10/19 First! Soda was rooted, and thus so was motd. --toulouse
\_ Soda was down several days last week and /etc/motd.publicd was
gone. What happened?
\_ Someone surreptitiously replaced an executable. We discovered this
within a few hours of it happening then decided to shut soda off
and do a complete rebuild. --toulouse
\_ which executable? Not sshd again?
\_ Curious, why the total rebuild? Wasn't there a "fresh"
snapshot made when soda was first virtualized years ago-
couldn't we just revert to that? Or is that what happened?
or did they manage to hack thru to the esxi layer with some
wacky cloudburst thing?
\_ Good job catching this. Are you running tripwire? -ausman
\_ I don't know. Mikey discovered it by running 'strings' on
an executable that was behaving weird. --toulouse
\_ do you know how they got in? which binary was it?
\_ Rooted? Where did you hear that? -ausman
\_ I'm on rootstaff. --toulouse
\_ ugh, lots of stuff gone, my motd archiver broken (wheres rcs now?)
-ERic
\_ use git
\_ Right, soda had to be completely rebuilt. We didn't have any
info on how motd was structured. Sorry. However, we're thinking of
writing a python daemon which would use inotify to POST updates on
/etc/motd.public to some URL. Want to work with us on this? How
can we help you get motd working how you like it? --toulouse
\_ git to push to github
\_ No backups?
\_ We have backups. Need something in particular restored?
\_ No, but with backups you should be able to restore
the system to its previous state (including MOTD).
\_ Which would be a very bad idea on a rooted system.
If you restore everything to exactly the way it was,
then you restore to a compromised state. Unless you
knew *exactly* when it was rooted.
\_ You just need to look at them to figure out
how things were set up.
\_ MOTD doesn't need to be revived. Spend your time doing
something more interesting to engage community in
discussion. -tom
\_ I agree. -ausman
\_ It's easy to agree, but I'm not hearing any suggestions.
Every time we've suggested moving to a newer medium we
get a groundswell of crufties complaining on how motd is
sufficient and they'd never use $ALTERNATIVE. What would
you use? --toulouse
\_ twitter
\_ It would be great if we could replace Motd with something
non Facebook. I really do not like the trend of news and
www forums being replaced with Facebook connect. Also...
I don't have a fb account right now. - long time motd poster
\_ I don't have a facebook account either. -another poster
\_ Facebook. -ausman
\_ twitter
\_ Are you kidding me? I'll get a Facebook account
when hell freezes over. I would not have
expected someone with an IT background to
recommend this alternative.
\_ It is what people use, it is pointless to
use a medium that undergraduates are not
interested in. Who are you? -ausman
\_ Undergraduate here. I'm not interested in
Facebook *or* MOTD -- any other bright
ideas? :)
\_ Eureka Streams http://goo.gl/VnUU
\_ What do you use for online collaborative
communication?
\_ I don't, I am too worried that the
NSA or Mossad will evesdrop on my
communications. I use one time pad
encrypted messages delivered by
carrier pigeon.
\_ I hope you killed the pigeon
afterward.
\_ Thus proving my point. Some people really do
live with *that* much paranoia. It comes with
the territory. --toulouse
\_ Look, it's clear that MOTD is providing
zero value to the CSUA. Whether the next
thing you do is phpBB, or facebook, or
blog or whatever, it will provide more
value to the CSUA. The fact that someone
will whine about whatever you decide is
something you'll have to learn to deal
with in technology.
Here's some free strategic planning
consulting for you:
The goals of a CSUA messaging
system should be to:
* Build community among CS undergraduates
* Encourage discussion of both technical
and non-technical topics
* Provide connections to industry
sources for networking and jobs
There are a dozen ways to accomplish those
things, and MOTD ceased to be one of them
10 years ago. -tom
\_ messaging/forum systems come and go with
time. Motd has been around a long time
with few changes. I'd hate to see us
adopt and abandon it for the forum of the
moment. They all come and go within a
relatively short time.
motd,wall,irc,fn,usenet,phpb,myspace,
yahoogroups,now facebook? -Eric
\_ On the other hand, much of the CSUA
has already abandoned motd. We
clearly haven't learned from history
and are doomed to repeat it. -ERic
\_ I don't really see the argument
that we should keep a dead forum
because whatever we change to will
eventually die. That's like saying
that you shouldn't buy a new
computer because you'll need a
better one in just a few years. -tom
\_ every tmie we switch we lose
people and/or history. I'm not
saying we shouldn't switch, just
try to minimise the losses, and to
switch to a medium with as long
a lifespan as possible. -ERic
\_ Sure. -tom
\_ Did blojo invent the motd? I just had lunch with him.
I totally forgot to mention the CSUA or Soda in any way.
\_ The MOTD predates blojo
\_ Get a good raison d'etre. Forum choices will follow. |