A vulnerability in the 32-bit compatibility layer for 64-bit systems was reported. It is caused by insecure allocation of user space memory when translating system call inputs to 64-bit. A stack pointer underflow can occur when using the “compat_alloc_user_space” method with an arbitrary length input.

What does that mean? Essentially, some sanity checks in the compat_alloc_user_space function to check the length and ensure that the pointer to the block of memory is within the user-space of the process is valid was missing. The fix has already been committed but if you are running any x64 versions of Linux, make sure you update your Kernel – especially now that the exploit code is publicly available!

Read up on the exploit by Jeff Arnold from Ksplice and use this very useful CVE-2010-3081 high-profile exploit detection tool to determine if you’re boxens are already compromised.

Of particular note from his article is the breadth of exploitable distributions – see the references below for vendor specific information:

This vulnerability was introduced into the Linux kernel in April 2008, and so essentially every distribution is affected, including RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, OpenVZ, CloudLinux, and SuSE, among others. A few vendors have released kernels that fix the vulnerability if you reboot, but other vendors, including Red Hat, are still working on releasing an updated kernel.

After downloading and running the tool under a non-sudo account, you should cheerfully get the following output.

thushan@dingo:~/tmp$ ./diagnose-2010-3081
Diagnostic tool for public CVE-2010-3081 exploit -- Ksplice, Inc.
(see http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/cve-2010-3081)

$$$ Kernel release: 2.6.32-23-server
!!! Not a RHEL kernel, will skip LSM method
$$$ Backdoor in LSM (1/3): not available.
$$$ Backdoor in timer_list_fops (2/3): checking...not present.
$$$ Backdoor in IDT (3/3): checking...not present.

Your system is free from the backdoors that would be left in memory by the published exploit for CVE-2010-3081.
thushan@dingo:~/tmp$

If not, its time to put those security drills into action!

References

• Redhat – https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-40265
• CentOS – http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2010-September/099268.html
• Ubuntu – http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-988-1
• Debian – http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-3081

Related posts:

1. THIS IS FEDORA: Fedora 11 Released
2. Boffins get 1,000,000 Linux Kernels running as virtual machines!
3. Ubuntu 8.10: Intrepid Ibex Released!

UPDATE (01/07): The link above is for updating from the Google-IO Froyo release to the final.

The full OTA release is here:
http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-ota-42745.dc39ca1f.zip

The update from Froyo Google-IO to Froyo-OTA:
http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF83-from-FRF50.38d66b26.zip

1. Rename the signed ZIP file to “update.zip” and upload it to your SD Card.
2. Power off your Nexus device.
3. Turn it on with the “Volume Down” button pressed.
4. When the boot loader appears, select “Recovery” using the Volume Up/Down keys to navigate and the Power button to select.
5. Once the Nexus has rebooted, the screen will display an exclamation mark with Android. Press and hold down Power and Volume Up, it’ll take a bit of time to register.
6. Navigate to “Apply SDCard:update.zip” and wait for the verification to complete and flash your phone.
7. After a bit of time the phone will reboot and launch your cultured Froyo release.
8. Verify by going to Settings > About Phone. The build number should be FRF83.
9. Bon Appetit!

As mentioned in my previous post from a couple of months back, this release packs a bit of punch! Yum!

Related posts:

1. Ars reviews the Nexus One!
2. Multi-tasking in style on the Android Platform
3. CES 2010 Video on Demand – Launch of Windows Slate

$ add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"
$ apt-get update

Then lets install the Sun JRE & JDK as required.

$ apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
$ apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Once installed you can verify the correct JRE is installed with:

$ java -version

I have to say, this release of Ubuntu is incredibly refreshing Its matured so well in a short period of time, its definitely got the Lynx Effect(NSFW).

Related posts:

1. Think outside the box: Getting VirtualBox 2.x running in Jaunty
2. Funky Jaunty: Ubuntu 9.04 Release Candidate, its almost here!
3. Rebuilding Zeus: Part 1 – Preliminary Research and Installing Ubuntu 9.04 RC1

As I’ve come to realise, because of the way Solaris works in general, you can have multiple (isolated & secure) Zones for each application service exposed by the server – eg. one for Tomcat, one for Glassfish, maybe both Apache 1.3.x and 2.x, MySql, Postgres etc. Whats more, you can limit how much resources these Zones can utilise. They all have their own configuration including network routing (coupled with OpenSolaris Crossbow) and you can make for one kick ass setup that won’t break another area of the operating system.

In the Zones.

Here’s a guide on setting up a new Zone in OpenSolaris, configuring it and booting it.

Me Against the Music, its all in the global zone

When we first install OpenSolaris we’ve already got ourselves into a zone (the parent to all other zones) which is known as the global Zone.

You can find this by trying out the following to list all the available zones on a virgin install of OpenSolaris.

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
 ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP
 0 global           running    /                              native   shared

The output will be something like above. Now we can go about creating ourselves a zone for playing around in.

When working with zones, we only need to worry about three commands (damn I love that!). The zoneadm command to manage the physical zone, zonecfg command for configuring the zone and zlogin to login to the zone from the global zone.

First we have to do a bit of planning and thinking about what we’re going to do about this zone.

Here are few things to consider:

• What do you want to run in the zone?
• Will it need networking and have it exposed outside of the machine?
• Where will the zone reside on your disk?
• Would you like to limit the amount of CPUs the zone can see?
• Would you like to limit the amount of RAM the zone can utilise?
• Do you want to automatically boot the Zone when OpenSolaris starts?

For this post, we’re going to create a simple Zone (we won’t install anything).

Toxic Zone

Creating a zone we specify a zone to the zonecfg command.

opensolaris# zonecfg -z toxic

You’ll get something like this appearing because teh zone doesn’t exist, thats fine.

toxic: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.

Then you will be inside the zonecfg configuration.

Lets configure this zone to have the following:

• Reside in /base/zones/
• Autoboot with OpenSolaris
• Shared IP of 192.168.0.24 bound to physical interface e1000g1

Follow me:

zonecfg:toxic> create
zonecfg:toxic> set zonepath=/base/zones/
zonecfg:toxic> set autoboot=true
zonecfg:toxic> add net
zonecfg:toxic:net> set address=192.168.0.24
zonecfg:toxic:net> set physical=e1000g1
zonecfg:toxic:net> end
zonecfg:toxic> verify
zonecfg:toxic> commit
zonecfg:toxic> exit

This will create the configuration, verify, write it and exit. You can verify it was created by running the list command again:

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
0 global           running        /
- toxic            configured     /base/zones

Its currently in a configured state, you can read more about the Non-Global State Model in the documentation. Next thing to do is to install the zone – this will get the base packages setup and configured for use.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic install

Everytime, boot her up.

Next lets boot this bad baby up.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic boot

Now if we do a list again we’ll see that our state has changed to running.

opensolaris# zoneadm list -vc
ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
0 global           running        /
- toxic            running        /base/zones

Now we have to configure the zone itself – just like a real machine. For this we use the zlogin command to login to the zone console.

opensolaris# zlogin toxic
[Connected to zone 'toxic' pts/5]
Last login: Sat Nov 21 17:52:43 on pts/5
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_127 November 2008
root@toxic#

After that we’re now in the toxic zone. Anything we do inside here, stays within this zone and won’t affect our global or other zones. But before we continue we really should configure our networking.

First lets modify our /etc/nsswitch.conf file with vi.

...
passwd:     files
group:      files
hosts:      files dns
ipnodes:    files
networks:   file
...

Make sure the hosts entry has dns as above. Next we need to configure the nameservers.

toxic# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.254' > /etc/resolv.conf

That will create a resolv.conf file with the nameserver which you can get from the global zone as it would be different for everyone:

opensolaris# cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.0.254

Breath on me, reboot the zone.

Now we can access the networking like the global zone. So you can do a package refresh and update-image too.

toxic# pkg refresh && pkg image-update

If it succeeds we have correctly setup our zone and its ready for use – you may want to reboot the zone however. To do this, exit the toxic console.

toxic# exit
logout

[Connection to zone 'toxic' pts/5 closed]
opensolaris#

Then lets reboot the zone.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic reboot
opensolaris# zlogin toxic
[Connected to zone 'toxic' pts/5]
Last login: Sat Nov 21 17:58:44 on pts/5
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_127 November 2008
root@toxic#

Outrageous, removing the zones.

Now how about removing this zone and trying again? First get out of the zone console and back to your global zone. Issue the halt command to shutdown the zone.

root@toxic# exit
opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic halt

Once stopped simply remove it.

opensolaris# zoneadm -z toxic uninstall
opensolaris# zonecfg -z toxic delete

You can make sure its gone by using the list command. That’s all there is to it!

Now you can consider yourself, In The Zone.

Related posts:

1. [XKCD] Security, in The Real World.
2. Boffins get 1,000,000 Linux Kernels running as virtual machines!
3. Think outside the box: Getting VirtualBox 2.x running in Jaunty

Here’s my final hardware specifications:

• CPU: AMD Athlon X2 5050e – 2.6Ghz (45W TDP, AMD-V)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P ( AMD 790X Chipset )
• RAM: 2x Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5 (4Gb kit x 2 = 8Gb)
• Graphics: ASUS 9400GT PCI-Express
• Hard Disks:
  • rpool – 2x WD740ADFD – 74Gb 10K RPM, 16Mb Cache (mirror’d)
  • tank – 6x WD1002FBYS – 1TB, 7200RPM, 32Mb Cache (raidz)
  • base – 2x WD7500AAKS – 750Gb, 7200RPM, 16Mb (mirror’d)
• Addon cards:
  • SATA – Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller
  • NICs – 2x Intel Corporation 82545GM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (e1000g)

I’ve finally managed to get the GA-MA790X-UD4P on the OpenSolaris HCL list – woo! Unfortunately the onboard NIC will not work in the 2009.06 release even though it is detected:

Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller

Maybe in a future release. Make sure you update the BIOS as OpenSolaris may have an issue with the USB controller being ‘mis-configured’ otherwise.

Just for kicks I went to Jaycar and bought myself a power usage meter to measure the watts used by the new boxen (see a review of the Mains Power Meter on DansData).

Old Zeus

• Idle: 380W
• Load: 413W

New Zeus

• Idle: 232W
• Load: 270W

Nice, with an Intel Atom based server it could go _a lot_ lower, but I’m happy with this.

Related posts:

1. Part II: Rebuilding ZEUS – The Operating System, FileSystem & Virtualisation
2. Rebuilding Zeus – Part I.5: Change of heart, change of hardware.
3. Rebuilding Zeus: Part 1 – Preliminary Research and Installing Ubuntu 9.04 RC1

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QRO3gKj3qw

Wow, you can take a peek at the source as well. I’m not sure if its just a very tweaked minimalistic Linux Kernel with a Chrome Window Manager or what, but like they did with Chrome, this is definitely a Think Different product. Take a look at a visual tour of the ChromeOS.

I don’t think this will replace your traditional desktop completely (I still like to have my stuff with me rather than hosted somewhere!) but what happens to devices, peripherals etc, development environments (Imagine running Visual Studio over the intertubes on ADSL!) etc.

But one things for sure, it takes the idea of Operating Systems and how you view your operating system to a different level. All those tabs you see in Chrome now, are virtual desktop like instances in ChromeOS. More info can be got from the PCWorld article on ChromeOS.

Related posts:

1. The anatomy of the Ext4 File-System
2. Funky Moves: Linux Kernel v2.6.29 released!
3. Funky Jaunty: Ubuntu 9.04 Release Candidate, its almost here!

Amongst the many changes, important ones to forward to (from the release notes):

* Optimized performance - All software packages on 32-bit (x86_32)
  architecture have been compiled for i686 systems, with special
  optimization for the Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks,
  but without losing compatibility with the overwhelming majority of
  CPUs.

* Smaller and faster updates - In Fedora 11, the optional yum-presto
  plugin, developed by Fedora contributor Jonathan Dieter, reduced
  update size by transmitting only the changes in the updated
  packages. Now, the plugin is installed by default. Also, RPMs now
  use XZ rather than gzip for compression, providing smaller package
  sizes without the memory and CPU penalties associated with
  bzip2. This lets us fit more software into each Fedora image, and
  uses less space on mirrors, making their administrators' lives a
  little easier. Thanks to the Fedora infrastructure team for their
  excellent work in setting up the infrastructure to generate delta
  RPMs on the fly for all the updates.

* NetworkManager broadband and other enhancements - NetworkManager,
  originally developed by Red Hat's Dan Williams, was introduced in
  Fedora 7 and has become the de facto network configuration solution
  for distributions everywhere. Enhancements to NetworkManager make
  both system-wide connections and mobile broadband connections easier
  than ever. Bluetooth PAN support offers a simple click through
  process to access the Internet from your mobile
  phone. NetworkManager can now configure always-on and static address
  connections directly from the desktop. PolicyKit integration has
  been added so configuration management can be done via central
  policy where needed. IPv6 support has also been improved.

* Next-generation (Ogg) Theora video - For several years, Theora, the
  open and free format not encumbered by known patents has provided a
  way for freedom-loving users to share video. Fedora 12 includes the
  new Theora 1.1, which achieves very high quality comparable to
  H.264, meeting the expectations of demanding users with crisp,
  vibrant media in both streaming and downloadable form. Thanks to the
  work of the Xiph.Org Foundation's Christopher "Monty" Montgomery,
  sponsored by Red Hat, other Xiph developers and the contribution of
  Mozilla.org, Theora videos now deliver much better quality primarily
  via enhancements in the encoder without any change in the format,
  making it available to all Theora users. Using Theora video and
  Vorbis audio formats, Firefox 3.5 and applications using the
  Gstreamer multimedia framework can deliver free media on the web out
  of the box even better than the previous release of Fedora. Theora
  is being rapidly adopted by several popular websites including
  Wikipedia, VideoPress and DailyMotion. Fedora Project is proud to
  support communities of free culture and open content as part of our
  mission. More details at

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/theora-1-1-released/

* Graphics support improvements - Fedora 12 introduces experimental 3D
  support for AMD Radeon HD 2400 and later graphics cards. To try it
  out, install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package. On many
  cards, this support should allow desktop effects to be used. Kernel
  mode setting (KMS) support, which was introduced on AMD hardware in
  Fedora 10 and extended to Intel hardware in Fedora 11, is now
  extended to NVIDIA hardware as well, meaning the great majority of
  systems now benefit from the smooth, fully-graphical startup
  sequence made possible by KMS. The Fedora graphical startup sequence
  now works better on systems with multiple monitors. Also on multiple
  monitor systems, the desktop will now automatically be spread across
  all monitors by default, rather than having all monitors display the
  same output, including on NVIDIA chips (where multiple monitor
  spanning was not possible without manual configuration changes in
  Fedora 11). Systems with NVIDIA graphics chips also gain initial
  support for suspend and resume functionality via the default Nouveau
  driver. Initial support for the new DisplayPort display connector
  has been added for Intel graphics chips. Support for Nvidia and ATI
  systems is already under rapid development and will be included in
  the next release of Fedora. Thanks to the Red Hat Xorg team
  including Adam Jackson (X server), Kristian Høgsberg (Intel driver),
  Dave Airlie and Jerome Glisse (Radeon driver for AMD), and Ben
  Skeggs (Nouveau driver for NVIDIA).

* Virtualization improvements - Not content with all the improvements
  in Fedora 11, we've kicked virtualization based on KVM up another
  notch in Fedora 12. There are extensive improvements in performance,
  management, and resource sharing, and still more security
  enhancements. A new library (libguestfs) and an interactive tool
  (guestfish) are now available for directly accessing and modifying
  virtual machine disk images. Richard W.M. Jones from Red Hat's
  virtualization team has a list of extensive virtualization tools
  available and coming up for Fedora at

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/fedora-virt-commands/

* Automatic reporting of crashes and SELinux issues - Abrt, a tool to
  help non-power users report crashes to Bugzilla with a few mouse
  clicks, is now enabled by default. Abrt collects detailed
  information automatically and helps developers identify and resolve
  issues faster, improving the quality of individual upstream
  components and Fedora. The SELinux alert monitoring tool has also
  added the ability to report SELinux issues to Bugzilla quickly and
  easily with just a couple of clicks.

* New Dracut initrd generation tool - Up until Fedora 11, the boot
  system (initial ram disk or initrd) used to boot Fedora was
  monolithic, very distribution specific, and didn't provide much
  flexibility. This has been replaced with Dracut, an initial ram disk
  generation tool with an event-based framework designed to be
  distribution-independent. Dracut has been also adopted by OLPC which
  uses Fedora; OLPC modules for Dracut are available in the Fedora
  repository. Thanks to the Dracut team, including Harald Hoyer,
  Jeremy Katz, Dave Jones, and many others.

* PackageKit plugins - PackageKit now has a plugin which can install
  an appropriate package when a user tries to run a command from a
  missing package. Another new plugin allows installation of software
  packages from a web browser. Thanks to Red Hat's Richard Hughes and
  the PackageKit team.

* Bluetooth on-demand - Bluetooth services are automatically started
  when needed and stopped 30 seconds after last device use, reducing
  initial startup time and resource use when Bluetooth is not in
  active use. Thanks to Red Hat's Bastien Nocera.

* Moblin graphical interface for netbooks - In additional to special
  compiler optimization for netbooks in this release and the continued
  integration of Sugar interface, the Moblin graphical interface and
  applications are fully integrated thanks to Peter Robinson, a Fedora
  Project volunteer, and others. Collaboration between the Moblin
  project and Fedora was accelerated since Moblin itself is largely
  based on Fedora. To use it, just install the Moblin Desktop
  Environment package group using yum or the graphical software
  management tools, and choose Moblin from the login manager. A Moblin
  Fedora Remix (installable Live CD) for Fedora 12 will also be
  available.

* PulseAudio enhancements - Red Hat's Lennart Poettering and several
  others have made significant improvements to the PulseAudio
  system. Improved mixer logic makes volume control more fine-grained
  and reliable. Integration with the Rygel UPnP media server means you
  can stream audio directly from your system to any UPnP / DLNA
  client, such as a Playstation 3. Hotplug support has been made more
  intelligent, so if you configure a device as the default output for
  a stream, unplug that device -- causing the stream(s) to be moved to
  another output device -- and later reattach it, the stream is moved
  back to the preferred device. Finally, Bluetooth audio support means
  pairing with any Bluetooth audio device makes it available for use
  through PulseAudio.

* Lower process privileges - In order to mitigate the impact of
  security vulnerabilities, permissions have been hardened for many
  files and system directories. Also, process privileges have been
  lowered for a number of core components that require super user
  privileges. Red Hat's Steve Grubb has developed a new library,
  libcap-ng, and integrated it into many core system components to
  improve the security of Fedora.

* SELinux sandbox - It is now possible to confine applications' access
  to the system and run them in a secure sandbox that takes advantage
  of the sophisticated capabilities of SELinux. Dan Walsh, SELinux
  developer at Red Hat, explains the details at

http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/31146.html

* Open Broadcom firmware - The openfwwf open source Broadcom firmware
  is included by default. This means wireless networking will be
  available out of the box on some Broadcom chipsets. 

* Hybrid live images - The Live images provided in this release can be
  directly imaged onto a USB stick using dd (or any equivalent tool)
  to create bootable Live USB keys. The Fedora Live USB Creator for
  Windows and Fedora and the livecd-tools for Fedora are still
  recommended for data persistence, encryption and non-destructive
  writes. Thanks to Jeremy Katz. 

* Better webcam support - While Fedora 11 improved webcam support, in
  Fedora 12 you can expect even better video quality, especially for
  less expensive webcams. Red Hat's Hans de Goede, developer of the
  libv4l library, has more details on his continuous upstream webcam
  support enhancements at

http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/6989.html.

* Polished Desktop - The latest version of the GNOME desktop includes
  the lighter Gnote replacement for Tomboy as the default note
  application, and Empathy replaces Pidgin as the default instant
  messenger. The new volume control application, first seen in Fedora
  11, has been improved to cover more advanced users. There are many
  nice tweaks from the desktop team for a polished user
  experience. More details at

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop_Enhancements_in_Fed...

* GNOME Shell preview - Fedora 12 includes an early version of GNOME
  Shell, which will become the default interface for GNOME 3.0 and
  beyond. To try it, install the gnome-shell package, and use the
  Desktop Effects configuration tool to enable it. It will only work
  correctly from the GNOME desktop environment, not others such as KDE
  or Xfce. This is a preview technology, and some video cards may not
  be supported. Thanks to Owen Taylor from Red Hat and the GNOME Shell
  team. 

* KDE 4.3 - The new KDE features an updated "Air" theme and fully
  configurable keyboard shortcuts in Plasma, improved performance and
  new desktop effects in the window manager, a new bug reporting tool,
  and a configuration tool for the LIRC infra-red remote control
  system. 

* Cool new stuff for developers beginning with Eclipse Galileo, which
  includes more plugins than ever before. Perl 6 is now included,
  along with PHP 5.3. For Haskell developers, the Haskell Platform now
  provides a standardized set of libraries and tools. But one of the
  biggest changes for developers is that most of the nice new features
  of Fedora 12, from Bluetooth to webcams, are implemented through
  underlying libraries, and many of the improvements will be included
  simply by relinking your application. Also available in this release
  are SystemTap 1.0 for improved instrumenting and debugging of
  binaries, complete with Eclipse integration, and the newest NetBeans
  IDE for Java development. 

* Cool new stuff for sysadmins include added functionality for
  clustered Samba services (including active/active configurations)
  over GFS2; and the ability to boot a cluster of Fedora systems from
  a single, shared root file system. 

* Multi-Pointer X - The update to X.Org server 1.7 introduces the X
  Input Extension version 2.0 (XI2), with much work contributed by Red
  Hat's Peter Hutterer. This extension provides a new client API for
  handling input devices and also Multi-Pointer X (MPX)
  functionality. MPX functionality allows X to cope with many inputs
  of arbitrary types simultaneously, a prerequisite for (among others)
  multitouch-based desktops and multi-user interaction on a single
  screen. This is low-level work of which applications and desktop
  environments will incrementally take advantage in future
  releases. More details are available in the Release Notes and in the
  XI2 tag of Peter Hutterer's blog at

http://who-t.blogspot.com/search/label/xi2

Download them from Fedora or if your a local:

• iinet / westnet – http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/
• internode – http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/

I’m torn between using the latest Ubuntu or Fedora on the client.

Related posts:

1. THIS IS FEDORA: Fedora 11 Released
2. QuickTip: Extracting all files in multiple folders in Linux
3. Funky Jaunty: Ubuntu 9.04 Release Candidate, its almost here!

Linux® continues to innovate in the area of file systems. It supports the largest variety of file systems of any operating system. It also provides cutting-edge file system technology. Two new file systems that are making their way into Linux include the NiLFS(2) log-structured file system and the exofs object-based storage system. Discover the purpose behind these two new file systems and the advantages that they bring.

Read the full article on the Next-generation linux filesystems, there was an article on LWN.net a few years back discussing the (then emerging) Btrfs and NiLFS and how things may pan out. I’m quite happy and content with ZFS but in either case it’ll be interesting to see how all three go.

Related posts:

1. Rebuilding Zeus: Part 1 – Preliminary Research and Installing Ubuntu 9.04 RC1
2. Maintaining your XFS with XFS Filesystem Reorganiser xfs_fsr to defrag
3. Linux Btrfs: A short history of btrfs

Get it from the main download server or from iinet or internode mirrors if your in Australia.

Then there’s Mozilla who released Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 recently too – based on Gecko 1.9.2, download a copy and try it out, its got Windows 7 integration and CTRL+TAB previews which are finally in!

If that wasn’t enough I finally turned 25 today, quarter of a century. Its nice to have a birthday on a weekend – especially a long weekend!

Related posts:

1. Boffins get 1,000,000 Linux Kernels running as virtual machines!
2. Getting a Windows 7 Beta 1 Product Key
3. Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Download

Download mirrors are being updated but if your local, here are a couple of Australian Mirrors.

CentOS 5.4 x86

• iinet – http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/centos/5.4/isos/i386
• internode  – http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/centos/5.4/isos/i386/

CentOS 5.4 x64

• iinet – http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/centos/5.4/isos/x86_64
• internode – http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/centos/5.4/isos/x86_64/

I just did a inplace 5.3->5.4 upgrade with a yum update. With a localised mirror, blindingly fast too!

Related posts:

1. Redhat 5.4 released, CentOS 5.4 is coming soon!
2. Rebuilding Zeus: Part 1 – Preliminary Research and Installing Ubuntu 9.04 RC1
3. THIS IS FEDORA: Fedora 11 Released