yonkeltron

So, I’ve been evaluating SELinux for a number of weeks now and I’ve had a wide variety of reactions ranging from excitement to confusion. Now, I’m ready to test out SELinux to get hands on with respect to deployment. Eventually, I hope to be proficient enough with SELinux to feel comfortable deploying it on my houseputer in a consistent manner.

My test will consist of the following components:

1. A virtual machine (either Vbox or KVM if I can get it working) in which I will install Debian Etch.
2. Following this, I will get X11 and the XFCE desktop environment up an running.
3. Once I have a basic-ish system up and running, I will attempt to install the Free version of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (as inspired by a recent LJ article.) to simulate a system with various usage patterns.
4. Upon successful configuration of this system, I will introduce one of the SELinux policies in the Debian package repositories.

Ideally, nothing will break and I’ll have a set of policy files and tools to play with as I explore the system. Let’s see how it works…

***Sorry fur der krossenposten***

Ein bin der Ahprul, 2007

Mayn Enschteemede Kolligeners und Freindenpeeple,

Das is en zerplashure mit cheekenblushen, zat ich bin anouncen ein tidnewzenbite. Der Advansener Opratin Systemer Laborworkenrum Vissnschaftlekher Institut (OSLab) ist bin movenlokashon a der undergroundenbazmant fun Lab I. Der laberworkenrum ist en der 060. Der OSLab bist a vissnschaftlekher istitut fun der explorenlearnen a der machine kontrol. Vus ist der machine kontrol? Das machine kontrol ist der softenwarez mit der nomen “opratin systemer” (OS). Der OSLab always bin superbusyworken mit der projekten fun der komputer blinkenlights. Ussen bin doin der workenlearnin mit der followen subjectntopiks:

• Der explorenlearnen a der machine kontrollen opratin systemers: Linux, Minix, Planen Neiner, Gettunveryhotten (Inferno), und der famelie fun mikrokernelen und der distributed machine kontrollen.
• Der experimentin mit der komputenmachinen fun mediaworxen; mediaworxen mit der spitzensparkin und der elektrolichten.
• Der makhen der softenwarez fun der Worldenwiden Netwurken Intarwebzen (Internet).
• Der brokhen der altenolder komputer springerwork mit der bigschteelhammerzen.
• Torchenflamin der Makintosch und der Vindowz OSen.

Kum und visten ourden laborworkenrum mit der turenlooken! Lookenfinden der rumplacken sayen das:

Der Advansener Opratin Systemer Laborworkenrum Vissnschaftlekher Institut (OSLab) - Laborworkenrum 060 Lab I.

Mit happifacen und thumpinbumpinmusik,

Jonathan E. Magen
Jonah Berquist
Der Uber OSLab Experten der Technischeners

http://www2.evergreen.edu/oslab

I have not had a great deal of time recently. That being said, I have accrued a list of subjects I desire to learn and technologies I wish to become familiar with. Some of them are neat and others are less captivating. If anyone sees something on this list that they find interesting, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

• PyKDE/PyQT - I would really like to get a hang of GUI programming in order to further my programming horizons. Given my love of KDE in general and the immenent release of KDE4, I feel like now is an excellent time to get aquainted with this seemingly excellent development platform. I have already found a few good tutorials to help a Python programmer like myself get a decent start.
• Parallel Python - While my professors tend to be more into the high performance computing stuff like OpenMP and MPI, I find the idea of a 1700 line quicksort algorithm to be a little intimidating. While the whole concept of a lighter weight language (like NESL) is not new, I fancy the idea of using Python to do interesting things.
• OpenLaszlo - I like the web. I wish I had a better understanding of how to make neat things for the web. As such, the OpenLaszlo concept of writing an application once and then being able to have it served up as either Flash or DHTML/AJAX seems very promising and flexible. There are some cool demos where the exact same application can be launched served up in either form.
• Unit Testing - Even after the launch of the Google Testing Blog, there really isn’t enough out there for people to dive into unit testing for software components. I really do wish that the Google folks, who seem to be awful keen on testing, would put out some good introductory material. That being said, I am eyeing the O’Reilly book…
• Jabber - I just like Jabber in general. Ever since I really got into the concepts during last year’s brief project, I’ve been craving a portable Jabber-enabled device so that I can keep in touch from any WiFi hotspot. Really, I just want to do something interesting and fun with it.
• Talmudic Logic - With the recent developments in the Conservative Movement, I have been reminded of just how rich the body of Jewish Law can be. It seems like, with my newfound exposure to discrete mathematics, I might be in a position to explore some of these concepts in a more comprehensive fashion.
• Wavelets - One of my development partners (the delightfully Turkish one) is quite fascinated with wavelets. His enthusiasm has spread to me after I saw how powerful they can be when analyzing data.

I feel like there is more but I just can’t remember at the moment.

I have a great deal of trouble explaining RSS to folks. It doesn’t matter when I call it Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary (or worse yet, RDF Site Summary), the truth is that RSS is designed for a fairly specific purpose: making portable and parseable the content of blogs. Now, before I continue, no format is perfect and RSS is clearly robust enough that at it’s current revision (2.0 is the latest stable spec), it’s used all over the place. However, while people are using RSS for some pretty interesting things, at the end of the day they are still repurposing RSS.

Enter Atom. It’s a multipurpose collection format with all the perks of RSS (XML,  standardization (0.3 stable + 1.0 draft),  inclusion of metadata (even DMCI), and extensibility), but without the incompatibilities. Additionally, the Atom standard specifies both a document format, consisting of general purpose entries, and a protocol called the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) currently a draft under review. It’s also sponsored by a who’s who of the modern tech world. In fact, I first learned about why it’s cool when I read an LJ interview with Tim Bray.

Breeze on over to AtomEnabled and check it out for yourself. I’m excited.

Today, more than ever before, it is official that I am a scientist. While it’s true that I’ve had a lab for coming up on a year, I attended my first grant workshop and bought my first lab coat. These two things are important for just as many reasons.

1. I need grant money to keep doing science
2. All the scientists on TV have labcoats

I know that #2 isn’t very scientific….but it was dirt cheap and I feel very special. Also, when the room gets chilly at night, the coat is just what I need to take the edge off.

This quarter is over! Huzzah! You can access the varying parts of this quarters work,completed along with delightful dev partner, Altan Orhon, as follows:

• Original project poster
• Slides from our talk (with accompanying handout)
• Randomly generated music on the blues scale
• Randomly generated art (thanks to Processing)
• Our final paper and appendix
• Code repo (messy?)

Who says Greeners don’t do work?

Now don’t get me wrong I love Wikipedia. I appreciate the breadth and general freedom of the whole project and the ease with which people can contribute and collaborate. That being said, I am very displeased with the progress of the articles in the Conservative Judaism series. I’ve been tagging and editing things like mad but the general quality has not been increasing as quickly and substantially as I would have liked. If you give a crap and are knowledgeable enough to help fix things, please do.

My project for the remainder of my program is to continue my work testing PRNG schemes. My one minute intro poster can be found here. Additionally, feel free to browse our code repo which should look something like spaghetti. We’re in the process of cleaning up the code base and also porting out statistics and graphing functionality from SciPy to Rpy in order to use R as the backend.

Unfortunately though, I’m having some very odd problems with Rpy that are making me nuts in addition to halting development. I’ll post more as it develops.

So my friend sprained his foot one night last week. We spent five and half hours in a local ER. In any case, his uncle is a podiatrist and when we sent him a photo of the injured foot, he was cool enough to edit the photo and return it to us.

Anatomy lesson anyone? Foot photo on Flickr.

In taking a closer look at the wonky world of filesystems, I found some pretty crazy stuff. One thing that I have been looking at for awhile has been ZFS which could help us in the lab with our quest for NAS. I asked my buddy Herschel for some tips on it and he pointed me to a presentation given at his USENIX chapter. The whole thing just looks too good to be true. Although ZFS is available under Linux through FUSE, we’re looking at a GNU OpenSolaris project called Nexenta.
Of course there is then XFS which is a giant load of cool. I’d really like to try XFS on some kind of RAID because of it’s nifty striped allocation and the like. I also do enjoy the ability to dump, restore, check and defrag live filesystems.

Then there is this project called libferris which, as highlighted by a recent Linux Journal article, can turn anything from XML to SSH to MySQL into a filesystem just by mounting it. Crazy eh?