to detect partitions. I spoke too soon earlier. It was super lucky
saturday, not lucky friday!! This time the LiveCD was an arm's length away
after last night's use and I checked out "fsck", "e2fsck" ...zilch, No
response.
There is a good utility called TestDisk, which is available as
a package for both debian and ubuntu -- sudo apt-get install, and you can run it from liveCD if your disk ever fails. It
testdisk
goes without saying that TestDisk will be useful only if your disk is detected
by BIOS and hence alive.
Now, the worst I could think was "bad sectors==dead disk" but before that I had
to check for loose wiring and then see if the BIOS detected the drive. The disk
was spinning as I could hear the 'whrr' sound. Unplugged and re-plugged the
wires a few times ...Nada...Bios would not detect the hdd. Convinced that it
was the worst "bad sectors==dead disk", I shut everything down. A few hours
later I switch it it on and voila the disk was detected and grub was soon
asking which OS I wanted to boot into. That means it was just a loose
connection (HOPEFULLY :)).
A BIG 'thanks' to ALL the folks who helped out with suggestions and listened to
my kvetch. Much appreciated :) If I'd ever have to calculate "productive
time" sans all the idiocy around then its scary to note the amount of time that
is wasted scheduling my day around a power outage, hardware issues and software
bugs, and then there is this mundane thing called 'life'. I wish I had 10-days of silence instead.