Will Slackware 13.1 be Multilib...?
 

Hi Forum

Is the future Slackware release 13.1 going to be default multilib...?

BRGDS

Alex

Someone asked a question like that in some other thread and Alien BOB said no, cause Pat would like to keep the 64bit port pure. Thankfully..
Some people who contacted Pat said he's considering adding PAM in 14.0 though.

judging from folders in alien bob's multilib web page, I think you have to refer to that address for 13.1.

Indeed.
When Pat releases updated gcc and glibc packages for slackware-current, I will be right on his tail releasing multilib versions of those packages.

Consideration is all, nothing set in stone. One of the motivators behind this idea is the fact that polkit seems to be a requirement to build future KDE versions and currently, polkit requires PAM. The choice would be, to add PAM or to remove KDE.
Having said this... one of the wicd developers, Andrew Psaltis (who happens to be a Slackware user) has used an old patch by PiterPUNK and Robby Workman to add support for shadow authentication to polkit, so perhaps there is hope. Adding polkit to Slackware is not possible at the moment, because Slackware lacks other required software.

Eric

Though not at all a KDE user, I admit removing it would probably drastically reduce Slackware's users base.

If there would be a SlackBuild for PAM I would try it anyhow, as so I could use fingerprint authentication on my ThinkPad.

Who said "too lazy to type his credentials" ?

Very good news. Hope that works, but im wondering what kind of (additional) sacrifices it will require in the long run. But as long as theres hope not all is lost.
Personally, as a desktop user, i consider PAM and polkit as two additional layers of uneeded complexity on my systems.
But i know some people will disagree, especially people requiring PAM for server use.

Eric, do you have a link to the shadow/polkit patch?

Hi Didier_Spaier

More than Fingerprint authentication you could use some sort of LVM/Luks AES encryption on Steroids... call it "XES" , with the passphrases stored in a flashdrive :

eXtreme Encryption Standard... :)

Immagine this:

Everybody knows that most modern symmetric cyphers work based on iterated Feistel network runs with a nonlinear binary function layer between successive runs...

In each run, the data chunk, typically 256bits size, is permutated using huge binary transposition tables ( binary permutation matrixes ), one in each round, in an order specified by the passphrase, XORED with the passphrase, and then the result is fed to the nonlinear transform, before entering the next run...

... some sort of digital "enigma" of "Purple" only bitwise... not "character"-wise...

The present COCOM ( Coordinating Comitee for Multilateral Exports ) regulations about encyphering algorythms limitate the "strength" of a given set of cryptographic primitives ( Hash Functions Symmetric/Public Key encryption algorythms, Random Number Generators ) which can be exported to "State-Nations"...

The "strenghts" are a standardized by the NIST ( National Institute of Technology Standards ) in "drafts" like the PKCS ( Public Key Cryptography Standard ) created by the MOSSAD infiltrated nutkakes of RSA security for instance ( where are the founders of RSA from...? Is it Israel...? Oh well... :) Do guys at Haifa Polytechnical institute "Know" of any "trapdoor" within AES...? ... just asking :) ) and others alike...


Well given the FACTS that I have exposed, one can meke some assumptions :

1)The USA will only allow for exportation of Encryption technology that is within the "reach" of the brute force of their computer centers held by the NSA near Baltimore

2)It is within the grasp of an individual ( although, highly educated in stuff like Discrete Arithmetics, Geometric Algebra, Algorythmics, and C++ ) to design a set of cryptographic primitives that would simply overkill by a factor of choice the current computing power of Mankind for Centuries to come... even considering Moore's Law...


What would happen if one chooses to increase the number of rounds of AES up to 512...? and the "minimum" length of tha passphrase to 2048 bits...? and increase the degree of nonlinearity of the function between rounds...?

( beware that optimizing a permutation table of 2048x2048 to "flatten" the statistical characteristics that are used in Linear/differential cryptanalysis is *NOT TRIVIAL*... )

It would make those nice guys from the NSA pretty sad, their mighty computing power would simply prove to be useless, in face of the required work... :)

... but, guess what... If it is YOUR INFORMATION, YOU have the right to DECIDE whoever is allowed to disclose it... simple as that...


So... If you plan to design your own implementation of "XES", or PKCS #13... good luck with it... :)

BRGDS

Alex

You know... that is exactly what my test version of mkinitrd does... I have this laptop I'm typing on fully encrypted using LUKS. If I have my flash key inserted when Slackware boots, it finds the LUKS key stored on that USB key (a random 1024 characters which I told cryptsetup to use as an additional key) and uses that to unlock the LUKS volume automatically.

If I leave the USB key out, Slackware asks for a LUKS passphrase.

Someday before the next release of Slackware, I hope this patch gets added to the mkinitrd package.

Eric

Hi Alex_Vader,

I certainly won't try, though one of my sons probably could do that as he is pretty good in mathematics: he works as a "quant" for derivatives in a bank, but don't tell anybody, traders as well as derivatives are not so popular nowadays lol.

I prefer to follow Edgar Allan Poe's advice as given in his novel "The Purloined Letter" (en Français : La lettre volée) and not even try to hide anything.

Anyhow I realize that there are Big Ears around us (CIA & Mossad among others) so I try not to write anything on the Internet or any other media that I wouldn't like to make public. And to make sure I remind that I never try to stay anonymous.

After all I stand by my statements and I feel that freedom of speech, which I hopefully benefit of, worth nothing if not used.

Take care,

I'd appreciate that patch!
In fact I thought this scenario was already supported. In fact, this would make using Slackware on laptops even more attractive.

gargamel

As long as nobody makes a dd of your USB key's content behind your back ...

@Didier Spaier: Excellent post, interesting statements (regarding not even trying to be anonymous).

In particular I share your attitude not to publish personal information that I don't want to share with the world on the net. That's why I have never subscribed to one of the social networks, like FaceBook, LinkedIn or Xing. Probably Web 2.0 is just not for me, although I used to develop web applications until only a few years ago. ;)

Also, I encrypt all my hard discs, because on some of them I keep personal data, and I don't want to make my date too easily available to someone else in case a device gets lost or stolen.

gargamel

@Eric: any joke aside, your solution appears attractive though I'm afraid it won't take me long to loose the USB key ;)

@Gargamel: thanks for your approval. May be I should encrypt my hard disks too, I'll think about that.

There would still be the original LUKS passphrase you used to create the LUKS volume...

Eric

But someone else, who finds the stick and has physical access to the laptop, can get access to all data stored on it. Therefore, in case one loses the stick, the passphrase stored on it must be revoked immediately. I haven't tried this with an arbitrarily generated file, though.

gargamel

A LUKS device has 7 slots in which to store key/passphrase material.
The first slot is taken by the passphrase you used to create the volume. If you add a key-file later, that information will be added to the second slot.

If you want to remove a key from a LUKS volume, (for instance because it has been corrupted) you can do so using the "cryptsetup luksKillSlot <device> <key slot number>" but in that case you will have to provide another valid key/passphrase.

The command "cryptsetup luksDump <device>" will show you which slots are occupied.

Eric

Oh, my Gawd, I hope so.
:)
For those of us on a slow connection, downloading
all the necessary files to make Slackware64 mulitlib is a royal pain in the ***.

Yes that'd be great.

in /extra would be good for me and then slackpkg could deal with the updates.

samac

Hi Eric

I would like to know how does one include a kernel module for Crypto support.

You know... the "Math" thing is quite easy for me... Inversion over Galois Fields, Modular Arythmetics, all this is trivial ( well, when you have read *A LOT* about that in your spare time in youth... ), C++ algorythmics is not that difficult also...

The "Unknown" part for me is the implementation issue....
And I really would like to make a "customized" encryption protocol...

Do you know some good bibliography about this...?

( Outside of NSA Library of course... :) )




Hi Didier_Spaier

I undestand your point of view... but let me remind you of this... :


The technical specifications of the Airbus A 340 were long known before its first operational flight, by Boeing, due to security breaches in the comm links of work sessions among investigation centers in Europe, intercepted by Echelon Network, and fed to the NSA computing Behemoths...

... can you or anyone here ascert the loss that has already been done to Airbus because of this ?
Can anyone here ascert WHY is it that every single attempt to merge the European States into single unified political-military centralized command ( very much like the USA )is ill fated from the beginning... ? lots of coincidences... you know...


It is also known that the Battle of Midway might have ended differently if the United States Navy Signal Intelligence Corps had not deciphered radio transmissions... That way, the "Tokyo Express" logistic corridor might have been secured long enough to the Empire of Japan to develop its nuclear capability, forcing the USA to sign the end of hostilities in different terms...

There was a heavy ongoing investigation effort at the RIKEN in the begining of the forties... AFAIK Yoshio Nishina Sensei had a preliminary draft of an implosion type nuclear weapon, although he never adressed issues like the mitigation of the Rayleigh Taylor instability in the focusing of the convergent shock wave...


Anyway...

All this to say that regadless of the value of Freedom of Speech, ppl have the right to privacy and secrets as long as these rights do not endanger others...


- Henry Stimson, Secretary of State of the USA, on the closing of the "Black Chamber" and the MI-8.


BRGDS

Alex

Hi Alex_Vader,

I realize that, wouldn't Polish and British codebreakers have been able to decrypt a vast number of messages which had been enciphered using the Enigma machines (according to Wikipedia), issue of World War II could have been different (and I probably wouldn't be typing on a keyboard to answer you as I wouldn't have existed).

While I appreciate free speech, yet I recognize that "ppl have the right to privacy and secrets as long as these rights do not endanger others" and that this right is threatened nowadays, especially under the pretext of "fight against terrorism".

Best regards

Quite true... :)

Polkit doesn't _REQUIRE_ PAM. It can be easily built with shadow. Check out the Slackbuilds of policykit in Slacky, Gnome SlackBuild and GWARE.

I am probably wrong for newer versions or the functionality required by KDE.

Indeed... Have you already tried building version 0.95 or even "polkit-1" (which is the code available in policykit repository). Distros are moving to polkit-1 which is a change in course for policykit. The git snapshot of polkit has a lot more PAM entanglement, which will require more work to undo than the relatively small fixes you could get away with in 0.9.

Also, in order to make use of polkit in the console (which we need because the average Slacker still startx X from the console with "startx") we need consolekit supporting the shadow utilities (or the reverse, shadow utilities supporting consolekit) as well.

It is not so simple unfortunately. If the *kit could be made to work with shadow that would be quite beneficial for Slackware.

Eric

I think it's not about the kits supporting shadow, but shadow must be made a simple front-end to the kits.

Anyway, are you talking for something different? I'm talking for the Policykit with the source package name "PolicyKit-0.9.tar.gz". Try with the "policykit-pamdisable" (http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gsb/gsb-2....sable.patch.gz) patch. Then when configured, use that "--with-authfw=shadow". It's not a elegant solution, not at all. I prefer adding PAM.

It's time to open your minds and trash shadow in the way you know it.

ConsoleKit is an awesome little session tracking daemon...nothing bad about it.
PolicyKit is also not bad.
PAM is... a bit complex, but... ok.

PolicyKit 0.9 is already a thing of the past. It is not api-compatible with the current work on what is not called polkit-1.

The rapid morphing of applications like polkit-1 that provide a distro's core functionality (see how PolicyKit evolves and breaks everything in its path, it is unstable and buggy and causes other software to be unstable and buggy) is a clear sign that this kind of software development should really be avoided like the plague.

Unfortunately, the arrogance of "major distros" forces all the rest along this slippery slope and in the end, I think it will be inevitable that we as Slackware will either fall into this dark pit or else are forced to stop being a consumer desktop distribution.

Eric

Can anyone even begin to "ascert" the economic lost via the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of jobs lost across the entire American aviation industry because of a company who built aircraft it couldn't otherwise afford to build if it hadn't been for the "illegal" funding provided by a consortium of European countries?

Well, I think that every country tries to protect its citizens' jobs, despite or using WTO's rules.

And American pension funds are among major shareholders, if not of EADS at least of more and more big European companies.

What about civil projects in the US funded by own capital of American companies... accumulated through revenues of contracts with DoD ?

I realize on the other hand that if not initially requested and funded by DoD, may be we wouldn't be communicating through the Internet as easier ;)

I am not sure we be still on topic anyway :cool:

What is this "slippery slope" and how will it end, i.e., what will it do to Slackware (and Linux as a whole) if it were incorporated?
Thanks.

Hi Cwizardone

Would you kindly define "illegal" ?

The issue is important, because it pertains to "whose interests" the "law" is purported to protect...

Within a single State-Nation, the definition is easier... "illegal" is everything that is ruled out by a constitutional precept to be "criminal", unlawful, not serving the welfare of the community as a whole...

Quite simple, i should say...

When it comes to International Trade, Geopolitics, Environment Protection... in short :

when it comes to dealing with distribution of scarce resources, like water, marketshares, land and sea... everything gets a bit dark, wouldn't you agree... ?

Why should American's Interests be above European's, or Japanese's or Chinese's.... ?

On which grounds...?

one can argue, on Military Power... like Commodore Perry did in the 1800 about the decision of the Sovereign State of Imperial Japan to do trade which whoever Nations it would choose...

or like most Western Powers did with the late Chinese Empire in the Opium War...

To them, this was a Righteous deed, supported and funded by milliions of Tax-Payers in Germany, England, France, United States, Spain, Japan...

What about listening to the opinion of a Chinese...? It would be a bit different I guess... :)


but if it is so... there is no righteous argument to limit the "reason" ( military power ) of whatever player in geopolitical scene to achieve the same parity of arguments as the US... wouldn't you agree...?

There is no "Absolute Source of Law" in International Relations... there is Bargaining, and GunBoat Diplomacy IMO... and millions of ppl starving, just because some wise dudes think that they own the World...

BRGDS

Alex


IMHO, American recognition of the "Relativization of Right" of multilateral interests was tacitly assumed in the
Taft-Katsura memorandum... about spheres of Infuence in the Pacific Ocean, and in the Southeast Asia...

This is what I'd vote for, too!

gargamel

I'm using Slackware for home desktop and that won't change even if you ditch KDE in the future. I think most Slack users choose Slack not to experience the latest fashion but to run a rock hard system. Besides, lately XFCE has improved a lot in terms of desktop features, so we're not totally out of alternatives. The Gnome guys plan about a revamp of Gnome for 3.0 next year. I hope they make it something easier to maintain so that in case Slackware abandons KDE there is a chance to consider replacing it with Gnome.

What, you mean like it did with Gnome users? ;)

Gnome completely screwed up by going with consolekit, policykit and Pam. Now KDE is making the same hair brained move.

I say good riddance to both of them. As Ilgar said, XFCE is quite nice these days. A little more desktop functionality and it'll be the way Gnome should have been (and was around 2.16).

I mostly use KDE, but I'd rather see KDE dropped than have Slackware undergo radical changes and go the way of the "major distros".

GNOME is (naturally) much more agressive in this aspect.
GNOME has had policykit for years. All those new technologies, HAL , *kit's are tested on GNOME before ever getting into KDE.
After all, all those "major distros" use GNOME as their primary desktop environment.

To my knowledge, Policykit has been used by Gnome for quite a while, and is therefore included with the major distros. As these are used on "enterprise desktops" and mission-critical servers, stability is probably not *that* bad, at least in the version included with their "Enterprise Linux" products.

What I am going to say is: Not everyone else is an idiot. Looking back, there was a similar discussion regarding D-BUS and HAL. Some people still don't like them, but I found and find it a great relief, and I haven't any stability issues with them.

I guess, it's a matter of time, until polkit is mature enough for Slackware, but there are many people using and improving it. It won't probably take that long, before the green banana turns yellow.

At least, I hope so. Because I like KDE a lot, and would rather not see it dropped from Slackware.

gargamel

Well you're right, I've been away from Gnome for so long that I didn't realize the same problem exists for that one, too. Well, we're left with XFCE then :).

Fluxbox is good enough for me :cool:

Eric,

I have a couple of questions and a comment.

Questions:

1. Is the major hang-up with polkit-1 (policy kit, whatever...) that it requires PAM?
2. Is Polkit intended to replace shadow?
3. Given that polkit is a pain in the right now, do you see any advantages to using it?

Comment:
I've only been using Slackware for a few years, starting right after version 11 was released. But while I'm a relative Slackware newbie,I've been using computers since 1982 when my grandfather bought me a Timex-Sinclair 1000 (28 years!).

I use Slackware as my exclusive desktop and laptop OS because of the care Pat and the team take in building it. I truly appreciate how the additions of HAL, D-bus, KDE 4, and 64-bit computing have been so smooth and mostly trouble-free. I also appreciate how you, Robby, Vincent Batts, Chess Griffin, Gilbert Ashley and others work hard to enhance Slackware users' experiences.

My hope is that KDE does not get dropped from Slackware. I've tried other WMs and none of them have the full set of features that KDE has. XFCE is a good WM, but it lacks the polish of KDE 4.3, and when I use it, I end up running KDE apps in it. While a vocal group on this board really do not like KDE, I suspect that the majority (51% or more :) ) of Slackware users use KDE. Losing it would marginalize Slackware.

I'm confident that Pat, you, and the rest of the team will find a way through the strangeness with Polkit and KDE and continue to make Slackware, among other things, a modern desktop OS.

Regards,

I used to be a "Gnomer" myself...

In Debian Lenny, Gnome would freeze randomly... requiring a hard power off reboot... :(

Since I have change to KDE in Slackware64 current, I have not experienced such issues anymore...

besides...

Check this :

http://www.osnews.com/story/12956

BRGDS

Alex

this is old
you may also find an article about that Linus switched away from kde (with some nice words) cause of the problems when kde 4.x was not so useful (< 4.3.2)

Way off topic, but regardless of all the FUD you've thrown at it and all the fairy tales that come from airbus, Boeing has never asked the U.S. government to fund a commercial aircraft project they couldn't otherwise afford to build. If airbus had to compete on a level playing field they would have folded years ago and, perhaps, McDonnell/Douglas would still be around and Lockheed would still be making commercial airliners. Hard to compete with a company like airbus that doesn't have to worry about making a profit because England, France, Germany, and Spain are always there to pick up the tab.

"Airbus Subsidies Have Destroyed Thousands of U.S. Jobs
Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
Date: Monday, December 21, 2009

In a few days, the world's two major producers of commercial transports (jet airliners) will release their order and delivery results for 2009. The results will show that European champion Airbus delivered slightly over 50% of all planes built, while greatly exceeding American champion Boeing in the number of new planes ordered. It's been going this way pretty much since the decade began, because after 40 years of subsidies from European governments, Airbus now has a complete family of transports that can aggressively compete in virtually any capacity/range category with Boeing.

In 1990, U.S. commercial transport producers had an 85% share of the global market and Airbus had a mere 15%. But as Airbus leveraged subsidies to aggressively price its planes and expand offerings, U.S. producers gradually lost ground. Lockheed exited the business in the 1980s. McDonnell Douglas effectively gave up in the 1990s. Boeing saw its market share fall from over 60% to under 50% in the current decade. As a result of these setbacks, tens of thousands of American aerospace jobs disappeared, and tens of billions of dollars in export earnings were lost.

This posting isn't about why policymakers should take illegal subsidies into account in comparing the Airbus and Boeing planes being proposed as a future Air Force tanker. I'll talk about that some other time. It's about something more basic: a political system that is so insular and disorganized that it allows its great industries to be destroyed one by one through unfair, anti-competitive behavior without even noticing, much less acting. We have seen similar decay in steel, in electronics, in shipbuilding, in chemicals, in paper and in autos -- and the net result is that America now runs a trade deficit in manufactured goods of over a billion dollars per day. Needless to say, this has not been a positive development for the U.S. dollar's role a reserve currency.

What bothers me, and no doubt Boeing, is how European governments have been allowed to deliberately and systematically destroy America's global lead in jet airliners without any real sense of outrage in Washington. The European governments and Airbus routinely issue dishonest statements about how Boeing gets unfair assistance too, but when the time came to lodge a case with the World Trade Organization, they didn't even allege that Boeing gets the kind of launch aid that has enabled Airbus to undercut Boeing on price. Instead, they referred to more modest types of aid that Airbus gets too.

The lesson of all this is that when countries have been Number One in the world for as long as America has, it takes a while to grasp that the global alignment of power is changing. We were indifferent when Japan kicked American auto companies out so Toyota would have a protected home market, and we were barely aware when China built up its steel industry to five times the size of ours. But if we don't start getting our act together on demanding fair treatment of our exporters -- starting with Boeing -- then we shall not be Number One for much longer.

Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/airbus-s...?a=1&c=1171

Hi Cwizardone

This was not FUD... all I refered to are FACTS about contemporary Nineteenth and Twentieth History, and a small but nonetheless legitimate question :

Who should "Have it all"...?

Yes, who...? Americans, Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Africans... ?

Who shoud be allowed to pollute the air and water for the sole sake of Indsutrial

profit... ?

I think that you would agree with me that ( despite the fact that we belong to different cultures and have different perspectives of what are the "conveniences" in International Trade, notions of Equity, Justice and Right are not strange concepts in both our cultures )
the "strength" of an agreement, like any one issued from the WTO for instance, is determined by the willingness of the vinculated parts to adhere to it.

In Short :

If an agreement causes mass unemployment, social convolutions, and massive economical damage to a Nation, wether it is America, Japan, EU ( I refer to EU as a "Nation" beacuse there is a common policy in trade ), China, is it morally correct to expect that Nation to still adhere to such an agreement...?

You see... in a globalized world where Finantial high-risk operations whose profit belongs to a few, and whose failure belongs to "every one else", like it happened with the consequences of the "subprime crisis" it is a bit of a complex issue to say that maket shares "belong" to A or B, IMHO.

What has American Finantial System done to the world Economy...?


BRGDS

Alex

Hi Cwizardone

Sadly for me, you shouldn't fear competition with Europe as much as with Asia.

As long as Chinese government will be eager to buy all bonds emitted by American Treasury and thus fund US deficit (at their own citizens' expense), you'll be able to keep American Way of Life.

But who knows how long this will last :scratch:

Best regards,

Don't ever assume anyone agrees with you. Your latest reply like the first is, again, all FUD as pertains to airbust and Boeing.
It has nothing to do with anything more than than fair competition. Nothing more, nothing less.

Which sort of suggests to me that the playing field wasn't all that level to start with hence the need for the subsidies.

Anyway, this has bugger all to do with Slackware and multilib so if you guys want to continue your argument over in 'general' I'm sure those of us not interested in arguments over US corporate interests would apprecate it.

Another vote for "/extra".

Exactly. And FUD, too. Plus, mis-informed in parts.

[IRONY]
I guess the money, that Europe invests into setting up its own aircraft industry is comparable to the amount of money the US spent in the past to fund former friends like Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. Hussein. Of course, they are no longer friends, so the money is lost, and not available to fund Boeing. Who need funding now, that they have international competition for the first time. Because they are not used to it.
EADS/Airbus should really have started in Seattle, without any money from anyone. Everthing else is unfair.
[/IRONY] ;)

BTW, Freedom Fries were invented in Belgium, so the former name "French Fries" should really be a thing of the past. ;)

Serious: *Your* post reads like FUD, and seems to suggest that the US government should protect its economy. But protectionism and globalization are contradicting concepts. If you want to protect your economy, yes, you can. But the consequence will be isolation, higher prices and inflation.

And really: The US car industry was not crushed by the Japanese. While it is true, that Japan is a closed market, it is too small to explain why the US car makers were unable to compete. As a matter of fact, they developed and built the wrong models, and they were unable to compete with models from Japanese and European competitors developed and manufactured in the USA. So they were not beaten in Japan, but at home. They just didn't understand the opportunities of globalisation.

But yes: Globalisation means that the same cake is shared by more parties, but it also means that the cake is getting bigger. Sometimes one can get a feeling the growth rate of the cake is slower than the speed at which the number of eaters increases.

As a European, I really feel your pain, thinking of renowned companies of the consumer electronics sector, that are now shadows of the past, like Grundig, to name just one.

Nevertheless I don't share your conclusion.

And as GazL said: This is highly interesting, but not related to Slackware or multilib, and should therefore be continued in another thread. Let's get back on topic.

gargamel

Speaking of multilib... :)
A friend just bought a new laptop and it came with the 64 bit version of windows 7. He asked me to "tweak" it for him and I've been playing with it for about 24 hours now. It would appear mickeysoft has their own version of "multilib" built-in as every 32 bit program I've installed has ran flawlessly. The only things that won't in install are the older 16 bit programs and drivers, many of which were still able to run under XP.
Overall, it looks like mickeysoft may have gotten it right this time, but it is still, from I've read about it, built on NT and is huge, but faster than previous version os ms-winbloat.
:)
Just FYI.