Author: Daniel Mettler

There’s a very insightful article on the NX bit on wikipedia.org explaining the differences of the approaches of Exec-shield, PaX, W^X and DEP:

Wikipedia: NX bit

AFAIK, the entry for DEP is not quite correct (“Emulation: No”) as DEP can emulate the NX bit on CPUs that don’t support it.

Hint: If you plan to buy a new computer, it’s probably wise to make sure it has a CPU supporting the NX bit (e.g. AMD64) as both Linux 2.6.8+ and Windows XP SP2+ can now take advantage of it.

Did you know that Gentoo Linux 2004.2 ships with a GCC ready for Stack-Smashing Protection? (SSP overview). For verification, just execute ‘gcc -v’ and see whether there is a SSP flag, e.g. like

gcc-Version 3.3.3 20040412 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.3-r6, ssp-3.3.2-2, pie-8.7.6)

To enable SSP for any newly compiled binary by default, just add -fstack-protector to your CFLAGS in /etc/make.conf.

IBM models for Neptun IV – autumn/fall 2004 (Neptun site)

I think IBM’s notebooks are better than my current notebook/TabletPC m200 by Toshiba. Some quick notes about the IBM notebooks above:

IBM X40:

+ small, lightweight
+ SD card reader
+ long battery runtime
+ Bluetooth
– relatively weak CPU, only a 1.2 GHz Pentium M (not a Dothan core)
– small HDD
– very weak graphics chip (Intel Extrem Graphics 2)
– no DVI out (only VGA)
– bad design (tapered/slanted bottom/keyboard)
– no external drives included
– has a trackpoint, but no touchpad

IBM T42 medium:

+ nice and fast CPU (Pentium M 735 Dothan)
+ Bluetooth
0 CD-RW/ DVD-ROM Combodrive (adds weight; should be a DVD+/-RW nowadays)
0 moderate weight (neither lightweight nor very heavy)
– small HDD
– low resolution screen (only 1024×768 even if it’s 14.1″)
– average GPU (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500/32 – equals in about a Nvidia FX Go 5200, but without DirectX9 support)
– short battery runtime
– no DVI out (only VGA)

IBM T42 large:

+ nice and fast CPU (Pentium M 735 Dothan)
+ Bluetooth
+ high resolution screen (1400×1050/14.1″ ideal! – 1400×1050 is more adequate for a 14.1″ than for a 12.1″ screen such as with my Toshiba M200)
0 CD-RW/ DVD-ROM Combodrive (adds weight; should be a DVD+/-RW nowadays)
0 moderate weight (neither lightweight nor very heavy)
0 average/large HDD
0 long battery runtime (though only thanks to a 9-cell battery pack)
– fast GPU (ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/64 – drawback: demands a lot of battery power. IBM should have included the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700/64 like Apple with its Powerbooks. The 9700 uses less power and is even faster than the 9600.)
– the 9-cell battery pack increases the depth of the notebook (huh? despite of a decreasing battery runtime, they should have rather used a standard size battery pack IMHO)
– no DVI out (only VGA)

I’m curious how the Apple models will look like. The biggest plus of an Apple Powerbook is probably its nice overall design and well-balanced, powerful functionality and of course MacOS X (which is the only truly user-friendly OS at the moment). The biggest minus is the fact that everybody is expecting a soon release of 1.) a dual-core G4 Powerbook 2.) a single-core G5/64bit Powerbook. So people eventually decide to wait another half a year.

A nice HowTo for Gentoo:

Gentoo Forums :: View topic – Email System For The Home Network – Version 2.1

Other nice docu:

Postfix SASL, PostfixManager, Courier imap SSL, Quota, Maildrop, MySQL, Spamassassin, Amavisd-new, Clamav Antivirus, Squirrelmail, ProFTPD with MySQL, BIND, APACHE and PHP Tutorial

Postfix with SMTP-Auth

Nice list: Top 75 Network Security Tools (found in a /. story about Kismet)

Ingo Molnar has just notified me, that his exec-shield patch is now part of the kernel 2.6 SRPMs by Arjan who will keep them updated. It’s a pity there aren’t any current plain-text patches of exec-shield anymore. Perhaps I’ll adjust my watchdog script and mirror plain-text exec-shield patches here.