A petition launched in December by MySQL creator Michael 'Monty' Widenius to 'save' the open-source database from Oracle has quickly gained momentum, collecting nearly 17,000 signatures. Widenius on Monday submitted an initial batch of 14,174 signatures to the European Commission, which is conducting an antitrust review of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, MySQL's current owner. The petition calls for authorities to block the merger unless Oracle agrees to one of three "solutions", including spinning off MySQL to a third party and releasing all past versions and subsequent editions for the next three years under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.

 

via osnews.com

I am a casual Linux user, not very smart or experienced, and have some problems I find I cannot resolve. First of all, I am a college kid on winter break, and cannot get the usual live help from tangible people that keeps me able to use Linux normally. Second of all, I haven't got a hard drive in my laptop right now. I have a laptop which I am currently using and a desktop which dual boots vista and ubuntu studio as well. I cannot use the keyboard on the desktop and am worried if I restart it will it still not work because I can't put a password in when the keyboard elicits no response. It was working fine and then I replaced the mouse and now it won't do anything it is as if I am not hitting the keys. If I hit Caps Lock the light does not turn on or anything and the Num Lock light is on so it cannot have become unplugged. Anyway, I use my laptop and that is fine, but my laptop, not having a hard drive, boots with a Karmic Koala liveCD. I think the CD is having problems. I use the laptop and after two days or so have to restart it because things just quit working. I tried to make a new liveCD with my desktop computer to see if it would resolve the issue but the CD does not work- it gets a lot of buffer i/o errors and sqshfce errors or something like that. Anyway, none of the flash plugins can be found when I attempt to install them and I don't know enough about Linux to install the tar.gz (I tried but did not really have a clue once I got to the middle of the instructions and kind of abandoned the attempt) so if you could explain to me in the simplest terms possible how to make a liveCD I would greatly appreciate it.

well 2009 is about to close,

 

and 2010 coming soon, I hope you all had a good year and that 2010 will be even better

 

cheers from niall and the linux-noob.com crew

This news is already a week old, but it only got submitted to us today, and I didn't notice it all. As it turns out, two malicious software packages had been uploaded to GNOME-Look.org, masquerading as valid .deb packages (a GNOME screensaver and theme, respectively).

 

The two cases were discovered shortly after one another. First, it was discovered that malware was masquerading as a screensaver. It came as a .deb package, but instead of installing a screensaver, it would execute a script which would mess with some files and download a few other scripts which would make the affected machine take part in a DDoS attack, while also allowing it to update itself.

 

Not long after, a similar problematic package was discovered, but I can find little information on that one, other than that it was a theme called "Ninja Black". Since only one removal instruction has been posted, I'm assuming it was the same .deb package/script uploaded under a different name.

 

Speaking of removal instructions - if you've been hit, here's the fix:

 

sudo rm -f /usr/bin/Auto.bash /usr/bin/run.bash /etc/profile.d/gnome.sh index.php run.bash

 

sudo dpkg -r app5552

 

This minor incident highlights both the inherent strength of the repository system, as well as one of its weaknesses. First, though, let's make it very clear that this very minor incident in no way means that Linux, Debian, Ubuntu or other .deb-based distributions are insecure. This is a clear case of social engineering, and there's no remedy for that yet. Of course, GNOME-Look is partly to blame too, but I guess it's virtually impossible to keep such a large site clean. For what it's worth, they removed the offending packages very quickly.

 

The inherent strength this little incident illustrates is that if you stick to the official repositories for Ubuntu, there's very little to be afraid of. Those packages are well-tested and secure (i.e., they contain no malware, but could of course still contain regular security flaws), and can be installed without fear of repercussions.

 

The weakness this case illustrates is that quite a few times, the official repositories are simply not enough. A new version might not be there, a program you wan't isn't in the repositories, or whatever other scenario. In those cases, installing something from outside of the repositories is appealing, but it does mean opening yourself up to potential hazards.

 

All in all though, this is a very minor case, but noteworthy nonetheless, as I think it's one of the first pieces of malware for Ubuntu.

 

via > http://www.osnews.com/story/22625/Malwar...GNOME-Look

a few pictures of my desktop cube.<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607295817489.png" data-fileid="1231">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607295817489.png[/img]</a><a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296039429.png" data-fileid="1232">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296039429.png[/img]</a><a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296232994.png" data-fileid="1233">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296232994.png[/img]</a>sun virtualbox [img]<___base_url___>/uploads/emoticons/default_rolleyes.gif[/img]<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296677943.png" data-fileid="1234">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296677943.png[/img]</a><a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296780919.png" data-fileid="1235">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607296780919.png[/img]</a><a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607297172469.png" data-fileid="1236">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607297172469.png[/img]</a>FEDORA 12 running in sun virtualbox<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607297598588.png" data-fileid="1237">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607297598588.png[/img]</a>

desktop cube+FEDORA 12<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729780523.png" data-fileid="1238">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729780523.png[/img]</a>fedora 12<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607298145314.png" data-fileid="1239">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607298145314.png[/img]</a><a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729827371.png" data-fileid="1240">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729827371.png[/img]</a>DSL(damn small linux)ps.deleted now<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729855509.png" data-fileid="1241">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260729855509.png[/img]</a>fedora 12<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607298932644.png" data-fileid="1242">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-12607298932644.png[/img]</a>openSUSE<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260731462326.png" data-fileid="1243">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_12_2009/post-5836-1260731462326.png[/img]</a>

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I am not sure whether this is an issue with GNome moreso than with Fedora.

 

Every time I minimize a window on my desktop, it becomes hidden away from view -- shrinking down into the bottom right corner. I can not reach them with my mouse cursor. How can I correct this problem?

 

This happened immediately after I removed my bottom panel. Previously, the minimized windows would be accessible in my bottom panel.

I've been trying to create a connection to mysql on a Linux server from Windows XP with MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver. After setting all of my credentials to test the connection I get the following error. "[MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]Host is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server". After looking up the error most references I found were to firewalls so for testing I disabled my local firewall and retried but got the same error message. I wanted to make sure that the port was open on Linux so I ran netstat -nap on the server and it showed mysql was running on the expected port and listening. I also went to this site to check my port. http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ and it stated that the port was open.

 

The mysql database is working fine when you are running queries locally but trying to connect from outside of the server is when you run into issues. I don't really know what other steps to take in debugging the problem; any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks and let me know if you need any more details about the problem.

 

-Jeff

This is how my Ubuntu-desktop in my school looks like, it's pretty simple:

Okey, my name is Martin and I like Linux. I'm from Sweden and have been using Linux for a year now. I like it. If you want, visit my IRC-network (it runs Ubuntu server): irc.kottnet.net

Hello everybody out there using Linux -

 

Google Chrome is go for beta on Linux! Thanks to the many Chromium and WebKit developers who helped make Google Chrome a lean, mean browsing machine. Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Linux team:

 

60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written

23 developer builds

2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed

12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributors

 

Thanks for waiting and we hope that you enjoy using Google Chrome!

 

 

Google Chrome Team

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/w00t.html