Friday, June 12, 2009
Yet Another Reason Why Old Computers Are Better
Hey There,
Here's hoping your weekend is starting off well (or will start off well as soon as you get out of the office ;) If you started your weekend last night, God bless you :)
Today I found an interesting blog called Feld Thoughts and a cool page regarding an unexpected return of some of his old computers. Amazingly enough, they all worked flawlessly. Neither one had Microsoft Office 2015 installed yet, but they were old, after all ;)
Checking out the pictures (from the site linked to above), it's kind of sad to think how well things used to be made (I'm not saying that everything that gets produced today is crap ;) and how poorly they seem to be now. "Planned obsolescence" was a phrase we learned in school from old codgers and curmudgeons who were obviously old and bitter and could find nothing better to do than complain. Now, the old coots seem like sages and I'm probably the same age they were back then. And, believe it or not, I feel more negatively about the state of consumer affairs than they probably did (at the time). It seems like today, about 15 minutes after you buy anything, there's a newer version out that you either "have to have" (peer pressure via television, magazines, media, etc - which doesn't work on me for some reason ;) or "have to have" (because the manufacturer stopped making parts before the production life-cycle completed - And, why exactly "do" we need "Windows 7" already, anyway? ;)
One day, I predict, you'll not have the time it takes to lift your ass out of your armchair to purchase whatever the people on TV are telling you you must have immediately, before trends change. I also predict that the word paradigm will no longer have any significant meaning since there will be no time to plot trends with out-of-date hardware/software and dinosaur methodologies (plus, it's a word... words sometimes come from books... books imply that reading - possibly thinking - is going on, and nothing good can come of that ;)
Anyway, enough of my bitching,
Enjoy the pic's below (from the site linked to above) and the remainder of your weekend :)
Cheers,
Old school
Sweet
, Mike
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Saturday, May 16, 2009
Another Gigantic Old Computer
Note: Thanks to the LXer that noticed this one:
It turns out this picture was actually a very well-done hoax!
The link to the hoax here: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
I'd be upset if it wasn't so funny ;)
Hey There,
Man, do I love those old time computers. You'll notice the picture below. Those where the days. Back when a home computer's description actually made more sense, since you could probably gut it and live in it after the memory went bad ;)
I found this picture at WallStreetFighter.com in an equally interesting article about the most expensive computer in the world (I think. Maybe someone's outdone this platinum-jeweled monstrosity by now ;)
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Finally a home PC that lives up to its name
, Mike
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
The First Computer Mouse - Circa 1964
Hey There,
Today, the drugs are either starting to kill the flu/virus that's been feasting on my system all week or I'm turning into jello from the inside out ;)
As fair warning, I'm going to write one more "highlight" post (where I showcase other fun stuff I've found wasting away in bed, trawling the net) for Monday and work on getting back to putting up posts with some meat on them, simultaneously, so that, starting Tuesday, we'll be back to normal. By then, either my flu (or I) will be history. I'm rooting for the former, but (applying rational thought) I don't know that I'd necessarily complain after-the-fact if it worked out in the latter's favour. Once you're dead, you no longer have to pay your parking tickets ;)
You may also have noticed that this Sunday's post got published about 4pm CST Saturday. I did this so I would have the option to pass-out-with-no-regrets at any time ;)
Today's interesting little thingy was found over on the Stanford.edu website, which showcases the "first" computer mouse. As you can see, from the pictures below, it doubled nicely as a blunt instrument ;)
Clicking on either of the pictures (or the preceding hyperlink) will take you to the main page, where you can check out the pet-rock/door-stop/computer-mouse for yourself, as well as view the original schematics.
I really wish I could get my hands on one of those; if only for self-defense ;)
Cheers!
, Mike
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Saturday, January 17, 2009
Photos From The Golden Age Of Computing
Happy Saturday, everyone :)
Today's post is going to be less humorous than most of our weekend posts, but still, kind of cool and interesting. We may get a laugh from inside of you. ...deep down inside ;)
So, kick back, relax and enjoy these pictures from the golden age of computing. All pictures are linked back to the original source (where required by the military -- no kidding) or linked to from the extensive archives at OldComputers.net. Lots of fun stuff to reminisce about over there, along with links to tons of other sites with old computer information and pictures!
Enjoy :)
Note: Click on the image below to see it in its original context (I forced the picture down to 800x600, since the actual picture is 1200-something by another huge number ;) and enjoy your stay on the Army's webservers ;)
And DEFINITELY check out this link to read up on the bleeding-edge technology from 1955 :)
, Mike
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Saturday, December 1, 2007
Old Style ps On Solaris 10
A lot of admin's may have heard this complaint already, but I'm just starting to hear it now from users who are upset about the change in functionality of the /usr/ucb/ps command (as opposed to the standard /bin/ps command).
Up to Solaris version 9, "/usr/ucb/ps -aguxwwwww" would give you extremely detailed ps output (like the entire 2 pages of output from a java command, for instance). Theoretically, in Solaris 10, it still does. Alas, in reality, it doesn't. Here's a link to the publicly available Sun Alert Notification that explains the issue in more detail.
The reason for this stems back to a vulnerability (feature ?) that was discovered in Solaris 8 and 9, regarding /usr/ucb/ps, whereby a user could use the program to view another user's environment settings/variables if they used the "-e" switch. Patches were released for both Solaris 8 and 9, and Solaris 10 was claimed to not be affected by it.
However, all the security patches for Solaris 8 and 9 really did was strip the setUID bit on /usr/ucb/ps and Solaris 10 was released with a /usr/ucb/ps binary that came with 0555 permissions standard (users could no longer get the extended output, but root still could). This would suggest that, perhaps, Solaris 10 wasn't ever really "immune" to the vulnerability, but, more simply, came with the work-around set as the standard. A quick test shows that this is, indeed, the case. Check out the following on a simple /usr/ucb/ps test against the cron process. Note that this is run on a Solaris 10 box, with very recent patch-levels, and I've changed the permissions of /usr/ucb/ps from 0555 to 4555:
host.xyz.com # uname -r
5.10
host.xyz.com # /bin/ps -ef|grep "[2]35"
root 235 1 0 Sep 12 ? 0:07 /usr/sbin/cron
host.xyz.com # /usr/ucb/ps -eaguxwwww|grep "[2]35"
root 235 0.0 0.0 2840 1864 ? S Sep 12 0:06 /usr/sbin/cron LC_COLLATE=en_US.ISO8859-1 LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 LC_MESSAGES=C LC_MONETARY=en_US.ISO8859-1 LC_NUMERIC=en_US.ISO8859-1 LC_TIME=en_US.ISO8859-1 PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin SMF_FMRI=svc:/system/cron:default SMF_METHOD=/lib/svc/method/svc-cron SMF_RESTARTER=svc:/system/svc/restarter:default TZ=US/Central
Looks like the problem hasn't actually been "solved."
So, there you have it; /usr/ucb/ps on Solaris 10 actually does still show regular users the environments of any user that calls a program. Of course, stripping the setUID bit makes that impossible again, but it also makes it impossible for regular users to get extended output for those long java command lines that they need to see.
There are several work-arounds for this work-around. For instance, you could try to use "pargs." It won't work without the setUID bit either, but at least it will tell you that it can't and not just shoot you truncated output with no explanation.
host.xyz.com> pargs -e 235
pargs: cannot examine 235: permission denied
Probably the best way to work-around this, and satisfy Sun's security requirements is to make use of a program called sudo (comes with Solaris 10). Just include a rule like the one below, so that users can only run "/usr/ucb/ps -aguxwwww" and can't run /usr/ucb/ps with any other command arguments, except straight-up with no arguments. They'll get the long output they need and will be prohibited from running /usr/ucb/ps with any other command line switches, like the terrible "-e." Example rule below:
ALL ALL = (root) /usr/ucb/ps -aguxwwww, /usr/ucb/ps ""
We'll go into more detail about sudo in a future post, in all probability. For now, here's a quick rundown on how this rule plays out:
ALL <--- All users can use this sudo rule
ALL <--- This command can be used on any host.
= <--- Pretty self explanatory ;)
(root) <--- These command will be run as the user root
/usr/ucb/pas -aguxwwww, /usr/ucb/ps "" <--- This is the list of allowed commands. The first command specifies that /usr/ucb/ps can only be run with the "-aguxwwww" switches. The second command (multiple commands separated by commas) specifies that the user can also run /usr/ucb/ps with no switches at all (The "" (double-double quotes) indicate that no switches are allowed after the command)
Now, everyone should be happy. You've kept the security flaw from being exploited, retained the /usr/ucb/ps permissions, satisfied the Sun Alert requirements and allowed users to be able to get their extended ouput.
If only every annoying problem were so easy solved ;)
, Mike
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Posted by Mike Golvach at 2:29 AM
10, 8, 9, administration, advice, old, permissions, ps, scripting, solaris, style, sudo, technology, tips, tricks, ucb, unix, usr, vulnerability