Why I Will NEVER Get Trend Micro Anti-Virus

Trend Micro is suing Barracuda because the latter supposedly infringes on a patent the former owns regarding the implementation of a anti-virus through an SMTP and FTP gateway. Apparently, Trend Micro is threatened by the less expensive solution of Barracuda which involves off-the-shelf hardware components and the open source Clam Anti-Virus. And so, instead of lowering its cost or improving its own features and services, it decides to sue on the grounds of its stupid patent. It only goes to show that they’re not really concerned about the security of computer users but only on their own profit. That’s just lame.

LDAP Authentication For Squid

One of the things you want to do as you integrate your systems would be to have them authenticate from a common user base. That user base is usually an LDAP source, in my case Microsoft Active Directory (don’t say anything!!!). One of the systems you would want to use the common user base is your web proxy, Squid in my case. Here is how to integrate the two. It’s quite simple actually though, as usual, LDAP gave me a bit of a hard time.

First you need to configure Squid to use LDAP. Just add the following in your squid.conf:

auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/squid_ldap_auth -P -R -b “dc=your,dc=domain” -D “cn=user,cn=Users,dc=your,dc=domain” -w “password” -f “(&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName=%s))” yourldapserver

If you’re encountering problems add the -d parameter at the end and do a tail -f on /var/log/squid/cache.log Now that Squid can authenticate using LDAP, just add your ACLs in squid.conf:

acl youracl1 proxy_auth “/path/to/userlist”
http_access allow youracl1

That’s it!

Asus Eee

asuseepc.jpgYesterday, as I was heading out for lunch, I encountered Tessa at the elevator lobby. She was carrying this small black neoprene case that almost without a doubt contained an electronic gadget. From the dimensions, I concluded that it was an Asus Eee which I’ve heard and read quite a bit about. But to be sure, I asked her and she confirmed that it is indeed an Eee. We talked about it a bit but since lunch was waiting, I scheduled a visit with her for later in the afternoon. As soon as I got some free time, I went up to her office and played around with the Eee.

The Eee is a diminutive device. It is around an inch thick and about the size of A5 paper and quite light. But it seems well-built and quite robust. The screen is small but quite usable especially when applications are in full screen mode. The keyboard is also small but still quite usable. The 900MHz processor is not too powerful and the 512MB RAM not too big but the response of applications is quite snappy. The storage is a (surprise!) small at 4GB, but quite fast since it is solid state (i.e. flash-based). If you need more, you’ll need to use external storage via up to three USB ports. But then again, most everything are stored online these days. Speaking of online it has both wired and wireless network interfaces.

But here’s the killer: It’s Linux-based! I know what you’re thinking. That it would be a complex beast. But no, it is actually seems quite easy to use. It has two mode: simple mode and full mode. In simple mode you’re presented with a very simple tabbed menu with large icons that even a grandma would like. Full mode, on the other hand, is the traditional Linux GUI with access to the applications you expect including my favorite: ssh. Oh yeah!

Do I like it? Hell yeah! But being new to the market, it’s still a bit expensive for my liking. But if someone were to gift me one, I wouldn’t say no. The black one please!

Kopete Or Milk?

Alex lent me a DVD of Kubuntu 7.10. Kubuntu is the version of Ubuntu that is packaged with KDE. For some reason he likes it and since he’s the Linux guru, who am I to second guess him? Hehe.Soon as I got home, I installed to Selene, my Thinkpad X22. The installation went without a hitch and in no time I was in Kubuntu. Everything else does though. I updated everything, played around with the look-and-feel, and was browsing (with a separately installed Firefox) and chatting (with Kopete). Almost everything worked. But unfortunately, both hibernate and standby don’t work! Argh. Now I’ll have to wait for Mr. Linux guru to to help me fix the problem.