$200 Green PC in Walmart stores!

There is a lot of buzz out there about this new computer, the gPC available now at Walmart. Arul gives an excellent short intro; however, he missed the fact that this is a Mini-ITX form-factor PC inside of a full-size case (!). You’ll just have to go get your own small-size case (such as some from mini-itx.com).

Wired ran an article on it describing it in full; DesktopLinux.com also had an article on it. The scientific site PhysOrg.com had an article on it as well. There’s other mini-sized computers – from HP and Dell for example – but this is lower in cost, comes with a variant of Linux and it’s available down the street.

The operating system is gOS, a modified version of Ubuntu Linux that leans heavily towards using Google applications wherever possible. There are downloads available of a free version of gOS, but the one on the gPC is optimized for that platform.

Among the stores they listed (for Wisconsin, USA, our area), it says Madison will have it, Monroe will have it, and Milwaukee – but Janesville and Beloit are not listed.

Locking out root!

This is not as far fetched as it sounds; every Macintosh OS X system comes configured in this way: it is impossible to log in as root.

How does one do things as root then? I shall reveal the secret…

First of all, one needs to make sure that the program sudo is available and correctly configured. It must be configured to allow you (or the system owner) to switch to root. Best to test this directly before doing anything to the root account.

Once you have verified that you can switch to root using sudo, then it is time to actually lock the root account. Before doing so, open a root shell using sudo or a direct log in as root. Then execute:

# passwd -l root

There! Now no one can log in as root – don’t you feel much better? Well…. you can become root (by using sudo) but logging in directly as root is impossible.

If passwd does not recognize the -l option, then just put an asterisk (*) into the password field, wherever it is. HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris all recognize the -l option; FreeBSD uses the -l option for a different purpose.

For FreeBSD (and quite probably, OpenBSD and NetBSD as well), use the vipw command to lock out not only the root account, but the toor account as well. The toor account is identical to the root account (including userid) but allows user customization.

When combined with the wheel group, this will lock down your root account quite effectively. Just don’t stop there: remember to use multiple defenses. However, that’s a topic for another day.

Update: This is most useful in situations where a normal user will always have access (workstations come to mind).  If your normal users are authenticated via NIS, or Active Directory, or LDAP, don’t do this! If root logins are locked out, and none of the users can log in…….. then what?  Uh oh….

OpenSolaris has a Marvell Libertas Driver! (and ZyDAS too!)

I previously discussed FreeBSD support for the Marvell Libertas chipset, and also some of the details of industry reception of this chipset.

I noticed recently that on OpenSolaris‘ wireless support page, the malo driver (from OpenBSD) for the Marvell 8335 chipset is now available (though at version 0.1). If you are using OpenSolaris on a laptop, this may be the way to go.

Also listed is a driver for the ZyDAS 1211 chipset (a USB wireless chipset), another that I’ve mentioned in the past. The driver is the zyd driver and is also at version 0.1.

There is a fabulous list of all the OpenSolaris drivers and the devices they support. With a printout of this list, you can be sure of getting a card which is well supported by OpenSolaris – and perhaps by other UNIX variants and by Linux as well.