From ama at ugr.es Thu May 4 20:10:40 2023 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Thu, 04 May 2023 12:10:40 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] OT: Nostr Protocol. In-Reply-To: <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <4802099.2951.1683160427888.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> <20230504013554.GI24312@eureka.lemis.com> <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> On 2023-05-04 10:58, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has been using it for a while. Not only has he been using it for a while already, but he's also contributing code and funding the developers of some projects (clients and relays) with 14 BTC through fiatjaf, Nostr creator. > I suggest any further chat about Nostr moves to coff at tuhs.org. CC'd. Cheers. Ángel From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Thu May 4 20:31:51 2023 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Thu, 04 May 2023 11:31:51 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Nostr Protocol. In-Reply-To: <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> References: <4802099.2951.1683160427888.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> <20230504013554.GI24312@eureka.lemis.com> <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> Message-ID: <20230504103151.C3F6D219A9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Ángel, > > Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has been using it for a while. > > Not only has he been using it for a while already, but he's also > contributing code and funding the developers of some projects (clients > and relays) with 14 BTC through fiatjaf, Nostr creator. I knew he'd been chipping in, but not the detail. I also understand he contributes despite having some projects of his own which potentially overlap. I didn't mention it in case it made it look like this was Dorsey's project and his stab at Twitter Mk Ⅱ. And I'd then have to explain it wasn't. :-) I'm glad I'm not the only one who's following it and is also on TUHS. Its potential for moving power away from the silos is significant. -- Cheers, Ralph. From ama at ugr.es Thu May 4 20:43:32 2023 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Thu, 04 May 2023 12:43:32 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Nostr Protocol. In-Reply-To: <20230504103151.C3F6D219A9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <4802099.2951.1683160427888.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> <20230504013554.GI24312@eureka.lemis.com> <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> <20230504103151.C3F6D219A9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: On 2023-05-04 12:31, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > I knew he'd been chipping in, but not the detail. I was already playing around with a few different clients when he showed up and I started following him. A few days later he asked how to fund the development. > I also understand he contributes despite having some projects of his > own which potentially overlap. Yes, indeed. He understood very quickly that nostr is exactly what he wanted to be the backing protocol of Twitter when they started it. Alas the business side took control over the project and ended up being the crap it has became. > I didn't mention it in case it made it look like this was Dorsey's > project and his stab at Twitter Mk Ⅱ. And I'd then have to explain it > wasn't. :-) It isn't his project, but he's very enthusiastic about it, as is another co-founder of Twitter, who also has halted the development he was doing on a different new distributed project and joined forces with nostr developers. I can't remember his name, but I saw him on a video interview a couple of days ago I can try to find back for you if you are interested in watching it. > I'm glad I'm not the only one who's following it and is also on TUHS. > Its potential for moving power away from the silos is significant. Nostr is so important that we cannot afford not to follow and, to the extent that we can, contribute to it. :-) Cheers. Ángel From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Fri May 5 20:36:49 2023 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Fri, 05 May 2023 11:36:49 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Nostr Protocol. In-Reply-To: References: <4802099.2951.1683160427888.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> <20230504013554.GI24312@eureka.lemis.com> <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> <20230504103151.C3F6D219A9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <20230505103649.B53FC22138@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Ángel, > as is another co-founder of Twitter, who also has halted the > development he was doing on a different new distributed project and > joined forces with nostr developers. I can't remember his name, but > I saw him on a video interview a couple of days ago I can try to find > back for you if you are interested in watching it. Yes please, when it's convenient. Talking of decentralised, I recently watched a twenty-odd minute video of American Jack Mallers presenting to Congressmen. He argued discussion of the Lightning Network should frame it as public infrastructure to transfer money without central bodies. https://youtu.be/SH_aCW-sXUg -- Cheers, Ralph. From ama at ugr.es Sat May 6 00:59:39 2023 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel M Alganza) Date: Fri, 05 May 2023 16:59:39 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Nostr Protocol. In-Reply-To: <20230505103649.B53FC22138@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <4802099.2951.1683160427888.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> <20230504013554.GI24312@eureka.lemis.com> <20230504085856.4AE7D22175@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <15f5292f0042c9666997725dc28d88a1@ugr.es> <20230504103151.C3F6D219A9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20230505103649.B53FC22138@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <66a58db59807f0bfe742378c829feb99@ugr.es> Hi again, Ralph: On 2023-05-05 12:36, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Yes please, when it's convenient. Sure, here it is: Evan Henshaw Plath (Rabble) pivoted Odea to Twitter and was the person who employed Jack Dorsey. In Twitter he was a driving force trying to keep twitter open/decentralised. Rabble more recently pivoted his chat app https:/nos.social from scuttlebutt to nostr. They really get what Nostr is all about and how important it's going to be. https://inv.riverside.rocks/watch?v=YhCfMn43uaA Enjoy it. > Talking of decentralised, I recently watched a twenty-odd minute video > of American Jack Mallers presenting to Congressmen. He argued > discussion of the Lightning Network should frame it as public > infrastructure to transfer money without central bodies. I saw it, too. Mallers' a cool guy, and arguably one of the best, probably head to head with Saylor and Antonopoulous, conveying so clearly the relevance of LN as the 2nd layer of the new censorship resistant permission-less trust-less global monetary system. Cheers, Ángel From ken.unix.guy at gmail.com Tue May 9 09:05:04 2023 From: ken.unix.guy at gmail.com (KenUnix) Date: Mon, 8 May 2023 19:05:04 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Latest Linux Rags Message-ID: *Latest Linux Rags* http://pclosmag.com/index.html?ref=itsfoss.com https://fullcirclemagazine.org/ Enjoy -- WWL 📚 Okey Dokey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ken.unix.guy at gmail.com Thu May 11 09:56:42 2023 From: ken.unix.guy at gmail.com (KenUnix) Date: Wed, 10 May 2023 19:56:42 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Fwd: Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and *Block hacking attempts* [image: image.png] #1. See how many remote IPs are connecting to the machine See how many remote IPs are connecting to the local machine (whether through ssh or web or ftp ) Use netstat — atn to view the status of all connections on the machine, — a to view all, -T Display only tcp connection information, ≤ n Display in numeric format Local Address (the fourth column is the IP and port information of the machine) Foreign Address (the fifth column is the IP and port information of the remote host) Use the awk command to display only the data in column 5, and then display the information of the IP address in column 1 Sort can be sorted by number size, and finally use uniq to delete the redundant duplicates and count the number of duplicates netstat -atn | awk '{print $5}' | awk '{print $1}' | sort -nr | uniq -c #2. Detect file consistency in specified directories of two servers Detect the consistency of files in specified directories on two servers, by comparing the md5 values of files on two servers to detect consistency #!/bin/bash dir=/data/web b_ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx #Iterate through all the files in the specified directory and use them as arguments to the md5sum command to get the md5 values of all the files and write them to the specified file find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_a.txt ssh $b_ip "find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_b.txt" scp $b_ip:/tmp/md5_b.txt /tmp #Compare file names as traversal objects one by one for f in `awk '{print 2} /tmp/md5_a.txt'` do #The standard is machine a. When machine b does not exist to traverse the files in the object directly output the non-existent results if grep -qw "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt then md5_a=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_a.txt|awk '{print 1}'` md5_b=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt|awk '{print 1}'` #Output the result of file changes if the md5 value is inconsistent when the file exists if [ $md5_a != $md5_b ] then echo "$f changed." fi else echo "$f deleted." fi done #3. Detect network interface card traffic and record it in the log according to the specified format Detect the network interface card traffic and record it in the log according to the specified format, and record it once a minute. The log format is as follows: - 2019–08–12 20:40 - ens33 input: 1234bps - ens33 output: 1235bps #!/bin/bash while : do LANG=en logfile=/tmp/`date +%d`.log #Redirect the output of the following command execution to the logfile log exec >> $logfile date +"%F %H:%M" #The unit of traffic counted by the sar command is kb/s, and the log format is bps, so it should be *1000*8 sar -n DEV 1 59|grep Average|grep ens33|awk '{print $2,"\t","input:","\t",$5*1000*8,"bps","\n",$2,"\t","output:","\t",$6*1000*8,"bps"}' echo "####################" #Because it takes 59 seconds to execute the sar command, sleep is not required done #4. Iptables automatically blocks IPs that visit websites frequentlyBlock more than 200 IP accesses per minute - According to Nginx #!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M) ABNORMAL_IP=$(tail -n5000 access.log |grep $DATE |awk '{a[$1]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>100)print i}') #First tail prevents the file from being too large and slow to read, and the number can be adjusted for the maximum number of visits per minute. awk cannot filter the log directly because it contains special characters. for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP fi done - Connection established over TCP #!/bin/bash ABNORMAL_IP=$(netstat -an |awk '$4~/:80$/ && $6~/ESTABLISHED/{gsub(/:[0-9]+/,"",$5);{a[$5]++}}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>100)print i}') #gsub is to remove the colon and port from the fifth column (client IP) for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP fi done Block IPs with more than 10 SSH attempts per minute - Get login status via lastb #!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +"%a %b %e %H:%M") #Day of the week, month, and hour %e displays 7 for single digits, while %d displays 07 ABNORMAL_IP=$(lastb |grep "$DATE" |awk '{a[$3]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>10)print i}') for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP fi done - Get login status from logs #!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +"%b %d %H") ABNORMAL_IP="$(tail -n10000 /var/log/auth.log |grep "$DATE" |awk '/Failed/{a[$(NF-3)]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>5)print i}')" for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP echo "$(date +"%F %T") - iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP" >>~/ssh-login-limit.log fi done Might come in handy... -- End of line -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 58299 bytes Desc: not available URL: From nikke.karlsson at gmail.com Thu May 11 10:12:28 2023 From: nikke.karlsson at gmail.com (Niklas Karlsson) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 02:12:28 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Fwd: Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A little outdated in that many Linux distributions no longer come with 'netstat' by default - you now use the 'ss' command. You may be able to obtain netstat by installing some form of network-legacy package, of course. As for blocking IPs that access you too frequently, there's 'fail2ban' which can do this more flexibly and configurably. As for #3 I'm not sure, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't some tool for that as well. /Niklas Den tors 11 maj 2023 kl 01:57 skrev KenUnix : > Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and > *Block hacking attempts* > > [image: image.png] > > #1. See how many remote IPs are connecting to the machine > > See how many remote IPs are connecting to the local machine (whether > through ssh or web or ftp ) Use netstat — atn to view the status of all > connections on the machine, — a to view all, -T Display only tcp connection > information, ≤ n Display in numeric format Local Address (the fourth column > is the IP and port information of the machine) Foreign Address (the fifth > column is the IP and port information of the remote host) Use the awk > command to display only the data in column 5, and then display the > information of the IP address in column 1 Sort can be sorted by number > size, and finally use uniq to delete the redundant duplicates and count the > number of duplicates > > > netstat -atn | awk '{print $5}' | awk '{print $1}' | sort -nr | uniq -c > > #2. Detect file consistency in specified directories of two servers > > Detect the consistency of files in specified directories on two servers, > by comparing the md5 values of files on two servers to detect consistency > > #!/bin/bash > dir=/data/web > b_ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx > #Iterate through all the files in the specified directory and use them as arguments to the md5sum command to get the md5 values of all the files and write them to the specified file > find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_a.txt > ssh $b_ip "find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_b.txt" > scp $b_ip:/tmp/md5_b.txt /tmp > #Compare file names as traversal objects one by one > for f in `awk '{print 2} /tmp/md5_a.txt'` > do > #The standard is machine a. When machine b does not exist to traverse the files in the object directly output the non-existent results > if grep -qw "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt > then > md5_a=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_a.txt|awk '{print 1}'` > md5_b=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt|awk '{print 1}'` > #Output the result of file changes if the md5 value is inconsistent when the file exists > if [ $md5_a != $md5_b ] > then > echo "$f changed." > fi > else > echo "$f deleted." > fi > done > > #3. Detect network interface card traffic and record it in the log > according to the specified format > > Detect the network interface card traffic and record it in the log > according to the specified format, and record it once a minute. The log > format is as follows: > > - 2019–08–12 20:40 > - ens33 input: 1234bps > - ens33 output: 1235bps > > #!/bin/bash > while : > do > LANG=en > logfile=/tmp/`date +%d`.log > #Redirect the output of the following command execution to the logfile log > exec >> $logfile > date +"%F %H:%M" > #The unit of traffic counted by the sar command is kb/s, and the log format is bps, so it should be *1000*8 > sar -n DEV 1 59|grep Average|grep ens33|awk '{print $2,"\t","input:","\t",$5*1000*8,"bps","\n",$2,"\t","output:","\t",$6*1000*8,"bps"}' > echo "####################" > #Because it takes 59 seconds to execute the sar command, sleep is not required > done > > #4. Iptables automatically blocks IPs that visit websites frequentlyBlock > more than 200 IP accesses per minute > > - According to Nginx > > #!/bin/bash > DATE=$(date +%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M) > ABNORMAL_IP=$(tail -n5000 access.log |grep $DATE |awk '{a[$1]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>100)print i}') > #First tail prevents the file from being too large and slow to read, and the number can be adjusted for the maximum number of visits per minute. awk cannot filter the log directly because it contains special characters. > for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do > if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then > iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP > fi > done > > > - Connection established over TCP > > > #!/bin/bash > ABNORMAL_IP=$(netstat -an |awk '$4~/:80$/ && $6~/ESTABLISHED/{gsub(/:[0-9]+/,"",$5);{a[$5]++}}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>100)print i}') > #gsub is to remove the colon and port from the fifth column (client IP) > for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do > if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then > iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP > fi > done > > Block IPs with more than 10 SSH attempts per minute > > - Get login status via lastb > > #!/bin/bash > DATE=$(date +"%a %b %e %H:%M") #Day of the week, month, and hour %e displays 7 for single digits, while %d displays 07 > ABNORMAL_IP=$(lastb |grep "$DATE" |awk '{a[$3]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>10)print i}') > for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do > if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then > iptables -I INPUT -s $IP -j DROP > fi > done > > > - Get login status from logs > > #!/bin/bash > DATE=$(date +"%b %d %H") > ABNORMAL_IP="$(tail -n10000 /var/log/auth.log |grep "$DATE" |awk '/Failed/{a[$(NF-3)]++}END{for(i in a)if(a[i]>5)print i}')" > for IP in $ABNORMAL_IP; do > if [ $(iptables -vnL |grep -c "$IP") -eq 0 ]; then > iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP > echo "$(date +"%F %T") - iptables -A INPUT -s $IP -j DROP" >>~/ssh-login-limit.log > fi > done > > Might come in handy... > > -- > End of line > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 58299 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au Thu May 11 15:58:51 2023 From: sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au (steve jenkin) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 15:58:51 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Fwd: Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <97CD9F08-E004-443E-89F9-2B9B23ADD53C@canb.auug.org.au> > On 11 May 2023, at 09:56, KenUnix wrote: > > Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts I found this content on Medium as a ‘members only’ article, published 5 April, 2023. A 2nd article of “useful shell scripts” Author handle is "Beck Moulton”, who does Java according to their Bio. "Focus on the back-end field, do actual combat technology sharing” There’s Golang and Rust threads and more. ============== I didn’t see any attribution of source in the articles. The snippets have the feel to be from some standard source, but I didn’t identify it. Previous post of ‘useful’ scripts (#1 vs #2) from 17 March, 2023. #1 According to the PID input by the user, filter out all the information of the PID #2 Display all information about the process according to the process name #3 View information about the user based on the user name #4 Check the connection status of tcp #5 Display system performance ============== A random github page from 2014, a “Linux Admin Cheatsheet”, for anyone wanting more. Not a recommendation, not a comment on suitability or quality of content. ============== cheers steve -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Thu May 11 19:18:57 2023 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 10:18:57 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi, >From a quick skim, these seem poorly written. They might do what's required some of the time but are no better than a quickly knocked-up attempt I'd do myself. > Use the awk command to display only the data in column 5, and then > display the information of the IP address in column 1 ... > netstat -atn | awk '{print $5}' | awk '{print $1}' | sort -nr | uniq -c The second awk does nothing, even though it's documented. > find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_a.txt > ssh $b_ip "find $dir -type f|xargs md5sum > /tmp/md5_b.txt" > scp $b_ip:/tmp/md5_b.txt /tmp > #Compare file names as traversal objects one by one > for f in `awk '{print 2} /tmp/md5_a.txt'` Looks like that ‘print 2’ should be $2. Presumably it was corrupted on its long journey of cut-and-pastes and renderings. The '' quoting is also adrift as what's there lumps the AWK with the input's path. > if grep -qw "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt This checks if an A file is present in B. There is nothing to spot new files in B not in A. > then > md5_a=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_a.txt|awk '{print 1}'` > md5_b=`grep -w "$f" /tmp/md5_b.txt|awk '{print 1}'` Both 1 should be $1 to get the MD5 for the path. And grep's -w isn't the right way to pick out the line. $ md5sum * | grep -w foo d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e foo d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e foo extra $ I didn't read further. -- Cheers, Ralph. From athornton at gmail.com Fri May 12 06:10:28 2023 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 13:10:28 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] BSTJ 1978 UNIX Issue Price Appreciation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2009A5D5-D06B-4928-876E-FC5E4153022C@gmail.com> > On May 11, 2023, at 12:38 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > > I'm one of the many legacies of the over 50 years of teaching by Dan Siewiorek -- remember in the 1970s there was an infamous band (named after an interesting object BTW). Ah, so Dan Siewiorek is Steely Dan IV, _not_ from Yokohama. Or perhaps Steely Dan V, from neither Yokohama nor Annandale-on-Hudson. Adam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Fri May 12 08:06:18 2023 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 08:06:18 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: On Thu, 11 May 2023, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > From a quick skim, these seem poorly written. They might do what's > required some of the time but are no better than a quickly knocked-up > attempt I'd do myself. [...] It appears to be some jerk pretending to be Ken T; any fool can take a Gmail address (and they do). -- Dave From coff at tuhs.org Fri May 12 08:35:46 2023 From: coff at tuhs.org (segaloco via COFF) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 22:35:46 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> I would be cautious with that sort of accusation. I've seen Ken here's traffic on TUHS and COFF for a little bit now and at least myself have never seen him try and pass off a false identity. I've seen email replies reach TUHS from Ken Thompson himself, there's nothing I've seen in this Ken's messaging that appears to present a facsimile of Ken T. or anyone else. Of course, if such misdirection is happening and can be proven, probably best to warn Warren directly on that sort of thing. That all said, yeah, I don't see this sort of email being too relevant to COFF. I'm no moderator so I won't claim to have authority on anything, but I for one tend to ignore just about anything Linux-oriented or specific in this list and TUHS. - Matt G. P.S. Sorry to backseat mod at all, I just have seen this sort of thing before, I don't think anyone involved has bad intentions, communicating over the internet is hard. ------- Original Message ------- On Thursday, May 11th, 2023 at 3:06 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Thu, 11 May 2023, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > > > From a quick skim, these seem poorly written. They might do what's > > required some of the time but are no better than a quickly knocked-up > > attempt I'd do myself. > > > [...] > > It appears to be some jerk pretending to be Ken T; any fool can take a > Gmail address (and they do). > > -- Dave From grog at lemis.com Fri May 12 12:13:17 2023 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 12:13:17 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> Message-ID: <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> On Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 22:35:46 +0000, COFF wrote: > On Thursday, May 11th, 2023 at 3:06 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: >> On Thu, 11 May 2023, Ralph Corderoy wrote: >> >> It appears to be some jerk pretending to be Ken T; any fool can >> take a Gmail address (and they do). > > I would be cautious with that sort of accusation... Agreed. My guess is that the poster is really called Ken. You can't blame him for that. > That all said, yeah, I don't see this sort of email being too > relevant to COFF. Well, it *is* Unix-related. Should COFF be restricted beyond that? The whole idea of the list was to provide a platform for topics where TUHS was inappropriate. I don't see the distinction Unix/Linux as an issue: a surprising number of Unix people have moved on to Linux. And I don't think we should pontificate on the merits of the post. Some are better than others. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From athornton at gmail.com Fri May 12 12:19:50 2023 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 19:19:50 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: > On May 11, 2023, at 7:13 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > Agreed. My guess is that the poster is really called Ken. You can't > blame him for that. You can fault his judgment for calling himself "Unix Ken" or whatever, because for most people around here, that would indicate a specific person who isn't him, but nothing he's posted seems to indicate malice or an intention to confuse people. I bet there are more than two people named Ken who are into Unix in the world. Adam From lm at mcvoy.com Fri May 12 12:34:28 2023 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 19:34:28 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 07:19:50PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On May 11, 2023, at 7:13 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > > > Agreed. My guess is that the poster is really called Ken. You can't > > blame him for that. > > > You can fault his judgment for calling himself "Unix Ken" or whatever, because for most people around here, that would indicate a specific person who isn't him, but nothing he's posted seems to indicate malice or an intention to confuse people. > > I bet there are more than two people named Ken who are into Unix in the world. > > Adam Adding my voice to Unix Ken is just another Ken. Nothing I've seen from him says he is trying to be Ken T. And since I'm opining, I both liked and didn't like his scripts. I liked that they were very classic Unix, a pleasant reminder of where we have come from. What I didn't like was all that data flowing through all those pipes. Yes, it is simple but it just doesn't scale that well when you are processing gigabytes of data, which you frequently are these days. I'll date myself, but I could replace every one of those scripts with a single pretty understandable perl script. Modern people might prefer Python, I can program in Python but I have a huge aversion to a programming language that doesn't include printf in the base language. Too weird for me. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat From rtomek at ceti.pl Fri May 12 14:24:15 2023 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 06:24:15 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 12:13:17PM +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 22:35:46 +0000, COFF wrote: [...] > > > That all said, yeah, I don't see this sort of email being too > > relevant to COFF. > > Well, it *is* Unix-related. Should COFF be restricted beyond that? > The whole idea of the list was to provide a platform for topics where > TUHS was inappropriate. I don't see the distinction Unix/Linux as an > issue: a surprising number of Unix people have moved on to Linux. And > I don't think we should pontificate on the merits of the post. Some > are better than others. Myself, I have had a look at Ken's postings. Maybe I will not copy straight to my own scripts, maybe not, but I always look for examples of (shell) scripts and options to various programs which may serve as refresher or inspiration. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From rtomek at ceti.pl Fri May 12 14:30:59 2023 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 06:30:59 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 07:34:28PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: [...] > > And since I'm opining, I both liked and didn't like his scripts. I liked > that they were very classic Unix, a pleasant reminder of where we have > come from. What I didn't like was all that data flowing through all > those pipes. Yes, it is simple but it just doesn't scale that well > when you are processing gigabytes of data, which you frequently are > these days. I believe (and I think I have seen more than once) that on multicore computer all parts of the pipe will be ran on their own core, if possible. Thus a script with pipes would give about the simplest way to modernize this "old school" kind of processing. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From coff at tuhs.org Fri May 12 15:02:25 2023 From: coff at tuhs.org (segaloco via COFF) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 05:02:25 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: You can relegate any Linux grumbles from me to the cheap seats. It's my daily driver as it is for many folks, I certainly wouldn't steer discussion away, my opinions on the matter are informed by my own biases after all... Can't complain too much though, I keep coming back to Linux for the hardware support...due to the nature of the BSD licensing there are probably a lot more BSDish drivers floating around out there than we see, but they're only in use by a select few. - Matt G. ------- Original Message ------- On Thursday, May 11th, 2023 at 9:24 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 12:13:17PM +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > > On Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 22:35:46 +0000, COFF wrote: > > [...] > > > > That all said, yeah, I don't see this sort of email being too > > > relevant to COFF. > > > > Well, it is Unix-related. Should COFF be restricted beyond that? > > The whole idea of the list was to provide a platform for topics where > > TUHS was inappropriate. I don't see the distinction Unix/Linux as an > > issue: a surprising number of Unix people have moved on to Linux. And > > I don't think we should pontificate on the merits of the post. Some > > are better than others. > > > Myself, I have had a look at Ken's postings. Maybe I will not copy > straight to my own scripts, maybe not, but I always look for examples > of (shell) scripts and options to various programs which may serve as > refresher or inspiration. > > -- > Regards, > Tomasz Rola > > -- > ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** > ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** > ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** > ** ** > ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From coff at tuhs.org Fri May 12 18:14:29 2023 From: coff at tuhs.org (Robert Stanford via COFF) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 18:14:29 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On 12/5/23 12:13, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 22:35:46 +0000, COFF wrote: >> On Thursday, May 11th, 2023 at 3:06 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: >>> On Thu, 11 May 2023, Ralph Corderoy wrote: >>> >>> It appears to be some jerk pretending to be Ken T; any fool can >>> take a Gmail address (and they do). >> I would be cautious with that sort of accusation... > Agreed. My guess is that the poster is really called Ken. You can't > blame him for that. > > I cop the same thing with my domain. That's my surname and I was lucky to score the domain (stanford.com.au) when it became available. I've never tried to pass it off as anything else, yet every now and then I encounter someone who gets a bee in their bonnet over it. From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Fri May 12 18:34:37 2023 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 09:34:37 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20230512083437.EF0B01F935@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Larry, > I can program in Python but I have a huge aversion to a programming > language that doesn't include printf in the base language. Python has Perl's sprintf() but as the ‘fmt % values’ operator rather than a function. So it isn't just available for printing but general string formatting. >>> mol = '%04d' % (6 * 7) >>> print('%08x %-8s' % (826366246, mol)) 31415926 0042 -- Cheers, Ralph. From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Fri May 12 21:42:06 2023 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 12:42:06 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> Message-ID: <20230512114206.C0F1A21987@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi, > I would be cautious with that sort of accusation. KenUnix replied but it didn't make it to the list. He's asked me to forward it on. To put everybody at ease my "handle" KenUnix has been in use by me for many years. It was never intended to be used to disguise me as someone else  It dates back to Ken (me) and using Unix for many years. I E. KenUnix. Ken -- Cheers, Ralph. From lm at mcvoy.com Fri May 12 23:58:18 2023 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 06:58:18 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: <20230512083437.EF0B01F935@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> <20230512023428.GK29399@mcvoy.com> <20230512083437.EF0B01F935@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <20230512135818.GM29399@mcvoy.com> On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 09:34:37AM +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Hi Larry, > > > I can program in Python but I have a huge aversion to a programming > > language that doesn't include printf in the base language. > > Python has Perl's sprintf() but as the ???fmt % values??? operator rather > than a function. So it isn't just available for printing but general > string formatting. > > >>> mol = '%04d' % (6 * 7) > >>> print('%08x %-8s' % (826366246, mol)) > 31415926 0042 I'm aware, I've used it. It feels bolted on. It's still weird. From athornton at gmail.com Sat May 13 02:40:16 2023 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 09:40:16 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Useful Shell Scripts Network Connections , Logins and Block hacking attempts In-Reply-To: References: <20230511091857.79F92221B9@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <0pqrbeVzt1XwimOc0TADlmqY1Klz6ykmdDXvQMFS4YJ6SAZnpRmPxdTiCNvMwx1wiE0qHL8MfRbf20qbxSCl_hAoTj06lqrhaw5MKYg8vKA=@protonmail.com> <20230512021317.GA3576@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <4F69BC60-0966-4B8C-A530-97C257151BAF@gmail.com> > On May 12, 2023, at 1:14 AM, Robert Stanford via COFF wrote: > I cop the same thing with my domain. That's my surname and I was lucky to score the domain (stanford.com.au) when it became available. I've never tried to pass it off as anything else, yet every now and then I encounter someone who gets a bee in their bonnet over it. Heh. I own fsf.net. That, once upon a time, was the Flathead Software Foundry. I, obviously, registered that domain pretty early in the grand scheme of things. If the actual Free Software Foundation wants it (they've never asked), it's theirs for the cost of registration. Everyone else can just eff right off. I turn down offers for it occasionally, but none of them have come close to what I consider a reasonable cost for my effort for migrating off of it would be. Adam From coff at tuhs.org Thu May 25 04:38:01 2023 From: coff at tuhs.org (segaloco via COFF) Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 18:38:01 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Western Electric Police? Message-ID: Sorry this is very tangential to the list but figured some folks here might have some knowledge just what with our proximity to Western Electric lore by way of UNIX. Still, didn't feel UNIX-y at all so COFF instead of TUHS. Anywho, spotted something particularly interesting in my rounds of checking for eBay postings: https://www.ebay.com/itm/385635333789?hash=item59c9a8369d:g:8TMAAOSw3kJkblSY&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4M%2FP8b5kKk64A30kXb0bB1sZy9A0eEQzMUL8bVTPoYjC3VdEXbOk2GQ3Grktr7%2FZT3M0y4tBLshdcwOlJh68NeF13w%2FYoVGjoHJpLcnyYO4W77BlnQStD7OFzVSokh7ioSPoUDMhkWMCqemYOVMmp6KZdFBaQvejJkzq8%2FFtu%2B4l%2BLxXqGd3ehArIPDTRWszVzIGdTOVo7mVGxlDMfnmH4ioZEIuT48KYyq8eyudiJrsUKmTX7w54XXS%2BhsMxSk6RmHWWLtWAWK%2BR6%2Fi4SXsLXLgvrRK6EGSPODC2lgO%2Bs%2FT%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4bapPCJYg After the link is an auction for a police badge, with the word "Police" on it, but also labeled as "Western Electric, Co.", along with the seal of North Carolina. I did a bit of searching and while I could find plenty of WECo badges labeled security, plant protection, etc. I can't find any others specifically using the word "Police". The latter term has governmental implications that other terms do not, and it's got me kinda curious if there was ever a time WECo or the Bell System at large actually had authority from the government to accredit their own personnel as "police" and not simply as security, guards, etc. and what sort of legal statutes would be involved. I'm not interested in purchasing this either way, but it'd be amusing if this is some facsimile, I don't know that reporting it as such would bubble up through eBay's systems though. Also given the sensitivity of discussions of law enforcement these days, I'm simply interested in whether there is any accessible documentation or history of WECo and/or Bell's relationship with formal U.S. law enforcement agencies, not any discussion on the propriety of this. If you want to chat philosophy, email me privately, but that sort of public discussion is too sensitive for me to want to wade into in mixed company. - Matt G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Thu May 25 10:14:42 2023 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 18:14:42 -0600 Subject: [COFF] C compiler in 512 bytes Message-ID: This appeared in my news feed and hacker news. https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Thu May 25 10:47:06 2023 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 17:47:06 -0700 Subject: [COFF] C compiler in 512 bytes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20230525004706.GS29775@mcvoy.com> One of my mentors, Greg Chesson, would have loved that. In fact, I have a lot of friends that will love that. Thanks for the link. And if you are a systems guy and need more systems guys, I would hire the author in a heartbeat. My kinda guy. On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 06:14:42PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: > This appeared in my news feed and hacker news. > https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html > > Warner -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat From clemc at ccc.com Thu May 25 11:06:05 2023 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 21:06:05 -0400 Subject: [COFF] C compiler in 512 bytes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is an outstanding hack. So creative. SW bloat is such a problem. It’s nice to see a minimalistic view — What do I really need to do the job - ie reminds me of John Mashey’s old “Small is Beautiful” ACM lectures. Thanks for passing it along. Clem On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 8:15 PM Warner Losh wrote: > This appeared in my news feed and hacker news. > https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html > > Warner > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From coff at tuhs.org Thu May 25 15:26:19 2023 From: coff at tuhs.org (Arno Griffioen via COFF) Date: Thu, 25 May 2023 07:26:19 +0200 Subject: [COFF] C compiler in 512 bytes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 06:14:42PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: > This appeared in my news feed and hacker news. > https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html Thanks! I always also loved the obfuscated C contest as you could pick up so much neat stuff and low-down info from that. Also showed you a lot of the underlying behaviour in the C language and how compilers would 'fill in the blanks' in several cases. As students during my college time we regularly got into friendly competitions to do the 'shoterst source xyz' or 'fastest' or even some obscure 'smallest resulting ASM from the compiler'. Fun times.. Longest running one I remember was cramming a fully compiling and running Conway's 'life' into as little C-source bytes as possible (excluding the playing field data, but it did have to read that..). I vaguely remember it getting down to a ridiculous 30-something bytes or so. Again.. Thanks for the link. Definite reading material for a quiet moment.. Bye, Arno. From lars at nocrew.org Thu May 25 16:30:30 2023 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Thu, 25 May 2023 06:30:30 +0000 Subject: [COFF] C compiler in 512 bytes In-Reply-To: (Clem Cole's message of "Wed, 24 May 2023 21:06:05 -0400") References: Message-ID: <7wmt1sdit5.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Clem Cole wrote: > This is an outstanding hack. So creative. SW bloat is such a > problem. It’s nice to see a minimalistic view It's one of the reasons I enjoy vintage software. You might think old programs are arcane and difficult. Not so! They are actually much easier to understand than the monstrosities we have today. From sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au Mon May 29 17:28:12 2023 From: sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au (steve jenkin) Date: Mon, 29 May 2023 17:28:12 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Bell Labs vs "East Coast" Management style of AT&T Message-ID: I was wondering if anyone close to Early Unix and Bell Labs would offer some comments on the evolution of Unix and the quality of decisions made by AT&T senior managers. Tom Wolfe did an interesting piece on Fairchild / Silicon Valley, where he highlights the difference between SV’s management style and the “East Coast” Management style. [ Around 2000, “Silicon Valley” changed from being ‘chips & hardware’ to ’software’ & systems ] [ with chip making, every new generation / technology step resets competition, monopolies can’t be maintained ] [ Microsoft showed that Software is the opposite. Vendor Lock-in & monopolies are common, even easy for aggressive players ] Noyce & Moore ran Fairchild Semiconductor, but Fairchild Camera & Instrument was ‘East Coast’ or “Old School” - extracting maximum profit. It seems to me, an outsider, that AT&T management saw how successful Unix was and decided they could apply their size, “marketing knowhow” and client lists to becoming a big player in Software & Hardware. This appears to be the reason for the 1984 divestiture. In another decade, they gave up and got out of Unix. Another decade on, AT&T had one of the Baby Bells, SBC, buy it. SBC had understood the future growth markets for telephony was “Mobile” and instead of “Traditional” Telco pricing, “What the market will bear” p[lus requiring Gross Margins over 90%, SBC adopted more of a Silicon Valley pricing approach - modest Gross Margins and high “pass through” rates - handing most/all cost reductions onto customers. If you’re in a Commodity market, passing on cost savings to customers is “Profit Maximising”. It isn’t because Commodity markets are highly competitive, but Volumes drive profit, and lower prices stimulate demand / Volumes. [ Price Elasticity of Demand ] Kenneth Flamm has written a lot on “Pass Through” in Silicon Chip manufacture. Just to close the loop, Bells Labs, around 1966, hired Fred Terman, ex-Dean of Stanford, to write a proposal for “Silicon Valley East”. The AT&T management were fully aware of California and perhaps it was a long term threat. How could they replicate in New Jersey the powerhouse of innovation that was happening in California? Many places in many countries looked at this and a few even tried. Apparently South Korea is the only attempt that did reasonably. I haven’t included links, but Gordon Bell, known for formulating a law of computer ‘classes’, did forecast early that MOS/CMOS chips would overtake Bipolar - used by Mainframes - in speed. It gave a way to use all those transistors on a chip that Moore’s Law would provide, and with CPU’s in a few, or one, chip, the price of systems would plummet. He forecast the cutover in 1985 and was right. The MIPS R2000 blazed past every other chip the year it was released. And of course, the folk at MIPS understood that building their own O/S, tools, libraries etc was a fool’s errand - they had Unix experience and ported a version. By 1991, IBM was almost the Last Man Standing of the original 1970’s “IBM & the BUNCH”, and their mainframe revenues collapsed. In 1991 and 1992, IBM racked up the largest corporate losses in US history to the time, then managed to survive. Linux has, in my mind, proven the original mid-1970’s position of CSRC/1127 that Software has to be ‘cheap’, even ‘free’ - because it’s a Commodity and can be ’substituted’ by others. ================================= 1956 - AT&T / IBM Consent decree: 'no computers, no software’ 1974 - CACM article, CSRC/1127 in Software Research, no commercial Software allowed 1984 - AT&T divested, doing commercial Software & Computers 1994 - AT&T Sells Unix 1996 - “Tri-vestiture", Bell Labs sold to Lucent, some staff to AT&T Research. 2005 - SBC buys AT&T, long-lines + 4 baby bells 1985 - MIPS R2000, x2 throughput at same clock speed. Faster than bipolar, CMOS CPU's soon overtook ECL ================================= Code Critic John Lions wrote the first, and perhaps only, literary criticism of Unix, sparking one of open source's first legal battles. Rachel Chalmers November 30, 1999 https://www.salon.com/test2/1999/11/30/lions_2/ "By the time the seventh edition system came out, the company had begun to worry more about the intellectual property issues and trade secrets and so forth," Ritchie explains. "There was somewhat of a struggle between us in the research group who saw the benefit in having the system readily available, and the Unix Support Group ... Even though in the 1970s Unix was not a commercial proposition, USG and the lawyers were cautious. At any rate, we in research lost the argument." This awkward situation lasted nearly 20 years. Even as USG became Unix System Laboratories (USL) and was half divested to Novell, which in turn sold it to the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), Ritchie never lost hope that the Lions books could see the light of day. He leaned on company after company. "This was, after all, 25-plus-year-old material, but when they would ask their lawyers, they would say that they couldnt see any harm at first glance, but there was a sort of 'but you never know ...' attitude, and they never got the courage to go ahead," he explains. Finally, at SCO [ by July 1996 ], Ritchie hit paydirt. He already knew Mike Tilson, an SCO executive. With the help of his fellow Unix gurus Peter Salus and Berny Goodheart, Ritchie brought pressure to bear. "Mike himself drafted a 'grant of permission' letter," says Ritchie, "'to save the legal people from doing the work!'" Research, at last, had won. ================================= Tom Wolfe, Esquire, 1983, on Bob Noyce: The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce | Esquire | DECEMBER 1983.webarchive http://classic.esquire.com/the-tinkerings-of-robert-noyce/ ================================= Special Places IEEE Spectrum Magazine May 2000 Robert W. Lucky (Bob Lucky) https://web.archive.org/web/20030308074213/http://www.boblucky.com/reflect/may00.htm https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=803583 Why does place matter? Why does it matter where we live and work today when the world is so connected that we're never out of touch with people or information? The problem is, even if they get da Vinci, it won't work. There's just something special about Florence, and it doesn't travel. Just as in this century many places have tried to build their own Silicon Valley. While there have been some successes in Boston, Research Triangle Park, Austin, and Cambridge in the U.K., to name a few significant places, most attempts have paled in comparison to the Bay Area prototype. In the mid-1960s New Jersey brought in Fred Terman, the Dean at Stanford and architect of Silicon Valley, and commissioned him to start a Silicon Valley East. [ Terman reited from Stanford in 1965 ] ================================= -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin