"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Contents: Distro News News in General Software Announcements

Selected and formatted by Michael Conry and Mike Orr

Submitters, send your News Bytes items in PLAIN TEXT format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better announcement than an entire press release.

Debian

Mandrake

Linux-Mandrake 8.0 has been released. New features can be studied in detail on their website. Highlights include KDE 2.1.1, GNOME 1.4, Kernel 2.4.3, Xfree86 4.0.3, and Anti-aliasing. If you would like to donate to the project, go to http://www.linux-mandrake.com/donations/

Progeny

Progeny Debian is out now. The download edition is already available, and the box set will be on sale from April 23. Ian Murdock, Progeny CEO and President, has said that Progeny Debian is not trying to be another distribution of Linux. "In fact, we don't see Progeny Debian as a separate distribution. It is an enhanced version of Debian for the commercial market. All of our development efforts are being contributed back to the Debian community, and we hope that our work can help make Debian better for all users", he comments.

Red Hat

Red Hat have announced Red Hat Linux 7.1 with 2.4 kernel. The Red Hat website has a complete list of the new features.

Slackware

If you want to see Slackware continue, you can donate to the project via their PayPal account. Donate to [email protected]

SuSE

SuSE Linux 7.1 for Sparc (Item No. 99985-21SPC) is supplied on five CD-ROMs with online documentation. It can be obtained exclusively directly from SuSE at the price of EUR 159 plus VAT. SuSE Linux 7.1 for Sparc is also available for download from ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc/suse-sparc/

Upcoming conferences and events

Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.

Linux for Industrial Applications 3rd Braunschweiger Linux-Tage	May 4-6, 2001 Braunschweig, Germany http://braunschweiger.linuxtage.de/industrie/
Linux@Work Europe 2001	May 8 - June 15, 2001 Various Locations http://www.ltt.de/linux_at_work.2001
Linux Expo, São Paulo	May 9-10, 2001 São Paulo, Brazil http://www.linux-expo.com
SANS 2001	May 13-20, 2001 Baltimore, MD http://www.sans.org/SANS2001.htm
7th Annual Applied Computing Conference	May 14-17, 2001 Santa Clara, CA http://www.annatechnology.com/annatech/HomeConf2.asp
Linux Expo, China	May 15-18, 2001 Shanghai, China http://www.linux-expo.com
SITI International Information Technologies Week OpenWorld Expo 2001	May 22-25, 2001 Montréal, Canada http://www.mediapublik.com/en/
Strictly e-Business Solutions Expo	May 23-24, 2001 Minneapolis, MN http://www.strictlyebusinessexpo.com
Linux Expo, Milan	June 6-7, 2001 Milan, Italy http://www.linux-expo.com
Linux Expo Montréal	June 13-14, 2001 Montréal, Canada http://www.linuxexpomontreal.com/EN/home/
Open Source Handhelds Summit	June 18-19, 2001 Austin, TX http://osdn.com/conferences/handhelds/
USENIX Annual Technical Conference	June 25-30, 2001 Boston, MA http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix01
PC Expo	June 26-29, 2001 New York, NY www.pcexpo.com
Internet World Summer	July 10-12, 2001 Chicago, IL http://www.internetworld.com
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 23-27, 2001 San Diego, CA http://conferences.oreilly.com
10th USENIX Security Symposium	August 13-17, 2001 Washington, D.C. http://www.usenix.org/events/sec01/
HunTEC Technology Expo & Conference Hosted by Hunstville IEEE	August 17-18, 2001 Huntsville, AL URL unkown at present
Computerfest	August 25-26, 2001 Dayton, OH http://www.computerfest.com
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	August 27-30, 2001 San Francisco, CA http://www.linuxworldexpo.com
The O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference	September 17-20, 2001 Washington, DC http://conferences.oreilly.com/p2p/call_fall.html
Linux Lunacy Co-Produced by Linux Journal and Geek Cruises Send a Friend LJ and Enter to Win a Cruise!	October 21-28, 2001 Eastern Caribbean http://www.geekcruises.com
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	October 30 - November 1, 2001 Frankfurt, Germany http://www.linuxworldexpo.de/linuxworldexpo/index.html
5th Annual Linux Showcase & Conference	November 6-10, 2001 Oakland, CA http://www.linuxshowcase.org/
Strictly e-Business Solutions Expo	November 7-8, 2001 Houston, TX http://www.strictlyebusinessexpo.com
LINUX Business Expo Co-located with COMDEX	November 12-16, 2001 Las Vegas, NV http://www.linuxbusinessexpo.com
15th Systems Administration Conference/LISA 2001	December 2-7, 2001 San Diego, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa2001

Newlix ServerWare

Newlix Corporation has developed an intelligent and customisable administration solution for Linux based server appliances. Newlix ServerWare contains an intelligent administration engine so intuitive that it creators say "it can be seen as having an entire IT team sucked right into the server appliance!" This technology is intended to improve the functionality and ease of use of server appliances. Full details are available on the Newlix website.

eCluster Internet Server Clustering

eCluster from XGforce is a scalable, Intelligent load-balance cluster system, which can be scaled up to 1024 Internet cluster groups and each contains 1024 cluster nodes(1024X1024). With round trip time load balance algorithm, one can cluster any OSes on any CPUs, such as NT, Novell, UNIXes (SUN SPARC, OS2000 BSD, Linux), etc. The support of load balance or fail safe mode, ensured non-stoppable and fast business transactions for SQL Database Servers, such as Oracle, MS SQL, Informix, MySQL, Postgress, etc.

A load balance algorithm is used which includes CPU load, weighted load, vm usage, round trip time, CPU usage, etc. Other features include Network Traffic Distribution, Network Failsafe, CFS(tm), and Large Network Management for both Internet and Intranet. Ports for LINUX, SUN, FreeBSD, and NT are available and free support is provided. For more information, consult the XGforce website.

ActiveState Launches ASPN Initiative

ActiveState has launched a new initiative to enable programming with open source technologies. The ActiveState Programmer Network (ASPN) includes quality assured binary distributions of Perl, Python and Tcl; multi-language and platform IDEs; technical references, sample code, recipes and more. For additional details or go to the ASPN website.

OTG Software

OTG Software has announced its acquisition of Smart Storage, a privately held provider of standards based DVD and CD storage management software. OTG expects Smart Storage's CD/DVD technology to speed its entry into the rich media market, to boost its international momentum, and to enable it to offer more solutions for storing and accessing data on the UNIX and Linux platforms.

Linux Fortran

• Building a Linux-controlled walking robot
  
• Through the tunnel
  
• Avoiding security holes when developing an application - Part 3 : buffer overflows
  
• Do your job with make!
  
• Introduction to BORG
  
• Real-time mp3 recording, part 2
  
• Game Review - GLTron
  

Linux Links

There is a vulnerability in kernel 2.4.x IPTables which you should patch if you use Linux 2.4 for firewalling. Quoting from the SANS Institute's alert: "A vulnerability in the ip_conntrack_ftp module, which is responsible for tracking incoming FTP connections, has been found. This vulnerability could be used to bypass IPTables firewall rules if IPTables is configured to allow RELATED connections to pass unhindered, which is a standard configuration used with FTP servers. An attacker can trick the ip_conntrack_ftp module into creating RELATED connections, thus allowing various outbound connections to the network of the firewall itself." A patch is available.

The Duke of URL has the following links to tempt you:

• review of SuSE Linux 7.1 http://www.thedukeofurl.org
• Review of the Pogo Linux Velocity, a desktop Linux machine which sports IDE RAID 1 or RAID 0.
• Wireless LAN Overview Part 2: the Devices. This is a good article for anyone interested in how the new 802.11b devices run on both Linux and Windows systems. Both cards are tested on each OS.
• An editorial on V.92, its benefits, if you're eligible for the update and if V.92 is really that much better than the older V.90 standard for modems.

Since the point of FAQ's is to get newbies up to speed, let's take this opportunity to direct attention to The linux-kernel mailing list FAQ. Then when you have digested that, you can see what's happening on-list.

SlashDot has offered the following links in the past month:

• An article discussing the differences between FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Apple's OS X/Darwin
• Slashdot have an interview with Microsoft's Doug Miller
• Parrot: how the April Fool's joke of the Perl and Python merger was perputrated.

Bryan Pfaffenberger writes about Why Open Content Matters in his Linux Journal web column " Currents".

And please, some paper-clip sized sympathy for The Microsoft Office help clip who became the latest (and most welcome ;-) redundancy in the tech-sector recently.

Finally, not strictly Linux, but UnixSpace.com have announced a free on-line internet access service to their ConteXt database server. Includes 30Mb space, Unix shell command line, and some GUI treats focused on DataBase building.

SSH

Open SSH have announced the release of version 2.5.2 of their software. The Open SSH suite includes the ssh program which replaces rlogin and telnet, scp which replaces rcp, and sftp which replaces ftp. Also included is sshd which is the server side of the package, and the other basic utilities like ssh-add, ssh-agent, ssh-keygen and sftp-server. OpenSSH supports SSH protocol versions 1.3, 1.5, and 2.0. You cannot afford to ignore security!

PostgreSQL 7.1 version announced

• full support for outer joins
• removal of the notorious 8k row length limit
• write-ahead logging performance enhancement
• even greater support for complex queries
• support for a larger number of complex queries
• a boost in overall performance (speed)
• improvements to the JDBC and ODBC interfaces and backup/restore features
• Fuller support for ANSI SQL92 standards.

Python

Cylant IDS for Linux: prevents unknown attacks too

Cylant Technology have released CylantSecure for Linux, an intrusion detection system that protects against both known and previously unknown forms of attack. It uses a modified kernel in conjunction with custom kernel modules to provide system protection -- and becomes part of the running kernel. Unlike other IDS products, CylantSecure does not use rules or patterns for identifying attacks, eliminating the need to rely on a database of known attack signatures. Instead, it focuses on actual software behaviour and builds a statistical model of nominal system behaviour. It enables a computer to distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviour, and then uses that information to stop malicious attacks before any damage can occur. Details on the software are in an online press release.

ICS Integrates Themes Into Open Motif

Internet Exchange Messaging Server 5

You can get a copy of IEMS 5 at http://www.ima.com/download/v5eval.html. The product overview can, also be downloaded. Beta participants of the Linux-Windows-based Internet Exchange Messaging Server (IEMS) 5 shall get a US$300 price reduction (about 30% off) if they purchase the messaging solution now than wait for its forthcoming official release.

Other software

The new version of Mailman, 2.0.4, compatible with Python 2.1, is out. LWN have the story.

Copyright © 2001, Michael Conry and the Editors of Linux Gazette.
Copying license http://www.linuxgazette.net/copying.html
Published in Issue 66 of Linux Gazette, May 2001