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  • Port25

    Talking Mono with Miguel de Icaza

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    by MichaelF on August 11, 2006 09:30am

    In this, the last of our interviews from the LANG.NET Symposium, Sam sits down with Miguel de Icaza, VP Development Platform at Novell and co-founder of Ximian.  Miguel is also responsible for starting two Open Source project you may have heard of:  GNOME and Mono. 

    In this interview Sam and Miguel talk about the history behind Mono, the current state of the project and Miguel's thoughts on Mono as it relates to .NET.

     

    Attachment: migueldeicaza.mp3
  • Port25

    John Lam and Sam Ramji discuss RubyCLR, Avalon Ruby Editor and Open Source Funding

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    by MichaelF on August 10, 2006 12:10pm

    The second person we interviewed during the LANG.NET symposium is John Lam.  John is the creator of RubyCLR and most recently he created an Avalon Ruby Editor (we capture a short demo near the end of this video.  Let me acknowledge now that, yes, I need to work on my skills capturing demos on film.)

    John has his own blog:  http://www.iunknown.com and he has an entry about his time with us in the lab here.


    Credit to John's Blog for the photo below, from his visit to the Open Source Software Lab

     

     

    Attachment: johnlam.mp3
  • Port25

    Sam Ramji and Professor John Gough talk Virtual Machines, Dynamic Languages, Ruby and .NET (Part 2)

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    by MichaelF on August 09, 2006 01:38pm

    In part two of two, Sam and Professor Gough continue their conversation focusing on Dynamic Languages and Professor Gough's work with Ruby and .NET.

    Part One of this interview, as well as some background on Professor Gough and the LANG.NET symposium can be seen here.

     

  • Port25

    Sam Ramji and Professor John Gough talk Virtual Machines, Dynamic Languages, Ruby and .NET (Part 1)

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    by MichaelF on August 07, 2006 12:30pm

     

    Last week Microsoft hosted the LANG.NET symposium in Redmond.  From the program: "The conference program will focus on the pragmatics and experience of designing languages, implementing compilers, and building language tools that target managed execution platforms such as the .NET CLR and other implementations of the ECMA CLI." 

    During the conference we had the opportunity to meet with a few attendees and film interviews to share with you on Port 25. 

    In part one of a two part interview Sam talks with John Gough, Professor Emeritus at Queensland University of Technology, about his background in compilers and virtual machines, Dynamic Languages and how he became involved with the .NET project.

     

     

     

    Attachment: johngough1.mp3
  • Port25

    Honeypots and User Mode Linux Part 2: Forensic Analysis

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    by MichaelF on August 04, 2006 05:50pm


    UML (User Mode Linux) and Forensic Analysis

    (Special thanks to Dan Simonton for the testing and writing in support of this tech tip)

    Processes running under UML will have no access to the hosting system, accept where explicitly allowed. Because of this UML is an ideal candidate for operating a honeypot. While processes running in UML have no outside access to the host operating system memory or filesystem; hypothetically, if an attacker managed to break out of userspace into some section of the host filesystem, they could do further damage on the host . Best-practice demands that host access be limited within the UML instance wherever possible.

    For any of this to be practical, obviously some services would need to be established. We’ll just assume these are already in place and forwarding iptables rules setup on the host. For instance, to forward inbound http connections to your UML instance:

    iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -s 0/0 \
           --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination (uml ip):80

    This process could be repeated for any other service you wish to run. Just be sure the appropriate destination port is specified both with the “--dport” option and also at the end of the command. Essentially you are instructing all inbound traffic to port 80 to be forwarded to your UML. The same process could be repeated for ssh,ftp and others.                                                                               

    Typically, the first order of business for an intruder with root access is to wipe out log files. It is best therefore to have log files written to the host (or another remote) machine. To achieve this,  the host system’s syslogd daemon must be configured to receive inbound logs. Add “-r” to the runlevel script of the host machine where it invokes syslogd the correct path is: /etc/rc.d/syslog. On the client machine, add the following to /etc/syslog.conf:

                            *.*         @yourhostmachine  
                                         (note: @ipaddress will work also)

    Now inbound connections to the UML honeypot and activity on the honeypot can be investigated through log files on the host machine.

    Conveniently for the purpose of running UML as a honeypot, tty_logging of UML into a directory on the host machine is built as an option into the kernel. The simplest way to achieve this is to add the following to the kernel command line:

                tty_log_dir=dir

    This way, even if they zap the shell log files on the UML, you will still have an account of their activity on the machine.

    There are a few quick and common methods of checking running activity. The following two should be familiar to anyone with a relatively basic understanding Linux, but we’ll mention them here for propriety’s sake:

                ps auxwww (check running process table)

                netstat –lvnap|less (check open sockets, associated process, and user ids)

    In the past, whenever I’ve found any strange binaries (sometimes named something really vague or obscure), I’ll run the following command, sift through, and evaluate the output:

                strings (filename)|less

    An all-to-commonly overlooked tool for inspecting a system is “lsof” (list of open files). It can be used to check file-to-file access, files listening on a socket and evaluate the state of a running process. It is helpful to know the normal running health of a system for comparison when using lsof. For a quick check of a specific process:

                 lsof –p (pid)

    To get socket info on a process:   

                   lsof  -i  -nP|grep -i (process name)

    To protect against potential outbound denial-of-service attacks, it might be prudent to explicitly declare hosts you wish to allow outbound ICMP traffic to (the host ip being one for example) and deny everything else. This can be done on the host by adding the following rules to iptables. You can add as many “ACCEPT” rules as you need, just be sure to put them before  the “DROP” rule.

            iptables -A INPUT -p icmp –s (uml ip) –d (host ip) –j ACCEPT
            iptables –A INPUT –p icmp –s (uml ip) –d (other ip) –j ACCEPT
            iptables –A INPUT –p icmp –s (uml ip) –d 0/0 –j DROP

    Similiarly, you could block potential outbound syn-flooding:  

       iptables -N syn_flood
         iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --syn –s (uml ip) -d 0/0 -j syn_flood
         iptables -A syn_flood -m limit --limit 1/s --limit-burst 3 -j
    RETURN
       iptables -A syn_flood -j DROP

    A quick search of http://sourceforge.net or http://freshmeat.net will quickly realize a vast sea of various analysis tools. Provided the disk image size for your is adequate, any of these can be copied to the drive image or simply downloaded once you have the UML instance running.  A few useful tools are:

    Tripwire: Useful for monitoring data integrity. In a nutshell, it takes a snapshot of your system binaries (or other specified directory), creates a checksum, runs routine system integrity checks against it, and reports any deviation.

    The Coroner's Toolkit: A suite of utilities for checking running process and file/filesystem information, recent changes and other such information.

    Snort: Snort is so prevalent, it almost needs no description. Still, it is one of the best tools for traffic analysis and intrusion detection. To accurately provide a description that does this monster justice would be a blog unto itself. There is a great FAQ on their website:

    http://www.snort.org/docs/faq/1Q05/

    Chkrootkit: A utility for identifying rootkits installed on the system.

    This is but a small (microscopic) primer into a much larger world of intrusion detection and integrity analysis, but we hope some may find this useful. We will likely delve into these subjects in the future.

  • Port25

    Infrastructure Management and Strategic Design: Part 4 – Service Management Frameworks

    • 1 Comments

    by jcannon on August 01, 2006 02:51pm


    Today, the IT departments offering and managing various IT Services might find themselves in what I would call a “pressure-cooker”. They are faced with a multitude of tasks and added pressure to maintain daily operations while driving efficacy, managing the growing complexity of Service Offerings and most importantly, doing so while keeping pace with the industry best practices. This has been one of the most explosive areas of growth and re-examination for the past few years. Back in my Ops days, I trained under ITIL i.e. IT Infrastructure Library and MOF i.e. Microsoft Operations Fundamentals to get a first hand look at some of the best Service Management practices in the industry. No matter how good I thought our Service Management practices might have been, I could not help but to think in terms of the maturity level of the Services that can be achieved by applying these principles. When you get down to it, you realize that the heart and soul of effective Service Management lies in how mature the offering and support model is.  I have learnt a lot from the ITIL Service Management Essentials course, which I attribute to research and practices that have gone into developing these models. I’d like to share w/ you what made sense to me:

      • Bridge Concept: As described in various ITIL formats, Service Management can be referred to as the “bridge layer” between Business and Technology. It is through the conduit of Service Management that core business needs as well as core technologies find their match with each other. This is attained by aligning the Business Needs and Goals of the organization with the various technologies and IT functions that can map to these overall goals
      • Think Framework: Once you have scoped out, what may be a void in the service hierarchy of your organization, make a commitment to implementing a Service Management and Delivery framework that is suitable for your org. One size DOES NOT fit all and although I am only talking about ITIL concepts here, there are several methodologies you can explore before making the plunge.
      • Benefits of implementing a Service Management Framework: In just a few minutes after sitting in the ITIL Essentials Training class I was able to get a very crisp idea of what the benefits of implementing a Service Management Framework are. To name a few –
        • Raising the bar on Service Delivery Quality
        • More accurate alignment w/ Business Needs
        • Enhanced relationship between service provider and consumer
        • Deeper visibility into service complexity
        • Driving efficiencies with optimal resource utilization 

      • Goals for implementing a Service Management Framework: if and when you do make the commitment to implementing a Service Management Framework, here’s a quick set of goals you can set when you proceed with the implementation of Service Management:
        • Put an SLA ( Service Level Agreement) or an SLO (Service Level Objective) around the critical and non-critical services you offer, respectively
        • Manage and monitor the implementation and practice of these SLA’s and SLO’s
        • Create and publish a service catalog describing the services offered by your IT department/division
        • Monetize the service management offerings, even if your customers are internal. This will help quantify the service effectiveness and bring measurability across the board

      • Additional Resources: the itSMF or IT Service Management Forum (www.itsmf.com) is an independent,  non-profit, user group distributed all across the world that has dedicated itself to exploring and promoting IT Service Management concepts and practices.


    I am very eager to hear back from those of you that are an integral part of the Service Management Lifecycle. Please share your experiences, challenges and learning with us.

    Kindest Regards and have a great week ahead!

  • Port25

    Bill Hilf interviews Matt Asay at OSCON 2006

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    by MichaelF on July 31, 2006 01:33pm

     

    Matt Asay, formerly of Novell, now VP of Business Development at Alfresco and co-founder of OSCON took some time out of his busy conference schedule to sit down with Bill for an interview.  Matt, author of the AC/OS Blog (Matt Asay on OS) is a vocal supporter of Open Source Software and has some interesting insights on where commercial Open Source Software is headed.

    In this interview Matt and Bill discuss Open Source business models, monetization opportunties for open business apps, and thoughts on the first days of OSCON.

    Here is a link to a recent blog post by Matt that further explains some of the concepts he mentions around Open Source business models.

    Big Thanks to Matt for taking the time to join us on Port 25! 

     

     

     

    Attachment: P25ShowSix.mp3
  • Port25

    Tim O'Reilly sits down with Bill Hilf at OSCON2006

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    by MichaelF on July 28, 2006 10:09pm

    While we were at OSCON this week we were fortunate enough to get some time to sit down with Tim O'Reilly.  I dare say Tim, author of the O'Reilly Radar, needs no introduction but just in case: Tim is an Open Source Software advocate as well as the Founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc.  He is also one half of the duo that founded OSCON along with Matt Asay.  While this is his first time on Port 25, Tim also joined Bill Gates at Mix 06 for a conversation and Q&A session.

    In this interview Bill and Tim discuss the redefinition of "Open Source", Web 2.0, and some other topics that arose in the first two days of the conference.

    Stay tuned:  Monday we will post another interview from the conference between Bill and Matt Asay wherein they discuss mixed environments and commercial OSS trends.  If you haven't already, sign up for our RSS feed and we'll notify you when this interview is published.

     

    Attachment: timoscon.mp3
  • Port25

    OSCON2006 Photo Update

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    by jcannon on July 28, 2006 01:36pm
    We'll have more videos and blogs to come on OSCON2006; in fact, later today we'll be posting an interview with Mindtouch, as well as trip reports from Hank & Anandeep next week. For now - we wanted to share a few pics we snapped from the show floor for those that couldn't make it all the way to Oregon. As you can see from our first picture, the weather stayed beautiful for Day 3 at OSCON :)

    Greenplum struck me as interesting startup with remarkable passion - especially the keynote delivered by Scott Yara, which challenged the open source community to stay dangerous in the face of establishment thinking. I believe O'Reilly is starting to post the presentations, so you may want to check back. His keynote was eclectic, and was appropriately titled, "School of Rock" - a discussion that thematically drew connections between the disruptive nature of open source and the way rock'n roll changed music in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

    Some pics from the show floor - and our vantage point...no shortage of interest around O'Reilly.

    Sun.....

    We also had some time to catch up with colleagues from Microsoft who bravely hosted a BarCamp session on Microsoft and OSS. Tim Heuer, Anand Iyer, Woody Pewitt and Sara Ford all deserve a pat on the back. They also have some great write-ups on their experiences at OSCON as well.

    More on Mindtouch later this afternoon....
    -jamie

  • Port25

    Technical Lab Analysis: ISC DHCP

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    by jcannon on July 26, 2006 01:37am


    In addition to technical tips, blogs and video interviews, the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft conducts a number of technical analysis and research projects throughout the year to help inform and solve key interoperability challenges between Microsoft and open source technologies. Since our launch, we've been working on a number of projects, the first of which we would like to share today.

    Abstract:
    The Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft is a key advocate within Microsoft for interoperability with Open Source technologies.  In order to drive discussions and engineering plans around interoperability, we need to initially build a core knowledge base in the particular technology which we can share with product and field teams.

    This paper is the first in a four part series on Linux networking technologies: DHCP, IPSEC/VPN, RADIUS, and DNS.

    The capabilities of a leading Open Source DHCP software package, ISC DHCP Server, are the focus of this document. The analysis concentrates on the manageability aspects of the ISC DHCP server and provides an overview from the point of view of the Open Source Software Lab, where the DHCP Server was installed, configured and tested. The intent of the document is to pass on the hands on experience gained from the installation, configuration and testing experience.

    Download the Networking Roles Analysis Paper: ISC DHCP (PDF, 556KB)

  • Port25

    OSCON2006 - O'Reilly Radar Updates

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    by admin on July 25, 2006 11:56am

     

    More Updates (8/1):

    Update, 7/25: We just wrapped up the O'Reilly Executive Day here at OSCON after two days of what many would call record heat in the Pacific Northwest. With many of the Port 25 folks having commuted from larger cities across the US, Portland is a welcome break from the office. For those who haven't been before - the pic this morning from the Willamette River might give you an idea of how beautiful this place really is.


    Tuesday started with a panel - The Ghost in the Machine: The Impact of Open Source on Web 2.0 - with Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, Jim Buckmaster, President and CEO of Craiglist, and Jeremy Zawodny, Technical Manager at Yahoo. The panel was moderated by Tim...an interesting discussion of how these companies, to varying extents, work with the open source community and continue to evolve their blended business models to satisfy the complex needs of both the community and their shareholders. Sorry the pics aren't great - the lighting was somewhat dark.

    Bill was up next for an unscripted Q&A with Danese Cooper, Open Source Diva, Intel and OSI. We're trying to get the video so we can post the discussion on the site, but for those that were there.....you already know how unscripted it was. Bill answered questions about everything from the new ODF/OpenXML Plug-in Project to our continuing work on Shared Source licensing. Stay tuned for the video....


     

    Some additional pics on questions fielded from the audience, ranging from general interoperability concerns between open source and Microsoft, to questions about how to grow & educate developers on Web 2.0 platforms. 

    We wrapped the day around 8 tonight - with the beautiful weather comes some great views of the mountain peaks surrounding Portland. Not pretending to know for sure, but I believe this is Mt. Hood from downtown Portland


     
    We'll have more to come throughout the week - but our first day at OSCON was great! It's also worth mentioning that we met with a very interesting partner, Mindtouch, and had the fortunate luck to talk to Steve Bjorg, President & CTO. Steve recieved some positive coverage on C|NET today around the work they're doing with Wikis- but more on that later this week, as well as some additional interviews that Bill was lucky enough to conduct.

    For those in attendance - welcome feedback, comments & love to hear what you thought of the tutorials & sessions so far. If you'll be there tomorrow, swing by the Expo Floor to pick-up a Port 25 tee-shirt :) Anandeep and Hank will also be roaming OSCON throughout the day.....

    See you guys soon

    - Port 25

    ------------------------------- 
    Here we go.....it's the Friday before OSCON and we're really excited about what we have planned for the show. For those of you attending, we hope you can join us for some of the planned agenda. For those who can't - keep an eye on Port 25 in early August for our wrap-up.

    This year - Port 25 is a Silver Sponsor of the event - and the theme of this year's OSCON is the growing influence of open source (and being open) on business. We couldn't think of a better theme to support!  So here's a quick run-down of our plans.....if you have any questions, feel free to shoot us a mail at port25@microsoft.com.

    •  
      •  
        • Bill will be answering questions in the O'Reilly Executive Day, on Tuesday morning, from 9:30 - 10am.
        • Michael and I (the Port 25 webmasters) will be interviewing Mindtouch, who has some interesting stuff to talk about. We'll also be wandering around the show, looking to talk to folks to learn more about what they do & to share some of the interoperability challenges they face. Free t-shirts for those willing to share :)
        • Jason Mauer will be presenting a technical track on the Windows Workflow Foundation - Thursday @ 11:35.
        • Anandeep & Hank will also be attending the show on Wed & Thurs - they'll be engaging customers, so feel free to seek them out.
        • At some point, we'll also be hanging with the very talented Sara Ford.

    There are a few other things in the hopper, so keep an eye out. We're looking forward to getting some face time with the community & listening more deeply to your concerns. We'll take them back to Microsoft and have follow-up blogs in August. See you next week!

     

  • Port25

    Honeypots and User-Mode-Linux (UML): Part 1

    • 0 Comments

    by jcannon on July 23, 2006 08:21pm

    Honeypots and User-Mode-Linux (UML)
    Part I: Setting up UML

    (Special thanks to Dan Simonton for the testing and writing in support of this tech tip)

    In technical terms, a honeypot performs a function very similar to that of a “honeypot” in the outside world: a sweet lure. A “honeypot” is a system designed with the purpose of attracting the attention of prospective attackers, to assess how they are attempting to infiltrate the machine and what they doing once they gain access. There are literally thousands of honeypot networks and systems setup by security professionals and hobbyists worldwide. These systems can provide a wealth of information into forensics and assessing trends in network intrusion.

    This is Part One of a two part tech tip, which will address the setup of User Mode Linux (UML) for honeypot use. Part Two of the tech tip will cover the containment of intrusions and other security topics that arise while using UML as a honeypot. Also addressed in Part two will be the “forensics” i.e. identifying what exploits were tried on the honeypot.

    One of the more popular methods for constructing honeypots in the Linux world is to set up a kernel to run in “user mode” on a host Linux machine. In function, this is very similar to running a “Virtual PC” on a Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh system. The primary difference is that “User Mode Linux”, or UML is open source and (depending on your personal depth of knowledge of the Linux kernel) you can really tweak any and every aspect of the host and UML kernel to your liking.

    User Mode Linux is essentially an entire operating system running as a program in user space. It masquerades as an OS because for most purposes, it is one. The immediate benefit of running a honeypot this way is that with proper precautions taken, there is no significant threat to the host machine, or its operating system. When or if an attacker gains control of the UML instance, you can simply shut it down and restart at no cost to the hosting machine’s uptime or stability.     

    The first step is to download a copy of the actual kernel source that you wish to compile on the designated host machine. This can be obtained from http://www.kernel.org/ or any associated mirror site. In this tech tip we will use the 2.6.16 kernel. The patches for the UML kernel can be obtained from:

    http://www.user-mode-linux.org/~blaisorblade/patches/skas3-2.6/skas-2.6.16-v8.2/skas-2.6.16-v8.2.patch.bz2

    You will also want to create a filesystem for the UML. In the interest of time and space, there are a number of filesystems that can be downloaded for various distributions from:

    http://uml.nagafix.co.uk/

    In this example we will be using Slackware-10.2

    First of all, the standard commands are applied to unpack the source

    $ tar –zvxf  linux-2.6.16.tar.gz
    $ bzip2 –d skas-2.6.16.-v8.2.patch
    $ cp skas-2.6.16.-v8.2.patch linux/
    $ cd linux-2.6.16/
    $ patch –p1 < skas-2.6.16.-v8.2.patch

    Note: In every step of the build process, it is crucial that the “ARCH=um” argument be passed along with the various kernel configuration and compilation commands.

    Next we will clean out any .config files (if any are present) and generate a default configuration:

    $ make mrproper && make mrproper ARCH=um
    $ make defconfig ARCH=um

    Now we manually check and edit the configuration:

                $ make menuconfig ARCH=um

    At the very top of the list are UML-specific options. It is important to know what some of these are:

    [ ] Tracing thread support
    [*] Force a static link
    [ ] Host processor type and features --->
    [ ] Three-level pagetables (EXPERIMENTAL)
    [ ] Memory model (Flat Memory) --->
    [*] Networking support
    [*] Kernel support for ELF binaries
    <M> Kernel support for MISC binaries
    < > Host filesystem
    < > HoneyPot ProcFS (EXPERIMENTAL)
    [*] Management console
    [ ] Magic SysRq key
    (0) Nesting level
    [ ] Highmem support (EXPERIMENTAL)
    (2) Kernel stack size order
    [*] Real-time Clock

    There are two options here in particular to take note of.

    The first is the “Host Filesystem” option. This gives the UML Linux kernel access to the host filesystem. If you enable this, be careful how the access is applied. A safe course is to apply extended mount and read-write restrictions over filesystems on the host machine.

    The second is the “HoneyPot Procfs” option. This essentially overwrites entries in the /proc filesystem of the UML kernel with that of the host. This is useful in that it removes fingerprints which might otherwise indicate the host is a honeypot. It could also be a potential troublespot for someone could map out the architecture of the hosting machine using this information. This is less of a threat than it is something to keep in mind.

    NOTE: Be sure to include general kernel support for ext2, ext3 and reiserfs.

    Looking further down from the kernel configuration tree, see the options for UML network devices. If you want to get to the outside world from the user mode kernel, be sure to enable ethertap and tun/tap support. This will allow the user mode kernel to communicate with the host tun/tap device.

    Be sure to check any other “non-uml” options for your kernel that might be relevant to your machine. There is one last step before you can build the kernel. Due to a macro called by the patch that is now deprecated, one of the kernel source files must be manually edited. In whatever text editor you prefer, open up the file: (within the source tree) arch/um/os-Linux/sys-i386/registers.c and add the following to the preprocessor directive:  

    #ifndef JB_PC
    #define JB_PC 5
    #define JB_SP 4
    #define JB_BP 3
    #endif

    Once all this is done, build the kernel with:

                $ make ARCH=um

    At this point, we have our hard drive image (with distribution) and a UML Linux kernel. We have a few more things to set up on the host before we are ready to boot our UML instance. First, we need to make /dev/net/tun writable (by the user the UML kernel will be running as). The quick and dirty way to achieve this is to make it world writable (NOTE: not a “best practice”, just a quick way to get from a to b).

    Alternatively you could create a separate group with write access to /dev/net/tun. Tun0 which is a tunneled interface to eth0, is used to negotiate traffic between the user mode kernel and the primary physical interface of the host machine. To configure the 1st interface (tun0)

                            tunctl –u umluser umldev

    This command invokes tunctl, specifies the creation of a device, assigns ownership to user (via –u) to “umluser” and name its “umldev”. The IP side is configured the same way as a standard Ethernet interface via ifconfig:

                ifconfig umldev (ip address)

    We’re ready to start our instance. We’ll want to specify the Ethernet device on start.

    linux ubd0=Slackware-10.2-root_fs mem=256M  eth0=tuntap,umldev

    Once you are asked for a login, simply enter “root” and it should drop you right to a shell.

                           
    dhcpcd: MAC address = fe:fd:00:00:00:00
    Starting OpenSSH SSH daemon:  /usr/sbin/sshd
    Updating shared library links:  /sbin/ldconfig

        Welcome to Linux 2.6.16-skas3-v8.2 (tty0)

    yadda-yadda login: root
    Linux 2.6.16-skas3-v8.2.
    Last login: Thu Jul 20 00:53:38 +0000 2006 on tty0.
    You have mail.
    root@yadda-yadda:~#

    On the UML side, use ifconfig to give an ip address to eth0. This needs to be something routable by the umldev IP of the host machine. The route then must be set to the outside world (via the host umldev interface).

                            route add default gw (umldev ip)

    On the host, packet forwarding and proxy_arp must be enabled:

    Host# echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
    Host# echo 1>/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/umldev/proxy_arp

    Now you should be able to reach the outside world from UML:

    [uml@yadda-yadda]$ ping www
    PING www.yadda-yadda..com (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=127 time=12.1 ms

    root@yadda-yadda:~# ssh www.yadda-yadda.com
    root@www.yadda-yadda.com’s  password:
    Last login: Thu Jul 20 11:00:50 2006 from yadda-yadda.com
    [root@www ~]#

    You should have a functional UML kernel running in its most basic form. You may kick it around, experiment with distributions (see links provided below), or otherwise abuse it as you see fit without consequence to your hosting system. This entry barely scratches the surface of one use of a usermode kernel, but if you have not considered running one before or are new to the idea, we hope this provides some useful information. Below are some links to some other resources, as well as the user-mode-linux project homepage.

    http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/  - UML Project homepage
    http://www.honeynet.org/misc/project.html   - The honeynet project
    http://uml.nagafix.co.uk/    - A repository of disk images to use with your kernel

  • Port25

    Release Often

    • 0 Comments

    by jcannon on July 23, 2006 08:15pm


    We’ve rolled out additional updates to the site this past Friday in response to feedback, and created a new section of the site: Forums

    You’ll also notice:

      • Threaded comments update – replies are now visible in flat view
      • Count of comments visible on the feature listing page
      • Trackbacks (at last!)
      • Changed the home page font to improve readability
      • New “Mission and Contributors” page with Port 25’s mission and short bios of the lab crew


    We are behind on providing transcripts for all of the interviews, but this work is still under way.  It’s important to us both for accessibility and to make it easier for non-English speakers (enabling machine translation).  We got a suggestion to try using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for transcription but we haven’t tried that yet ;)

    Finally, I hope that the podcasts are useful.  I enjoyed learning about Martin Woodward’s work on an open source, cross-platform (Eclipse-based) integration to Team Foundation Server.

    Hope you have a great week,
    Sam

  • Port25

    Podcast: Accessing VS Team Foundation Server from Mac, UNIX or Linux through Eclipse

    • 0 Comments

    by jcannon on July 21, 2006 03:51pm


    Sam interviews Martin from Teamprise, a company which has developed a pretty interesting suite of client applications that can access Visual Studio Team Foundation Server from Macintosh, UNIX or Linux clients using Eclipse. The Teamprise implementation allows development teams to use the source control features as well as work item tracking from within the Eclipse IDE.

    Related Links:
    - Check out the Teamprise site
    - Download the MP3 File Directly

    Podcast Related Links:
    - Subscribe in the Port 25 Podcast Feed
    - Subscribe to Port 25 Podcasts in iTunes

  • Port25

    Microsft, Xen and Hypervisor Partnerships

    • 0 Comments

    by jcannon on July 18, 2006 07:37pm


    By now, many of you have seen the article, Microsoft Gives Linux a Virtual Hug.

    If not, I recommend checking it out.

    It describes Microsoft’s partnership with Xensource (www.xensource.com). For those who do not know anything about the technology and what they would use it for, I will give a brief description. Many years ago when processors where not so fast, memory was expensive and general computing hardware was not very powerful, we needed all we got to make a single computer run as fast as we could. Now, today, we are in an area where a lot of people and companies have hardware that is very powerful (And some could argue relatively cheap) that many have machines that are way more powerful than what they need. So they end up with machines that are underutilized. So, what can we do to squeeze the last bit of performance out of the hardware we bought? In comes a technology called hypervisor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor), which in laymen terms is a method (Either hardware or software implemented, or a combination thereof) that allows multiple operating systems to run at the same time. This, as I stated, can reduce hardware operating costs and adds a level of security and stability. (One operating system can not crash another one running on the same machine for example). Interestingly enough, Hypervisor is a relatively old technology, and was used early on in the 1970’s in mainframes.

    I personally do not claim to have any insight to the articles meaning. (And we in the lab were not involved) But I think it indicates a trend here, the trend is that Microsoft is looking at OSS. Another example is of the OSS lab we work at here in Microsoft, which something many people did not think would happen any time soon.  (If ever)   As some of you might have read from my earlier blogs, I am very new at Microsoft, and I would have never expected to work here myself. As my colleagues can attest, I still walk the hallways talking about ‘them’ (Microsoft) and ‘us’ (OSS). So seeing changes like this are very exciting to me.

    I was reading Slashdot, and the responses to the above article. And I have to smile about some of them.  There is a wide array of peoples opinion on the interpretation of this, the usual “Microsoft’s latest attempt to dominating the world” to people who seem surprised and excited about this direction.

    Here in the Lab, we are taking what we do with our work very seriously, and all that comes out of the OSS world, we look at from many different angles. This group is very new inside Microsoft, and already we are making an impact. Several years ago the perception was that Microsoft was discounting OSS, and who would have predicted than that there would ever be an OSS research group at Microsoft.

    There are many things we can continue to learn from each other, and we at the OSS Lab are very much looking forward to help erase FUD on both sides of the isle.

    As always, comments/suggestions etc appreciated.

    - Hank Janssen

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