burngreave.net - Internet

Burngreave.NET Projects

Wed, 5 Oct 2005 22:51:33 +0100

The burngreave.net umbrella covers a number of different projects.

Community Area Network. We are developing a wireless based community area network in coordination with other groups in Sheffield. For more infomation see http://bcan.burngreave.net
Volunteer PC support for the community at the PC Fixit Cafe. See http://www.burngreave.net/mailman/listinfo/cafe for more information
IT consultancy services / workers co-operative BITWork
Community ISP services, hosting web sites and email for a number of organisations and bodies.
Email lists

BITPart Aims and Objectives

Sat, 8 Feb 2003 02:41:00 +0000

Burngreave IT Partnership
Aims and Objectives

Learn Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, After Effects, Video Editing Without Leaving Your Home....

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:32:31 +0000

We're launching in the future online learning for people in Burngreave who want to learn:

Photoshop - Illustrator - Indesign - Video Editing - Creating Video Commercials using After Effects and more.

This is an amazing way of learn. The learner will be able to see my desktop, and see what actions I am doing, hear me talk as I show, step by step how to design flyers, posters, magazine layouts, using video editing tools and learn Industry Standard software.

I know there are courses out there but they cost too much. The course I am running will be a charge of only 5 pound per person for a 4-6 weeks lessons. If anyone in Burmgreave is interested then please email me at:

Web 2.0 Privacy and Control - Who has your data ?

Sat, 9 Jun 2007 13:39:04 +0100

Start of an entry on Privacy and the web

Who controls your data ?

some links to think about
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/08/blly_bragg_myspace/

http://albumoftheday.com/facebook

http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/data-privacy-google-asked-to-please-explain/2007/05/25/1179601745294.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/google_mail_is_evil_privacy/

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/48883/

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/06/03/web_2_privacy/

Rock Street / Verdon Street wireless network

Tue, 8 May 2007 17:22:39 +0100

Snapshot of the Rock Street / Verdon Street network, 08 May 2007.

OLSR Network Topology 10-April-2007

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:34:00 +0100

OLSR Network Topology 10-April-2007

OLSR and Freifunk use in Burngreave Community Area Network, Sheffield

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:19:15 +0100

We've started moving the Burngreave Community Area Network to the Freifunk Firmware on the Linksys WRT54G family using OLSR routing protocol .

Here is a picture of the network topology around Verdon and Rock Street Areas of Pitsmoor

The Internet is not a Superhighway

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:56:19 +0000

From Slashdot

" The internet is a lot like an information superhighway...

No, the Internet is NOT like a superhighway :-) From Usenet, 1994-ish:

"Think of the Internet as a highway."

There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know didley about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net. . .

A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection. No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.

Arbourthorne Free Wireless Project

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 18:22:05 +0000

Started work on the Arbourthorne free wireless project. ( need to think of a catchier name ! )

Purchased 4 Linksys WRT54GL and started installing the freifunk firmware

Seems quite cool software. The OLSR daemon works nicely and creates the routes happily. Need to remember that the wireless interfaces must all be in the same subnet, adhoc, and have same essid for automatic meshing to work.

LTSP Workshop at MATILDA

Sun, 28 May 2006 12:49:50 +0100

I recently participated in a sheffield hacklab workshop on setting up Linux Terminal Server based services at the MATILDA social centre in Sheffield.

We installed SUSE 10.1 Linux on a relatively ancient but serviceable dual processor 1 Ghz PIII 1GB RAM 2x 18GB SCSI HDD server.

SUSE 10.1 installed without a hitch ( as is to be expected from a Linux distro these days.)

The latest version of LTSP, LTSP 4.2 is pretty magnificent. The documentation is well written and easy to follow, and we configure a few simple networking services ( DHCP, TFTP, NFS, XDMCP and etherboot, with the help of http://rom-o-matic.net/ ), and we have a working LTSP server built, and a skipped compaq deskpro 6350 SFF Pentium II PC with 32Mb RAM acting as thin client.

Script to block ssh brute force attacks

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 10:13:03 +0100

My servers are being attacked regulary with ssh brute force attacks. I had 40,000 attempted failed logons over 7 hours from one ip address recently, at the peak it was doing 4 attempts a second.

This script works fine on the Debian Servers
Its very simple and can be run from cron every 15 minutes ( or less ).

It looks for the 'Illegal user' entries in a LOGFILE. If more than BADCOUNT are seen from the same ip address it gets added to hosts.deny ( man 5 hosts_access ) and thus is unable to bother sshd again. root will get mail when it does stuff.

You can make sure it doesn't lock you out by adding your trusted ip addresses to hosts.allow

wikipedia is your friend

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:12:39 +0000

this seems to have appeared: BurngreaveMessenger.

Burngreave Computer Fixit Cafe

Sat, 5 Nov 2005 13:54:43 +0000

Burngreave Computer Fixit Cafe

Working inside a vserver

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 02:24:54 +0100

notes from first use of a vserver
I've logged on happily onto somme.

On the surface , yes it looks like a standard debian install, but as you say some differences.

1. I install sudo and vim, (apt-get install sudo vim), then su - ( to root ). After editing the sudoers file and adding myself I cannot use sudo

alan@somme:/etc$ sudo su -
sudo: unable to lookup somme via gethostbyname()

until editing the /etc/hosts file. and altering it to this

209.51.169.86 somme.prevolution.org somme

the hosts file was empty before that.

2. I tend to use tcpdump, traceroute, mtr and nmap, to diagnose errors and perform security auditing after making configuration changes etc. I find that these dont work and give a socket error. Are these fixable ? Would iptables modules be similary affected ?

Legal framework for Free Networks

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:18:55 +0100

Thanks to vortex and the free2air group

Legal aspects of open public networks