HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kjartan@repulse.saclay.cea.fr
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: A RFC Hack
Date: 27 Jan 93 13:49:25 GMT
Organization: None

Hi again!

Lots of people have shown some interest in getting the hyper-linked file
to access RFC files.  This has led me to consider a more useful version
of it.

The first thing is to actually automate the retrieving of new RFCs.  The
simplest way is (and that is the one i'm working on right now) is to NFS
mount the RFC archives from wuarchive.wustl.edu.  These seems to be updated
quite regularly. The NeXTStep is then to periodically update an index on
the whole stuff (to enable word queries), and the last step would be to
parse each RFC file on access, and automagically insert hyperlinks for
each reference to other RFCs.  This latest part is the most difficult, as
there is no standard way of referring a RFC (RFCxxx, RFC-xxx, RFC xxx)
but I guess that a smart parser could handle it.

Another nice option would be to make queries only on the most actual RFCs
for a given subject.  This would have to use the Obsoletes:  line in the
RFCs but I'm not sure whether this line has a standard format.

The ultimate would then be (apart from a nice NextStep interface) to
interface the whole thing in the World-Wide-Web, such as to make this
universally available, but that shouldn't be too difficult, once that
all the above is fulfilled.

If anybody has some other suggestions, or have a special gift for writing
intelligent parsers, they are welcome to mail it to me.

-Kjartan

ObHack: Convicing a large stupid Cray that it actually was a nice
and slender NeXT slab.
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: bm@shadow.columbia.edu (Blair MacIntyre)
Subject: Re: "Catching Peppers" program
Reply-To: Blair MacIntyre <bm@cs.columbia.edu>
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:03:45 GMT

>>>>> On 15 Jan 1993 10:08:40 GMT, rasas@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Greg
>>>>> Patten) said:

Greg> friedenb@egr.msu.edu (Gedaliah Friedenberg) writes:

>A few months ago there was a script posted which send mail
>to yourself whenever your account was fingered.  In the mail
>was the name and email address of the person fingering your
>account.  I think that the post was entitled "Catching Peepers"
>or something like that.  Could someone repost it, or send it
>to me?  Thanks

Greg> I'd really like to see this too, I missed it last time..

Well, I tried this a while back, and (assuming a standard finger
program!) only a limited subset of "cases" is possible.

What we did was run a program which created a FIFO called (surprise!)
~/.plan 
and ran a TCL script each time the FIFO was read.  In the script we
tried such things as looking through "ps auxw" for someone who is
fingering you and then putting in the resulting .plan output something
like "Rick, get back to work, you deadbeat!"  and logging the event to a
file.  If nobody was fingering me, I then did this
    set cornell [string match "* 128.84.237.*" $netstat]
    if {$cornell == 1} {echo "(Katy, you deadbeat, get to work!  Like me!)"}
    if {$cornell >= 0} {echo $cornell [index $netstat $cornell]}
since the only person connecting to my machine from that subnet would be
my girlfriend. :-)  You could check the port to make sure it was a
finger, I suppose.  

Problems:  you can only find the ID of the person if it's on a local
machine (or you have login privs on the other machine).  You need to be
careful about deciding if someone is fingering you, based on the output
of "ps aux".

Alas, I can't use that program any more since FIFO's don't work over NFS
so when people finger me from other than my home machine (one of dozens)
their finger process doesn't wake up the program hanging off the fifo.
Sigh.   
--
Blair MacIntyre --- bm@cs.columbia.edu --- CS Department, Columbia University
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: eirik@elf.TN.Cornell.EDU (Eirik Fuller)
Subject: shared root
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 23:26:19 GMT


In the "no hack too small" department ... I was asked to rescue a
sparcstation which wouldn't boot; as it turned out, /dev/console was
missing.  Actually, it was a plain file with a shutdown message, but
that didn't make booting any easier.

Using another similary configured sparcstation on the same subnet as a
server, I booted the ailing sparcstation as a diskless client.  Not a
big deal, but the working machine had not been set up as a server.  I
had to start mountd, nfsd, bootparamd, and rarpd (and tweak their
various files; I never did create /etc/exports, since that's what
"exportfs -i" is for).  I also had to tell inetd about tftpd and set
up /tftpboot (mkdir tftpboot && ln boot tftpboot/12345678.SUN4C).

For the bootparams, I listed the server's own root directory, and
exported it readonly.  I also exported its /usr readonly, though had
it occurred to me I probably would have mounted the local one instead.
I used an NFS swap file, though I could have used the local swap if
I'd included -a in the boot switches along with -bs.  The -n in
"mkfile -n" meant I didn't waste much space on the swap file.

The -b switch to boot eliminates most of the noise resulting from the
readonly root directory; the -n in "/sbin/mount -n" makes the
unwritability of /etc/mtab irrelevant.  Once the damaged root
partition is mounted, fixing its dev/console is pretty simple.

I might have gone to all the bother of setting up a real client root
partition, except that I had already used readonly root partitions on
other occasions, so doing it in this case seemed natural.  X terminals
work well with readonly root directories.

All this just got me thinking about what would be involved in making a
full-fledged diskless client work with a shared readonly root.  A
suitable syslog.conf would eliminate much of the usual root file
system modifications.  A static mtab should work well enough for df
output and such, though that could get complicated with automounters.
Perhaps the best way to cope with files that absolutely have to change
is to symlink them into a tmpfs file system.  I'm pretty sure /etc/rc*
would have to be overhauled.  Hmm, sounds like a fun project ...
From: cgw@sol.acs.unt.edu (christopher williams)
Subject: Re: Hello All!
Originator: cgw@sol.acs.unt.edu
Organization: University of North Texas
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 03:08:21 GMT

In <98052@ms.com> GB@ms.com (Gill Bates) writes:
>Hello All!
>So, how do you like my automatic posting software?  Nice huh?
>Sorry, The SPA has recommended that I don't distribute it.
>GB

quick! someone stop him before he gets a Clue(tm)!

-cgw-
From: phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Port list, kindly
Date: 26 Jan 1993 15:34:34 GMT
Organization: CUMC
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: guru.med.cornell.edu

A while back there was a posted list of UNIX ports.  Managed to
rm mine (duh), so if someone could email a copy to me, I'd be
very happy!

obHack: killing my local twm and running mwm from a remote machine via
a telnet session (we don;t have rsh or rexec available here) -- I
hate twm worse than Windoze.

-- 
73 de David Weingart  KB2CWF    In the event I am captured or killed, the
phydeaux@cumc.cornell.edu       Cornell University Medical College and the
phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu   Department of Academic Computing will disavow
phydeaux@src4src.linet.org      any knowledge of my opinions.
From: holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Rich Holland)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: obHack [polyglots]
Date: 23 Jan 1993 12:14:06 -0600
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu

christos@deshaw.com (Christos Zoulas) writes:

[i originally wrote]:

>>Does anyone have that little program lying around that was posted sometime
>>last year that compiles in many languages?  It worked in like C, fortran,
>>pascal, basic, and supposedly as a DOS .COM file....*looking through 
>>my NEWS directory*

>Here it is:

Thanks!  I wanted to show a friend, and lost my copy.  He didn't think it 
was possible to write something that would work in more than one environment.
I hacked together a quick fortran/c example to demonstrate it, but POLYGLOT
*really* does a good job of confusing people.  :-)

Here's mine:

char a; /*
C$NOEXT
       PROGRAM hello
       WRITE (*,*) 'This is a fortran/c program!'
       END
C*/  main ()   /*
C*/  {        /*
C*/    printf("This is a fortran/c program!\n");  /*
C*/  }

-- 
Rich Holland              | INTERNET: holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu
100 Jardine Terr., Apt A7 | BITNET  : holland@ksuvm
Manhattan, KS  66502-3357 | UUCP    : ...!rutgers!matt.ksu.ksu.edu!holland
char*p="char*p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: cedman@princeton.edu (Carl Edman)
Subject: Re: Port list, kindly
To: phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart)
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 17:48:12 GMT

In article <1k3lmaINNied@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu> phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart) writes:
   A while back there was a posted list of UNIX ports.  Managed to
   rm mine (duh), so if someone could email a copy to me, I'd be
   very happy!

No, you didn't rm it. You just mislaid it.  Accidentally you moved it
to /etc/services.  If you don't believe me, just look yourself.

        Carl Edman
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: pv@gagme.chi.il.us (Paul Vader)
Subject: Batch rn
Originator: pv@gagme
Organization: Inline Software Creations
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 22:06:03 GMT

Rob J. Nauta Writes:
>You GOT to be kidding... If you want to automatically save articles, use
>'readnews'. It comes with Bnews. it's old, slow, primitive, but for this it
>works.

There's one good reason to use rn instead, and it's a biggie. KILL FILES. If
you run rn in batch, you can build big and complex kill files, and not have
to wait for them to execute online. That said, try this script to run rn in
batch (I haven't used it in quite some time, so it might not be quite right.
My sysadmin developed a batch set of newsreading tools at my suggestion a
year ago when he wanted to practice nntp programming, but that's another
story):

echo "Starting news extraction process..."
echo "z %(%m=n?=: )">batchrn
TERM=dumb
RNINIT='-s -T -t'
RNMACRO=$PWD/batchrn
export RNMACRO RNINIT TERM
yes 'z' | rn > newsfile
echo "News File creation completed. Cleaning up..."
rm batchrn
echo "Done."

This has a few problems:
1. If you run out of space while the extraction is running, It just stops
   dead. Cleaning up your .newsrc can be messy. Your're best off immediately
   copying .oldnewsrc to .newsrc and starting over someplace else with more
   space.
2. For some reason I wanted to see indexes before the messages. You might
   want to take this out of the macro, but I'm leaving it as an exercise
   for the Reader because I don't remember the syntax.
3. I could never quite get it to work under cron. I use "at" instead, and
   imbed an at command at the end of the script to reschedule for the next
   day (If you do this, add a date to the newsfile filename).
4. You see everything that happens in the session, because it's just
   pressing the spacebar (except at the newsgroup selection prompt, where it
   types "="). This leads to some ugliness in the extract, especially the
   "---More---" prompt right after the header.
5. It's almost as exciting to watch as grass growing, and chews CPU like
   calculating the millionth digit of pi.

Enjoy! PV

P.S. Enough with the IP ports already! Try "more /etc/services" or RTFM.
-- 
Paul Vader            systems analyst, hell's cavenewt, rollerblader,
pv@gagme.chi.il.us    FOAF, smartass liberal democrat
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: fstuart@eng.auburn.edu (Frank Stuart)
Subject: Re: My first nntp hack
Organization: Auburn University Engineering
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 06:26:13 GMT

In article <2b5d66e7@ralf> Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU writes:
>ObHack:  A previous posting talked about running 'rn' unattended.  I've
>been doing that since 1987 with a program that opens a pair of pipes to
>'rn' and feeds it all the necessary commands and looks at the responses
>to decide what needs to be done next.  The whole thing is controlled by
>a data file which specifies what newsgroups to save and per-newsgroup
>filtering info.

If you aren't too particular:
     yes ' ' | rn |& whatever
works just fine.


Frank Stuart           |   grep: dead.trees: Permission denied
fstuart@eng.auburn.edu |   MMMMmmmmm, Soylent Green
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: adamfox@homer.super.org (Adam Fox)
Subject: Re: masked entries in password file
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie, MD  USA
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 23:34:19 GMT

In article <C1CDrC.3C4@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>, Biff writes:
|>     Hello,
|>           A simple question that I'm sure someone out there can answer...
|> Some systems have only a '*' in the encrypted password field, I think this 
|> is because they have an echoed password system or something like that.....
|> I think there's a port you have to connect to locally to query for the 
|> encrypted password or something like that to get a higher security rating
|> for the entire system..... Could some one please explain this to the net
|> (interest only). I am quite curious as to how this works and I can't be 
|> bothered to muck around with the ports an shit if someone already knows 
|> how it works and what the general protocol is....
|>  Cheers......

They probably have either a shadow password file somewhere that only root
can see (some root-owned process checks the authentication) or they are running
kerberos which authenticates in its own way through a server and secure protocol.
I'm mostly familiar with Suns/BSD-type machines so your version of UNIX may
vary.  On Suns, those are the 2 main alternatives to using a world readable 
password file with encrypted strings.  Perhaps you can hack a kerberos server,
but without knowing how kerberos really works, you will probably have trouble
doing it, I understand is is not trivial (unless you know the holes, of course).

-- Adam Fox
adamfox@super.org
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: john
Subject: Sorry if this gets posted...
Originator: john
Organization: none
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 06:27:23 GMT

I don't want this to make it to the newsgroup.
My humble apologies if it does...

 john
From: news@colorado.edu (The Daily Planet)
Subject: Re: Hello All!
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 18:50:18 MST

In article <C1HCD1.9Gt@dcs.ed.ac.uk> adk@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Andrew Kennedy) writes:
>In article <98052@ms.com> GB@ms.com (Gill Bates) writes:
>                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^
By the way, it's microsoft.com, not ms.com

>
>>Hello All!
>>So, how do you like my automatic posting software?  Nice huh?
>
>No, not really.  How does it work?  What does it do?  What is so
>"automatic" about it?  It appears to change the "Sender:" line.
>Big deal.

No, it writes the post.  Unfortunately, the AI isn't great, so it ends up
sounding like a complete moron :-)

>> From alt.hackers Tue Jan 26 20:53:44 1993
..
>> Nntp-Posting-Host: ms.com
>
>>Sorry, The SPA has recommended that I don't distribute it.
>
>Perhaps because it's rubbish.  Please try harder next time, you colorado
>university student, you.

Do you mind?  Colorado University is QUITE different from Colorado State--
I assure you, no CU student would ever be so silly as to do this sort of
thing :-)
>
>ObHack: Writing a replacement for ping(8) - well, a front-end really,
>that gave much friemdlier messages, and had more options, like a
>sarcastic mode, and a "sultans of ping" mode....
>
Sarcastic mode?  Oh jees...I can't wait...

Seriously, maybe he just meant that he wrote a program to automatically forge
the authentification and attempt to forge the sender.  This, I suppose, is a
*minor* hack. (not that we all don't have one)

ObHack:
Writing an X windows programming interface to make X appear procedural rather
then event driven, and allowing useful X programs to be written in a low number
of lines.  Should be ob-kludge, really, since that is what it was.  I ended up
forking off a seperate event handler and talking to it via pipes.  It works, but
is pretty ugly...does anyone have any ideas?

ObNonComputerHack:
Fixing my retainer with a soldering iron.  Didn't fool my Orthodontist,
though :-(  (thankfully I don't have to wear it anymore)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: nimouat@mobius01.math.uwaterloo.ca (Nikos Mouat)
Subject: Re: .
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 13:25:54 GMT

In article <2uHwXB2w165w@haloeter.hacktic.nl>, joepa@haloeter.hacktic.nl (Joep meloen) writes:
> tdaniel@bluemoon.use.COM (Terry McDaniel) writes:
> 
> > Hay chicos where can I get Computer Underground Digest and back
> > issues of Phrack and LOD?
>   Try Utopia in holland at 31-20-273860
> 
>   ciao

 FTP to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, ftp.eff.org

     /pub/cud/phrack/phrack.{1..41}
     /pub/cud/lod/LOD.{1,2,3,4}
     /pub/cud/cud/*.*


nik.
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: GB@ms.com (Gill Bates)
Subject: Hello All!
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:21:00 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

Hello All!
So, how do you like my automatic posting software?  Nice huh?

Sorry, The SPA has recommended that I don't distribute it.

GB
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: jmmannin@eos.ncsu.edu (James M Manning)
Subject: Re: My first hack!
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 08:26:52 GMT

In article <1992Jan22@hack> newbie@hack writes:
>So, did I make it?

One, isn't that message id a bit old for Jan 1993???
Also, just me, but is it a good guess that you're in the state
of Colorado?  Just curious :)
Later,
James
-- 
/********************************************************************\
| James Manning Jr.|AIX systems programmer - rs6k - bas1.bas.ncsu.edu|
\********************************************************************/
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: tad@ROCK (Tad Hunt)
Subject: Re: My first nntp hack
Organization: Computer Science House, RIT
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 22:53:01 GMT

In article <AfL2RTC00VonAi=9w3@andrew.cmu.edu> "Alex R.N. Wetmore" <aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>Excerpts from netnews.alt.hackers: 18-Jan-93 Re: My first nntp hack by
>Rich Holland@matt.ksu.ks 
>> *scratching head*  I didn't hear that one -- but didn't someone at 
>> Ohio State (?) hook up a coke machine so that anyone on the internet 
>> could finger it and see which flavors (coke, diet coke, dr. pepper, etc)
>> were "out" ??
>
>That was the Computer Engineering Dept at cmu.  They had it so that you
>could tell how many were in there.  There have been tons of articles
>about it on alt.folklore.computing.
>
>alex
>

	Well, CMU used to have a drink machine from what I've heard, but I
don't think it was accessable from the internet.. Ours, however, IS
fingerable from the internet.  Its pretty cool, we have a converted
coke machine. you don't put money in it, you go find a drink admin, and he
puts the cash in your on-line drink account. when you want a soda(pop) you
log in to one of our machines here at CSH (Computer Science House) and
enter the command: drink, which brings up a menu that looks like the one
you get when you finger drink@csh.rit.edu and lets you drop a drink.
You can even specify a delay between the time you enter the number of the
drink to drop till it drops (just in case you're at the other end of the
hall and you don't want someone to scarf it before you get there).  Its
pretty cool, we're working on adding sensors that keep track of how many cans
of soda(pop) are in it, and the last time it was filled (so you know if
they're cold or not.

	Also, the other cool thing about Computer Science House is that we're
the first and only (to the best of our knowledge anyway) completely student
run organization to have installed ethernet in every  dorm room, and provide
an X-Windows workstation to those who want it.  I can write more if anyone
wants to know, but I gotta blow for class.

-Tad
From: gilly!dave@quack.UB.com (Dave Fischer)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Trivial but cool.
Date: 26 Jan 1993 02:19:55 -0600
Organization: Spiders From Mars net
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

This morning's 10-second-but-really-funny hack:

I'm on a vt52 with four "user defined" LEDs above the keyboard,
labeled: L1 L2 L3 L4. I made a wild guess that <ESC>[1-4] would
set them, and a little searching turned up the code <ESC>0 to
turn them all off. ("Manuals"? Yeah, right.) Cool - now... what
would I use them for?

The shell I'm using (homebrew) has a special character for
number-of-background-jobs in the prompt string. So I replaced
my standard:

"%t <user>[<euid>] %j%% "

(%t == hh:mm, %j == number-of-jobs, %% == '%')

with:

"%t <user>[<euid> <ESC>0<ESC>%j%% "

So now a single bg process lights up L1, etc., etc...

Heh heh heh. And you thought vt52s where useless!!!

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

------------------------ uunet!quack!gilly!dave ------------------------
================= Dave Fischer - Nature's Perfect Food =================
---------------------- dave%gilly@quack.sac.ca.us ----------------------
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: mvm@caesun6.epg.harris.com (Matt Mahoney)
Subject: DOS hack
Reply-To: mvm@epg.harris.com (Matt Mahoney)
Organization: Engineering Productivity Group, Harris Corp., Melbourne, FL
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 21:37:58 GMT

ObHack: Modifying COMMAND.COM so that when you typed in "date", it
responded with "Not tonight dear, I got a headache".

--------------------------------        _\/_
Matt Mahoney, mvm@epg.harris.com       |(TV)|  Drug of the Nation
#include <disclaimer.h>                |____|

Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: rons@netcom.com (Ron Sires)
Subject: Re: Port list, kindly
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 00:48:20 GMT

lllowen@netcom.com (lllowen) writes:

>petrilli@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Chris Petrilli) writes:
>>Actually, the best place to look is the RFC published by the IANA
>>(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), it lists stuff that isn't even
>>mentioned in the most complete /etc/services file.  You can find it on
>>nic.ddn.mil.  Just grep for "assigned numbers".

>Is there an RFC number associated with that?

It's RFC 1060.

ObHack:  Changing the printf format strings in a MS-DOS executable to
correct a bug the manufacturer had left in the release version.

-Ron
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: rens@lorax.shearson.com (Rens Troost)
Subject: Re: School can be expensive (was Re: A first post)
Followup-To: alt.hackers
Reply-To: rens@shearson.com (Rens Troost)
Organization: Lehman Brothers
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:44:11 GMT

In article <C18su0.2Dz@ecf.toronto.edu> murraya@ecf.toronto.edu (MURRAY ALEXANDER W) writes:

   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  Apple II Forever  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

   When the last Apple ][ motherboard crumbles, there will still be someone
   running some kind of DOS emulator (MS-DOS 24.3?  Just what we needed,
   Microsoft...) running the Apple ][ emulator software (look on
   ftp.cco.caltech.edu).  Gotta play that Bilestoad!  Er... Lunar Leepers,
   anyone?


Them leepers is cute, them leepers ain't kind,
Them leepers will jump up and bite your behind!
Your job is to fly through them leepers galore,
to rescue some men, is the reason what for.

Sorry, I think I just had a flashback to 1980....

-Rens

       ObHack: Patching the sysents table to re-enable the old
               sethostid(2) call.

ObUselessHack: STREAMS
--
  __   ___  ,    __  
 /__) /__  /| / (    |  J. Laurens Troost    Lehman Brothers Technical Services
/  \ (___ / |/ __)   |  *Opinions expressed herein are mine. Mine, I tell you!*
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INET: rens@shearson.com        VOICE: (212) 464-3705        FAX: (212) 464-2040


      "I saw things in the system than were not visible by the management"

			    -Marc T. Hynes, 1993