LinuxSecurity: “This week, the most interesting articles include “Tutorial: How to Set Up a Linux-Based Firewall for a SOHO,” “The Practical
Intrusion Detection Handbook,” and “Setting Up a VPN: a Tutorial.” Also, an interesting privacy related article brings up the
ongoing Carnivore issue, “Groups urge Ashcroft to act on Carnivore.”

It’s at ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/2.4-ac/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

Cox writes, “Ok we are back on kernel.org.”

2.4.4-ac9
o Clean up x86isms from the UML code (Chris Emerson)
o Remove un-needed UML flag,fix hang under load (Jeff Dike)
o Fix attach race in UML (Jeff Dike)
o Fix warnings, clean up cpp abuses in UML (Roman Zippel)
o Remove -D__KERNEL__ from user space of UML (Roman Zippel)
o Add NCR53c700 and 53c700/66 driver (James Bottomley)
|For NCR Dual 700 microchannel card
o Alpha semaphore updates (Ivan Kokshaysky)
p Fix ibmtr build a bit (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o Tidy sysrq-t output (Russell King)
o Fix miata halt to SRM (Tom Vier)
o Fix aging on buffer cache pages (Marcelo Tosatti)
o Fix looping behaviour on failing memory
allocations (Marcelo Tosatti)
o Handle the PIIX4 on the new intel 82801BAM (Tim Raymond)
o Fix user visible -ENOIOCTLCMD returns (Shane Wegner)
o Fix startech uart detection problem (Val Henson)
o Further tulip updates (Jeff Garzik)
o Revert hpt366 patch

2.4.4-ac8
o Prefetch constant copy_to_user data (Arjan van de Ven)
o Update cpqarray driver – use pci dma api (Charles White)
o Update cciss driver – use pci dma api (Charles White)
o Enable compiled in synclink driver (Paul Fulghum)
o Fix plip section conflict (Keith Owens)
o Tulip driver updates (Jeff Garzik)
o Frame buffer logo updates (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Update __initdata documentation (Ingo Oeser)
o Linearize sunrpc buffers using GFP_KERNEL (Trond Myklebust)
o C Scott Ananian has moved (C Scott Ananian)
o Update get_unaligned docs (John Levon)
o Fix pci pool handling on boxes that have non
irq safe map create/destroy (Pete Zaitcev)
o Update m68k semaphores (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Update NLS Configure.help (Nerijus Baliunas)
o Clean up cyclom driver (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o Further serial driver update (Jeff Garzik)
o Fix typo in sched.c (Jim Freeman)
o Do prefetches on wake_up_common walk (Arjan van de Ven)
o Fix bootmem init problems (Andrea Arcangeli)
o Fix pops on cs46xx power management (Thomas Woller)
o Fix reference of freed memory in cs46xx (Christopher Kanaan)
o Hopefully fix i2o scsi reset crash (me)

Microsoft published a white paper dealing with POS terminals, and the software relating to them. A discussion of its points is on Slashdot.

Ever wondered how to setup a convienent, network-wide backup scheme? FrankenLinux has a guide to the use of Amanda, an OpenSource utility which does everything (except swap the tape for you).

– By Grant Gross
–

Caldera CEO Ransom Love shook up the Open Source community this week with a couple of pronouncements. What made the most news: Love’s partial agreement with Microsoft executive Craig Mundie, who ripped into the supposed evils of the GNU General Public License a couple of weeks ago.

Love chatted up several technology journalists this week, and he told them that the GPL was Open Source’s “weakest point” and hinted that Caldera was working on a BSD-type of license. Caldera also completed its acquisition of pieces of Unix company Santa Cruz Operation and then announced that it has become the world’s largest Linux company.

Love also talked to NewsForge’s Jack Bryar this week about a wide-ranging list of topics, from Caldera’s “world’s largest” claim to the GPL to Caldera’s place in the Open Source community.

Red Hat doesn’t like Netscape

But this isn’t the Caldera weekly news wrapup. Other news broke out, too. Linux distributor Red Hat announced this week it would dump Netscape for the Mozilla browser once Mozilla reaches the 1.0 version (maybe we should say if Mozilla ever reaches the 1.0 version). For the record, we should mention that the long-awaited browser did announce its 0.9 version this week.

Torvalds doesn’t like software subscriptions

Linux father Linus Torvalds punched back at Microsoft this week after the Mundie speech. Torvalds criticized software subscription schemes, like Microsoft’s software renting plan announced this week. Torvalds said software subscriptions are just plain bad for customers, although we all know, of course, that Microsoft would never do something to prop up its bottom line at the expense of consumers. (Note sarcasm.)

Also worth reading, if you didn’t get enough of the Open Source community’s response to Mundie last week, is Torvalds’ comments in an interview with ZD Net.

New in NewsForge

You saw these stories first in NewsForge this week:

• News editor Dan Berkes broke the news that a company called CodeWeavers is releasing a program that will allow Linux Web browsers to run Windows plug-ins such as Quicktime and Shockwave.

• We reported on IP.com and The Foresight Institute’s launch of a “defensive” intellectual property database for programmers who don’t want to patent their work at PriorArt.org. However, Free Software leader Richard Stallman argued that the Web site won’t solve the problem of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issuing patents for very minor creations.

• Editor-in-chief Robin Miller reported on the Open Source Initiative board’s vote to grant the OSI Certification Mark to two licenses, the Apple Public Source License, version 1.2, and IBM’s Common Public License, version 0.5.

Curious about the latest Debian based distribution to come down the pike? Progeny Linux is reviewed at Debianplanet in detail — from installation, to configuration, to support.

Freshmeat has an editorial by Bjorn Gohla warning of the possibility of political repression with the help of free information, and the need for political as well as technical restrictions on open software.

Casio is going to be shipping dual boot laptops (reported by Newsfactor). “This is an opportunity to see what kind of demand there is for a Linux notebook machine.” No mention is made on whether they will also provide MS-free machines.

A Debianplanet article has been posted about working around dependancy issues in Debian. “Does anyone know the tricks to make it behave, the backdoor way to edit its database so it conforms to my needs, rather than trying to control me?”

TheRegister reports that thousands of machines have been hit by the IIS/Solaris worm. The most distressing part of this attack, is that the vulnerabilities being abused have had patches out for months.