HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: treincke@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Tim Reincke)
Subject: Re: Prevent user from editing /etc/passwd
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:01:12 GMT

schweik@cpp.ob.open.de (Martin Schweikert) writes:

>Hi!

>I have a user on my SVR3 machine who knows - and must know :-( - the
>root password.

>I tried to find a method to prevent him from editing /etc/passwd. It's
>quite difficult.

>[...]

>Now, my question: is there another possibility than writing a C program
>that exec()s vi? Not that it was a problem to write such a program, but
>I would like to keep things as simple as possible ...

>Martin

If I were you and had an unauthorized user who knew the root password, I would
change the root password and send the user a strong warning against such 
activity.  If the user knew the root password and was messing around with
important system files (like /etc/passwd), I would suspend his account, no
questions asked.

Don't fool around with security hacks to solve the problem.  The problem does
not lie in running vi or ex, it lies in the hands of an irresponsible user
who does not deserve access to your system.

- Tim
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Reincke                         | Email to: treincke@uiuc.edu
Junior, Computer Science                   |       Or: treincke@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
CCSO Resource Information Consultant       |------------------------------------
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | "It's okay...I'm with the band."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,misc.consumers,comp.periphs,ne.wanted
From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson)
Subject: Good suppliers of Exabyte tape products (SUMMARY)
Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA
Date: 20 Aug 92 20:50:32

Here's the summary I promised.  Thanks to all those who replied.

I will entertain additions/corrections etc.  I won't repost to the
backup mail list but I will post an update to comp.periphs if I get
any additional information.  By the way, I ended up making a large
order with R-Squared (including Sony tapes, @ $8 can't beat the
price!).

Supplier: Exabyte Corp
Address: 1745 38th St Boulder, CO 80301
Phone: 303-447-7391
Contact: K. Mueller/ Sheri
Price: 12pass 8mm clean cart $39.95 ea (min 5) 10@ $37.95 ea 100@ $32.95 ea
Reference: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com

Supplier: Richard Young Products
Address:
Phone: 510-429-1700
Contact: Beth Reeder
Reference: sblair@dell.com

Supplier: Inmac
Address:
Phone:
Contact:
Price: $20 for Exabyte tapes
Reference: eddie.mit.edu!eplunix!raoul

Supplier: Tower Records
Address: Boston/Cambridge
Phone:
Contact:
Price: Sony data tapes
Reference: spike@world.std.com

Supplier: R-Squared
Address: 11211 E. Arapahoe Rd, Suite 200 Englewood, CO 80112
Phone: 800-777-3478, FAX: 303-799-9297
Contact: Dave Manders (x144)
Price: Exa clean cart 12pass 10@ $24.00 ea, 100@ $20.00 ea, 112m 120@$16.00 ea
Price: Sony 112m 120@$8.00 ea
Reference: jon@linkers.med.utah.edu,larry-granroth@uiowa.edu

Supplier: Peripheral Solutions
Address: Santa Cruz, CA
Phone: 408-425-8280
Contact:
Price: Exa clean cart 12pass 10@$36.95, 100@$29.95, 112m 10@24.95, 100@$29.95
Reference: uunet!mport.com!jack

Supplier: Data Vault Systems
Address:
Phone: 708-885-6000
Contact: Rick Pohn
Price: Exa clean cart 3pass $17.25, 12pass $27.95, 112m $17.79
Price: DIC Digital clean cart 12pass $21.95, 112m $13.95
Reference: bha@logia.attmail.com

Supplier: Boxhill Corp
Address: NY
Phone: 800-727-3863
Contact: Kelly Ann Gray
Price: Exa clean cart quantity 2 for $35
Reference: rwu@fig.citib.com

Supplier: Magnacom Data Products
Address: 99 Washington Ave. Suffern NY 10901
Phone:
Contact:
Price: About $25.00 per tape 
Reference: keh@philabs.philips.com

Supplier: Integrated Mass Storage Systems
Address:
Phone:
Contact:
Price:
Reference: imss@access.digex.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.sys.att,comp.unix.sysv386
From: dchin@midas.msc.cornell.edu (David W. Chin)
Subject: Problem with lp on SVR4?
Keywords: lp
Organization: Cornell-Materials-Science-Center
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 18:06:06 GMT

Does anyone have this problem with lp that I have?  If I have more than one
file in the queue, the first file gets printed out OK, but the rest come out
as blank pages.  I'm running AT&T SVR4.0 on AT&T WGS 6386/25's.

Thanks in advance.

David Chin				 Cornell University '92

________________________________________________________________________
Internet:                       |        
  dchin@helios.tn.cornell.edu   |        
Bitnet:                         |        Phone:  (607) 257-6576
  iojj@crnlassp                 |        Add:  401 Thurston Ave., Ithaca
  iojj@crnlvax5                 |              NY 14850-2431
________________________________|_______________________________________
From: m-jk8594@GRANNY.CS.NYU.EDU (James Kyriannis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Reading BSD filesystems on a block level
Date: 18 Aug 92 03:20:25 GMT
Organization: Courant Institute, New York University


I'm trying to learn about BSD filesystems, so I decided to write myself a
'sector editor', which can read in blocks from the filesystem device and let
me view the stuff it finds.  Since I'm running BSD/386, I don't have access
to fsdb or its source, so I don't know how some things were done.

fsdb is capable of letting you edit filesystems while they are still
mounted.  How is this done?  I've been using 'open(filesys_fd, buffer)'
to open the block device, but if the filesystem is mounted, this call
returns with a "/dev/sd0a: Device busy" from perror().  Then, how can I
access my filesystem directly, without having to unmount it?  [fsck also
uses the 'open()' method.]

Also, I want to be able to lseek() into the filesystem, at increments
the size of one block.  According to usf/fs.h, MINBSIZE is 4096, though
in sys/param.h, MAXBSIZE is 8192.  Further, calling getfsstat() will tell
you that the fundamental filesystem block size (f_fsize) is 1024 bytes.
Which one is the correct size of a BSD Net2 filesystem block?

Thanks,

Jimmy

-- 
=============================================================================
                          |
Jimmy Kyriannis           |  +5 Chain Mail --- don't leave home without it.
m-jk8594@cs.nyu.edu       |
From: Norbert_Papke@mindlink.bc.ca (Norbert Papke)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Odd Hang Symptoms (HP)
Date: 19 Aug 92 00:41:40 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

> Jason May writes:

> Msg-ID: <1992Aug18.133640.273@ctp.com>
> Posted: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 13:36:4

< Org.  : Cambridge Technology Partners


> HP 9000/847, running HPUX 8.02.

> Symptoms of a recent system hang:

> The machine responded happily to ping packets, and telnet would connect,
> but the login prompt would never appear for telnet, we couldn't log in
> on the console, and ftp/rlogin/etc. did not work.  NFS requests would
> all time out.

This sounds exactly like a problem I used to have.  The ethernet driver
on my 720/730s stopped accepting packets greater than 80 bytes (ping works,
ftp doesn't!) after it received an ethernet packet greater than 2096 bytes.
Note that the maximum legal ethernet packet size is 1514 bytes.  But
some manufacturers of ethernet devices don't seem to take that limitation
too seriously.  HP has a patch for this (PHNE_0469 on the 700 series, may be
the same on the 800s).

> We rebooted the machine and now all is fine, but I've never seen these
> symptoms before.  Has anyone else seen this happen?

Yup, a reboot fixes it (until the next killer packet).  BTW, so will
resetting the ethernet driver.

> Thanks in advance,
> -Jason (jmay@ctp.com)

Hope this helps.

--
Norbert Papke (Norbert_Papke@mindlink.bc.ca)
Prince Rupert Grain Ltd.
900 - 1055 West Hastings St.
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
	<1992Aug19.173219.9864@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:37:43 GMT

Mark> == Mark Fullmer <maf@tabatha.MAE.CWRU.EDU> 

 Mark> This spoofs rfc931, fingerd logging, and fingerd finger-back.

 Mark> telnet random.host.edu 79  
 Mark> user@host.to.query

 Mark> fingerd just passes the line to finger.

Yes, but finger user@host@relayhost works on many systems also.  Yay.

This can be traced back, however, if the relayhost both runs '931 and
has a '931-aware logging fingerd, and the original host runs '931; the
final host will see "nobody@relayhost" fingering them, ask the relayhost
admin to check the logs, and he'll see "originaluser@originalhost" at
that time point.

--
Christopher Davis * ckd@eff.org * System Administrator, EFF * +1 617 864 0665
            ``Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ti Kwan Leep.
            Approach me that you might see.'' -- The Master
From: shlam@eng.ie.cuhk.hk (Alan S H Lam)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Date: 17 Aug 92 10:43:58 GMT
Organization: Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese U. of Hong Kong

ward@math.psu.edu (Brian Ward) writes:

>In article <1992Aug15.022526.14014@Princeton.EDU> spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu (S. Spencer Sun) writes:
>|>	I want to know who is "finger"ing me (no jokes please...)
>|>and I want it to keep a log.
>|
>|From the frequency with which similar questions arise, I would guess
>|that no such fingerd has been written, but if you write one, I suggest
>|you definitely post it because there seem to be a lot of people who
>|would like to have it (I'm not one of them though)

>As one of the authors of a fingerd, I would like to express how ludicrously
>stupid I think the idea of a fingerd that does this is. With all of the
>various fingerds out there, the chances for loopback are pretty, uh, nasty.

>I suggest reading rfc931. Then, install tcp wrapper and ident, and you can
>get stuff like this:

>Aug 15 02:01:02 euler.math.psu.edu in.fingerd[7640]: connect from ward@lagrange.math.psu.edu
>Aug 15 02:01:04 euler.math.psu.edu in.fingerd[7673]: connect from ward@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu

But I learn that only the remote client host running the RFC 931-compliant daemon can
show the remote user name; otherwise, it only show the remote client hostname.

Am I right? If not, please correct me.

Thanks.


--
Alan S. H. Lam
Department of Information Engineering, CUHK, Hong Kong
E-mail: shlam@eng.ie.cuhk.hk 
Tel: (852) 609 7975 Fax: (852) 603 5032
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.sys.next.sysadmin,comp.sys.sun.admin
From: scs@iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Subject: NeXT on Sun YP Network w/o netinfo?
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 15:58:24 GMT

One of my clients has received one (count it) NeXT workstation and want
to integrate it into an otherwise all-Sun network.  It's a bare-bones
configuration with just enough disk to support the application (user
data files will reside on one of the Sun NFS servers.)  The online docs
mostly aren't there, and we have only the slimmest of NeXT admin
manuals.

The client has NIS running and a number of NFS servers he wants to
integrate into the network.  He doesn't have any docs worth speaking of
on the NeXT, and it was bought from a advertising firm as a platform to
run a particular product.  The advertising firm is supposed to do the
support, but does not know anything worth speaking of except about
their own product in a pure NeXT environment.

We have been able to successfully integrate NIS with the NeXT, but we
have not been able to get the NFS mounts to happen properly at boot.
Doing standard NFSish things like editing the fstab don't work.  The
docs we have been able to find discuss *only* using NFS with netinfo.
However, it appears you get netinfo or NIS, but not both.  Duplicating
the YP data into netinfo is acceptable only if there is some mechanical
method.

I've checked the FAQs for NeXT, no joy.

Is anyone running machines in a configuration such as described here?
If so, pointers would be appreciated.
-- 
"If life were fair, the acquisition of a large bosom or a massive inheritance
 would have no bearing on your ability to attract the opposite sex, and Dan
 Quayle would be making a living asking runny-nosed children, `Do you want
 fries with that?'"     -- John Cleese, "Corporate Computing" magazine
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.x.apps
From: vince@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (David Vincenzetti)
Subject: Re: Usenix UNIX Security Symposium Hotel ALERT
Keywords: Usenix UNIX Security Hotel Alert
Organization: Computer Science Dep. - Milan University
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 09:01:20 GMT

In <1021@cert.sei.cmu.edu> ecd@cert.sei.cmu.edu (Edward DeHart) writes:

>I've been asked to pass the following URGENT message to anyone
>interested in attending the Third Usenix UNIX Security Symposium.  The
>Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel has just alerted the Usenix conference
>department that they are sold out of rooms for the Saturday night before
>the Symposium.

I am going to join the USENIX conference and I would like to book a room now.
I'm wondering if someone would mind sending me a list (well, a sort of) of
available hotels in Baltimore. Please skip all those expensive hotels like
Hilton or Sheraton, I have to play it cheap. Many thanks in advance!

Ciao,	David
-- 
David Vincenzetti -*- vince@ghost.dsi.unimi.it -*- PK available by finger
From: kchiles@virga.llnl.gov (Keith Chiles)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: LPD network parameters
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:17:23 GMT
Reply-To: kchiles@virga.llnl.gov (Keith Chiles)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


|> Dear Netland;
|>   I am trying to print 2.5 megabyte postscript files to 
|> a sun workstation with a NEC color postscript printer.
|> Locally, the printer works fine, but when I print from
|> another system if seems to truncate the file.  I seem 
|> to remember that there is a way to increase the 
|> size of the files that are allowed over the net, but
|> havn't found how to do it.  Would some kind soul
|> send me the instructions on how to allow large files
|> to be printed across the net? 
|> Many thanks in advance!!
|> 
|> Cheers, Keith
|> kchiles@arac.llnl.gov
|> 
Dear Netland,
   Thanks to the  many of you who responded to this post.
The receiving system had the buffers (MX) set to infinity,
but the printcap on the sending systems were default 1 meg.
The problem is now corrected and we are happily sending large
screen dumps.  Thanks for the help.

Cheers, Keith
From: Christophe.Wolfhugel@univ-lyon1.fr (Christophe Wolfhugel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Date: 15 Aug 1992 08:14:04 +0200
Organization: INSA Informatique, Lyon, France
NNTP-Posting-Host: grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr

[unadequate distribution: usa removed, I guess that bad idea of fingering back
is not only US specific]

In article <1992Aug15.022526.14014@Princeton.EDU> spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu (S. Spencer Sun) writes:
>From the frequency with which similar questions arise, I would guess
>that no such fingerd has been written, but if you write one, I suggest
>you definitely post it 

Maybe that no one a done such things because after asking the question
people realized that this is not necesarilly a good idea.  For those
who really wanna have some more information, limit yourself to getting
the adress/name of the remote host with the DNS.  Do not finger or
rusers back to the caller's host. If both sites have the same mechanism
this will create loops and (laughs) overflow your process table.

-- 
Christophe Wolfhugel    |    Email: Christophe.Wolfhugel@univ-lyon1.fr
   "No keyboard, press F1 to continue"
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: ward@math.psu.edu (Brian Ward)
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Organization: The Society for Green Traffic Lights
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 06:15:12 GMT

In article <1992Aug15.022526.14014@Princeton.EDU> spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu (S. Spencer Sun) writes:
|>	I want to know who is "finger"ing me (no jokes please...)
|>and I want it to keep a log.
|
|From the frequency with which similar questions arise, I would guess
|that no such fingerd has been written, but if you write one, I suggest
|you definitely post it because there seem to be a lot of people who
|would like to have it (I'm not one of them though)

As one of the authors of a fingerd, I would like to express how ludicrously
stupid I think the idea of a fingerd that does this is. With all of the
various fingerds out there, the chances for loopback are pretty, uh, nasty.

I suggest reading rfc931. Then, install tcp wrapper and ident, and you can
get stuff like this:

Aug 15 02:01:02 euler.math.psu.edu in.fingerd[7640]: connect from ward@lagrange.math.psu.edu
Aug 15 02:01:04 euler.math.psu.edu in.fingerd[7673]: connect from ward@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu
From: sherer@lub001.lamar.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Disk quota usage
Date: 12 Aug 92 15:20:53 +1700
Organization: Lamar University - Beaumont

I was just wondering if anyone is using disk quotas on an ULTRIX system. If so,
what are the pitfalls? I have been to a DEC ULTRIX System Administrator class,
and the instructor warned against using disk quotas, but I wasn't sure if
this was a bug in ULTRIX, or if it was just a personal opinion. We have a great
number of students taking up disk space without regard to others, and it would
be beneficial to us to have disk quotas enabled, at least for students. 

If you have used disk quotas, do you have to set them up at installation time,
or can you set them up on an existing ULTRIX system? I don't have that much
documentation on the subject, so I'm not sure about it (obviously).

Thanks for the help in advance.

Kirk Sherer
Lamar University

Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:4541 comp.unix.aix:8802
From: jfh@rpp386.lonestar.org (John F. Haugh II)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: Headaches at work
Date: 14 Aug 92 00:04:14 GMT
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Austin, Republic of Texas

In article <1992Aug11.154027.4378@ccd.harris.com> sdk@controls.ccd.harris.com (Sean Klingler) writes:
>Here at Harris Controls, we have quite a few people who have been
>suffering headaches while working.  Most of us use Motorola and NCD
>14 - 17 inch monochrome monitors.  We have noticed that working
>on good old wyse50 monitors does not cause this problem.  This seems
>to be a problem above and beyond normal eye-strain.

The Wyse 50 had a particularly sweet character generator that I
have found to be much nicer than many other terminals.  I have mild
astigmatism and find that the eye strain I have from using anything
but a Wyse 50 is much worse than that from using a Wyse 50.  You
might want to look into eyestrain as a possible cause because your
symptoms match mine exactly.  And my eye doctor's diagnosis is that
I suffer from eyestrain ...
-- 
John F. Haugh II                   | Life's Little Instruction Book:
Ma Bell: (512) 251-2151            | "#138.  Learn Spanish.  In a few years,
UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh |  more than 35% of all Americans will speak
Domain: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org      |  it as their first language."
From: barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Date: 17 Aug 92 20:02:33 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Population Research Institute

In article <1992Aug17.171935.23127@terminator.cc.umich.edu> william@stat.lsa.umich.edu (William Pietri) writes:
>In article <1992Aug15.022526.14014@Princeton.EDU>, spencer@stroke.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun) writes:
>> In article <1992Aug14.210137.24157@csus.edu>, tching@target.water.ca.gov (Tracy Ching <SysAdmin>) writes:
>> >	I want to know who is "finger"ing me (no jokes please...)
>> >and I want it to keep a log.
>> 
>> AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
>> 
>> From the frequency with which similar questions arise, I would guess
>> that no such fingerd has been written, but if you write one, I suggest
>> you definitely post it because there seem to be a lot of people who
>> would like to have it (I'm not one of them though)

Instead I would suggest that all programs who insist on doing reverse
fingering be immediately purged from all systems, and their authors
strung up by their genitals.

>There's a version of GNU Finger that's been cleaned up by the folks at
>ICSI.  (It looks like that it is available at icsi.berkeley.edu in
>pub/stolcke/icsi-finger-1.0.11.tar.Z.)  If you tell it to use m4
>instead of cpp as the macro processor for plan files, then this plan
>should do what you want:
>
>=== begin m4 file ===
>[..]

Ack, why do people insist on using such hacks?

Simply install the tcp_wrapper (which you should have installed anyway)
with an RFC 931 daemon (optional)

Then with syslog, and you get entries like this:  (or in a flat file if you
don't want/have syslog)
Aug 17 15:06:20 darwin in.fingerd[24164]: connect from steven@dejong.pop.psu.edu

It's simple, it's fast, it's efficient, and what's more you can use it
around rlogind/rexecd/rshd/telnetd/uucpd/sendmail and you gain real security, 
too.  Of course, the remote site must have an rfc 931 daemon running in order
for the username to appear, but that's not too much to expect.  (subtle
plug for all those admins out there)

tcp wrappers:  ftp.uu.net:/pub/security/tcp_wrappers.tar.Z
rfc 931 daemon: ftp.uu.net:/networking/ident/servers/pident-1.8.1.tar.Z
(There are newer beta versions out as well)

--Dave
-- 
System Administrator, Population Research Institute    barr@pop.psu.edu
  One is the loneliest number.
  Two is as lonely as one, just shifted to the left.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: ward@math.psu.edu (Brian Ward)
Subject: Re: Where can I find a "fingerd" that fingers the person back?
Organization: The Society for Green Traffic Lights
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:17:45 GMT

tching@target.water.ca.gov (Tracy Ching <SysAdmin>) writes:
|(and running a daemon with RFC 931 is out of the question because it
|assumes that the other side has it too)  Having a daemon on the other side
|that recognizes a loop during a finger would also satisfy the "back".

dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) writes in response to barr@pop.psu.edu
(David Barr):
|>Ack, why do people insist on using such hacks?
|
|Because they work sometimes. More often than finding someone fingering
|you from a machine running RFC931...

I'm afraid that you are all missing the point (except daveb, he's just being
a little cruel)

tcp_wrappers is a helpful package to install. It will tell you of this stuff,
even if the other side is not running rfc931.

Let us be more precise.

Here is a log message from tcp_wrappers on a telnet session from a site that
does not run rfc931:

Aug 17 19:14:03 baire.math.psu.edu in.telnetd[2383]: connect from a5.ima.umn.edu

And here is "better;" the same tcp_wrappers in effect and a log message
coming in from a rfc931 site:

Aug 15 21:13:24 lagrange.math.psu.edu in.rlogind[1296]: connect from grio@postscript.cs.psu.edu

This, of course, works for finger as well.

Without loss of generality, one can assume the other side does not have to
be running rfc931 to get useful information on what is happening to your
machine tcp/ip-wise. However, Tracy's original problem is solved precisely
when the other site is running rfc931 code. Assuming that the other side is
not running rfc931, however, one must take it into consideration that you can
get no difference in an answer for you would get with tcp_wrappers with _or_
without rfc931 support in place or _any other package_; one gets the site
name only.

rfc931 is a Good Thing, by the way.

tching@target.water.ca.gov (Tracy Ching <SysAdmin>) writes:
|Oh well... no wonder Spock is "In search of.."

more understanding... sigh..

--
By the way, I've also been hacking on GNU finger. I'm glad to see that I'm
not the only one who thinks that fingering ".help" is a pretty good idea.

Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin