Lethbridge Linux User Group

Cell phone text scammer used up all my Pay & Talk minutes, stole $6 from me

If you have a cell phone you will want to protect your self from scammers.

My wife and I were out of town on the weekend and normally turn off our cell phones when we travel. When we got back all my wife's minutes on her Pay & Talk Telus phone were all used up. She does not use the phone much so I have it set to refill each month for $10 off my credit card. I know she did not use her phone that much so I went on the Telus web site to check the billing details.

Her phone had been billed for 3 text messages at a cost of $2 each. Many LUG members have talked in the past about how the big cell phone companies in Canada had changed to billing customers for receiving text message but those fees where about $0.25 per message. It looks like the sender of these messages is able to collect the rest of the fee and they have a program that sends out these messages to cell phone users without their permission. This is a great scam, they could be stealing from millions of Canadian cell phone users.

Most people I talk to about the text message billing on cell phones believe that the cell phone companies will not allow you to disable text messages but they do. I was on the phone for about an hour before I was able to get to a human working in technical support at Telus and he was able to turn off all text messaging for my wife's Pay & Talk phone.

I tried with no success to get the money back but because this is a pay before you use service the money is gone. Telus does not keep details on text messages on Pay & Talk phones, or so I was told. My other phone is on a contract that I would be able to refuse payment on if scam happens to that number.

If you don't use text messaging call your service provider and have it disabled. If you do then watch your bill closely, this criminal will strike again.

Cool commands to try on CLI

I was looking for a CLI (Command Line Interface) way to add of the space used on my hard drives and found this cool site.
http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html with lots of fun commands to try on the CLI.

The answer to what I was doing. The program df shows the size, used space and free space of your hard drives. The program bc is a CLI math program. The programs grep and gawk allow you to select only the parts you want to use.

royce@Hydra[~] #/bin/df -h | head -n 1; /bin/df -h |grep hda
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 54G 43G 7.8G 85% /
/dev/hda1 20G 2.2G 18G 12% /mnt/other
royce@Hydra[~] #/bin/df | head -n 1; /bin/df |grep hda
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 55866816 44859624 8169312 85% /
/dev/hda1 20482840 2298176 18184664 12% /mnt/other

So to see the total size in Bytes
/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $2}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc

So to see the total size in Giga Bytes
expr $(expr $(/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $2}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc) / 1024) / 1024

So to see the used space in Bytes
/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $3}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc

So to see the used space in Giga Bytes
expr $(expr $(/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $3}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc) / 1024) / 1024

So to see the free space in Bytes
/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $4}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc

So to see the free space in Giga Bytes
expr $(expr $(/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $4}' | (tr 'n' +; echo 0) | bc) / 1024) / 1024

To format the output
royce@Hydra[~]
#echo $(expr $(expr $(/bin/df | grep hda |gawk '{print $4}' | (tr 'n'+; echo 0) | bc) / 1024) / 1024)GB free space
25GB free space
royce@Hydra[~] #

Happy hacking :)

PerlQt Wiki is online

There is now a Wiki to help you get started with programming in PerlQt.

PerlQt Wiki

PerlQt fast programming gets even faster for beginners

PerlQt is a very easy to use programming tool that is powerful enough for advanced developers and now it super easy for beginners as well.

Radados developers have created a PerlQt project manager that makes it very easy to learn the starting steps of computer programming by reducing the complex steps of project creation to a few simple buttons. This tool does not teach anyone how to program in Perl or C++ with Qt but it does enable users to explore their possibilities with out feeling intimidated by the complexities that PerlQt is handling for them automatically in the background.

Radados users can install it using synaptic search for the package name radados-perlqt. PerlQt can be made available for other Linux system and for Windows(cygwin) but the Radados install is the easiest way to get up and going in a mater of seconds. Radados users will have a new PerlQt icon on their ViceWM desktop or can start the project manager by running PerlQt.pl.

More information here

Ubuntu 8 fixes and Samba authentication

Radados packages ported to Gutsy for fixing small issues with the command line and SMB clients are now available for Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.

Ubuntu Gutsy fixes (download here)

Add vi syntax highlights
Make use of ssh-agent
Require PKI for SSH login
Fix Zenity focus bug
Set TTY getty's to readable font size
Add much needed CLI aliases
Set PS1 colors

Radados Samba Client (download here)

Configure your Linux system to authenticate to a SMB domain controller.
Added pam_mount.conf.xml changes needed for Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10

Building RAID1 for IPcop 1.4.20

IPcop does not ship with RAID1 support. I like to use RAID1 for my firewalls because IPcop only needs about 5G to work and you cannot buy new hard drives that small.

It is a waste to use a large hard drive when there are so many small older drives that would work just fine so if you use older drives RAID1 is a good idea.

I used Radados linux for this but another live CD may work. The kernel must be recompiled and custom IPcop modules, like IP filters for h323 are missing because I tried many times to follow the IPcop directions to build the IPcop source files but it dies with errors every time.

Steps
1) Install two IDE hard drives as HDA and HDB to your new firewall
2) Install IPcop 1.4.20 to the HDA (other versions of IPcop may need to adjust this script)
3) Reboot with a live CD and run this script

Download here

RADADOS = Rapid Application Development And Deployment Of Systems

Radados Linux now available! Radados is easy installs for workstations and servers.

Web site http://www.Radados.org

BitTorrent download from linuxtracker.org

VoIP * Workshop February 22

As Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is revolutionizing the century old telephone industry, the free and open source software Asterisk is setting the pace for standardization of PBX equipment. This is a free workshop and all are welcome. This will be an introduction to VoIP and Asterisk where you can see a demonstration of equipment, try out the easy to use management software and discuss the challenges and opportunities of VoIP. Bring your laptop so you can explore the Asterisk management software with a web browser on your desktop.

There will be door prize draw so bring your business cards.

For computer nerds there will be a demonstration on Monday February 18 at the Lethbridge Linux User Group meeting at the same address.

When
VoIP * (Asterisk) workshop on Friday February 22 and 1:00PM.

Where
CJIL Television
450 - 31 Street North
Building with the big "M" on it on the corner of 5 Ave. and 31 St. N. Come in the main doors.

Installfest in Edmonton: September 15 and 16, 2006

Liberating Students Digitally, an open source software advocate and user group at the University of Alberta, will be holding our third annual Fall Installfest on September 15 and 16, 2006. This year's 'fest will take place in the first-floor common area of the Computing Science Centre, a space provided by our partners for the installfest, the Undergraudate Association of Computing Science.

Our "default" distro this time around will be Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), but as always we're open to special requests of all sorts. We're also planning to have a couple of demo machines for people to play with, and some informational displays to raise awareness of free and open source software. As usual, we'll be providing monitors, mice, keyboards, speakers, etc. for installs, so all you need to lug is your laptop or tower.

We're looking for volunteers, so if you're interested and will be in Edmonton come September, we'd love to hear from you. The plan is to have an online registration system up soon, but if you don't want to wait for that, feel free to send us an email. Full details are on our (frequently updated) website, http://www.digital-liberation.ca.

Canada census now for Linux users.

This is great news. If you wanted to use the web site or not this is a landmark victory for Linux users everywhere. The Canadian government has officially recognized Linux users as valued members of society. Notice to Linux users