gmane.org.user-groups.bsd.nycbug

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Siraaj Khandkar — 2013-05-20T14:28:25

On May 19, 2013, at 9:30 AM, Justin Dearing <zippy1981< at >gmail.com> wrote:


I'm quite ignorant of the .NET world, so this doesn't mean very much to me,
but a cursory google for "f# WCF service reference" gave me this as first hit:

http://dotnet.dzone.com/news/building-wcf-services-with-f-p

Though because of my ignorance, I have no idea if that actually addresses your
concerns :)




My main point is that F# is not a domain specific language - it was designed to
be general purpose and delivers quite well on that. There's no reason to
pigeonhole it into any particular application.

Of course, whether or not anyone chooses to use any language (or OS, or
whatever) is mainly subjective preference, so there's no reason to be defensive
(or offensive) about that either ;)

RE: Monads - they're only required in a pure language (Haskell, Miranda, Idris,
etc). MLs are impure, so you can have as many side effects as you please. In
fact, most F# that I've seen around (which isn't much, mind you) is heavily
imperative i

vBSDcon Website Is Up!

Rick Miller — 2013-05-20T13:22:44

Hi all,

In April 2013, Verisign announced the inaugural biennial vBSDcon event
in Dulles, VA to occur October 25 – 27, 2013. In the weeks since the
initial announcement, the vBSDcon website has been activated with
details on the dates and location of the event. The website is
available athttp://www.vbsdcon.com/.

Some details have yet to be published, but will be available on the
official vBSDcon website in the coming weeks. Please check back
periodically for new updates!

--
Take care
Rick Miller

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Justin Dearing — 2013-05-19T13:30:36

Like i said I never coded F# so I'm speaking from the experience of others.
However I don't think you can generate a WCF service reference (SOAP client
stub code) in F#. I would also assume if you were implementing your own
ILogger in log4net, you'd prefer C# or VB.NET because you'd be writing a
lot of boilerplate inherit a class and overwrite all these methods code.
Maybe someone who always codes in F# or ML languages would do that in F#.
The only functional programming I've done in javasccript closures and
anonymous delegates and lambas in C#. Perhaps if I ever grok monads I will
think different.

Justin

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Siraaj Khandkar — 2013-05-19T03:22:35

On May 17, 2013, at 1:57 PM, Pete Wright <pete< at >nomadlogic.org> wrote:


R and F# are as different as they come: R is quick and dirty DSL for explorative statistics and is a poor fit for developing systems, while ML and thus F# is a language focused on safety, expressiveness and pragmatic interoperability, so it is excellent for developing complete systems [1] (not just math).


[1]: As in "business systems", not as in "operating systems" (for that it would also be terrible :))

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Siraaj Khandkar — 2013-05-19T03:07:46


There's no reason to make that distinction, if you like the language you'll
use it for whatever, if not - you'll avoid it. I happily write plumbing code
in OCaml.



Are you making that distinction based on availability of 3rd party libs?
Because if so - I'm pretty sure one can easily call other .NET code from F#.

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Siraaj Khandkar — 2013-05-19T02:57:57

On May 16, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Pete Wright <pete< at >nomadlogic.org> wrote:



F# is one of the latest additions to the ML [1] family of languages, which are strongly, statically-typed, mostly-functional [2] languages, sporting Hindley–Milner type inference (so type-annotations are optional).

It was originally modeled on OCaml [3], though leaving-out some important features (like functors and first-class modules) and adding a bunch of .NET-specific stuff.

I'm a regular user of OCaml and spent only a few concentrated days exploring F# - my impression was that if you're hopelessly stuck in MS/.NET world - F# is quite a treat. For a *nix user, OCaml is probably a better choice [4] - you get the unadulterated ML goodness (functors), excellent Unix interface [5] and compilation down to blazing-fast native code.

To be fair, F# did introduce some very cool new features like concurrency primitives - async tasks. You can also do shared memory parallelism (due to .NET's concurrent GC) whereas in OCaml you'd have to fo

MiniPCI WiFi cards free to a good home

Brian Callahan — 2013-05-17T21:39:26

Hi talk --

As the subject line says, I have a bunch of minipci (not minipci-e; what 
I have are the bigger, older) wifi cards that I don't need anymore, so 
I'm offering them to nycbug people for free. These cards are good for 
soekris and mikrotik boards, and older laptops. Please check to make 
sure you can use them.

Other OpenBSD devs (and free/net/dfly devs) get first priority (if 
you're a f/n/d dev, let me know so you can get the dev bump); other than 
that, first come first served.

All cards are used but presumed working (I no longer have the hardware 
to test, but there's no reason these cards should not work).

Here's a list of what I have, plus their corresponding OpenBSD driver:
* ALPHA Networks WMP-N06SA.03, Atheros AR5008+AR5416 (athn)
* Broadcom BCM94318MPG Rev 4 (bwi - may not work on OpenBSD/other BSDs)
* Intel WM3B2200BG (iwi)
* Unknown AR5212A (ath)
* Unknown RTL8185L (no OpenBSD [no BSD?] driver - write your own!)
* Unknown WL-850R/E, RT2561T (ral - should work but never tested)

I'd pr

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Pete Wright — 2013-05-17T17:57:52

ah ok thanks Justin!  We've been adopting "R" in my domain over here - 
so it sounds like F# may fit a similar role as that.  Got it.


I agree with you this.  I've been following mono for ages now ever since 
I was at a gnome dev conference and miguel announced and gave a pretty 
exciting live tutorial on mono.

sometimes i feel that is the R&D guys and most of the engineering talent 
at microsoft were able break free from the business constraints of 
trying to maintain various monopolies we'd be seeing some *really* 
interesting cross platform code out there.  but then my company decides 
to force everyone to use the office365 cloud products and i turn back to 
my normal hater self :)


thanks again for your perspective on this - i feel like it's always good 
to keep a well stocked toolbox of computer languages handy, kinda like 
my liquor cabinet...

cheers,
-pete

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Justin Dearing — 2013-05-17T14:09:40

I'll try to answer objectively. I've never written F# personally. I've
written a lot of CLR code in C# and powershell, and when forced at gunpoint
VB.NET. I don't have a suggestion for a tutorial. As far as when you want
to use it, its an extension of OCAML, and there is an option to compile
pure OCAML code. Its a really good language for implementing algotithims.
Its not good for "plumbing code." So as an example, if you were writing a
daytrading system in the CLR, you code to talk to the bloomberg terminal,
and talk to the system that executes the trade should be in C#. The code
that's taking your data from your bloomberg terminal and doing all kinds of
crazy math to determine when and what to buy and sell should be in F#.

F# is apache licensed[1] and bundled in mono. I've never seen an instance
of Microsoft harming an open source .NET project via copyright or patent
claims. Miguel, the head of mono has a commercial  business that produces
Visual Studio plugins to let you develope in the CLR and deploy o

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Marc Spitzer — 2013-05-17T04:41:27

Not sure, I just saw thos on hacker news and though it might be of interest

marc


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Pete Wright <pete< at >nomadlogic.org> wrote:

Re: instructions for building f# on freebsd

Pete Wright — 2013-05-16T17:50:26

I am new to F# - is there a good tutorial and/or good usecase of when I 
would want to use F#?  It looks like it is built on top of Microsoft's 
.NET CLR - is that a good thing?

I'm not trolling - just hoping someone on the list has experience with 
this lang that provide some insight :)

cheers,
-pete

instructions for building f# on freebsd

Marc Spitzer — 2013-05-16T17:41:58

basic instructions for getting f# up and running on freebsd:

http://fsharp.org/use/freebsd/

thought it might be useful to some,

marc

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

James Marcus — 2013-05-10T17:56:53

 I also thought the details on this backdoor were pretty weak.  I only read
about the vulnerability last night but I did run the python script on all
our webservers this morning and everything returned clean.

James


On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Pete Wright <pete< at >nomadlogic.org> wrote:

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

Pete Wright — 2013-05-10T17:27:41


yea i agree with you on that jesse, as well as with bob's earlier point 
along the same lines.

i gotta say i do like how this backdoor runs out of shared memory and 
apparently doesn't leave any traces of itself on the filesystem.  i'm 
certain that has been done before - but thought it was a pretty novel 
idea :)

-pete

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

Jesse Callaway — 2013-05-10T15:04:21

they believe will detect this code.  it's pretty simple - so i'm not sure
how reliable it is tbh.
binary?
often,yes. sometimes no?

but yeah if it's a binary install then checksumming would be a great first
approach. what's scary about all this is there's no vulnerability that's
been pointed out... just seems to magically infect

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

Chris Snyder — 2013-05-10T14:13:35




Isn't detection a matter of comparing the system's httpd to a known-clean
binary?

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

Bob Ippolito — 2013-05-10T00:45:41

It looks like this just a backdoor that someone would install once they
have already penetrated your system through some other vulnerability. The
backdoor doesn't seem like it should be particularly platform specific, the
shared memory APIs are cross-platform. I'm sure the author of this backdoor
could easily generate binaries for any platform/web server combination that
they decide is worth their time. In any case, finding this backdoor would
just be a symptom that you have some vulnerability in addition to the one
that the backdoor introduced.


On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Pete Wright <pete< at >nomadlogic.org> wrote:

Re: Cdorked.A Backdoor

Pete Wright — 2013-05-10T00:17:44


had some cycles to dig deeper - found a python script from eset.ie that 
they believe will detect this code.  it's pretty simple - so i'm not 
sure how reliable it is tbh.  here's a link to a wordpress site which is 
hosing the python script (that's not sketchy at all is it?):

http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/dump_cdorked_config.7z


tl;dr version if you don't want to grab the script.

- defines a key and size of a linux shared memory segment:
  17 SHM_SIZE = 6118512
  18 SHM_KEY = 63599

- attempts to load librt.so via ctypes python module so it scan interact 
directly with systems shared memory pool:
  22 try:
  23   rt = CDLL('librt.so')
  24 except:
  25   rt = CDLL('librt.so.1')

- the scanning/detection bit is a little fuzzy to me atm - although i 
believe it looks for a chunk of shared memory allocated at SHM_KEY of 
SHM_SIZE assuming the backdoor exists if this pattern is matched.

dunno...still scratching my head about this whole thing....my current 
suspicion is that if t

Cdorked.A Backdoor

Pete Wright — 2013-05-09T23:45:06

Hey - anyone else been able to find more reliable information on this 
backdoor?  This is pretty much the only semi-useful information I've 
been able to dig up on it today:

http://www.welivesecurity.com/2013/05/07/linuxcdorked-malware-lighttpd-and-nginx-web-servers-also-affected/

While I'm specifically interested to see is if this is an application 
level vuln, something to do with the linux kernel's only ,thus making my 
*BSD servers mostly safe, or what...

Thanks!
-pete

Re: Crypto Anarchy

Charles Sprickman — 2013-05-01T02:08:29


I was thinking of the situation in Iraq after things were destroyed
- a cafe owner or similar selling service at the premise, providing
some basic cost-shared access.

Looks like the Iranians have few options, this article notes that
VPNs are being blocked (except for "registered" VPNs, heh), and that
in October they were trying to jam satellites:

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-internet-censorship/24926892.html

Not sure if they are just trying to block DBS or internet services
over satellite:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/201112wsjammingconference.html


Any idea how this works?  I can see localizing a cell phone, but
triangulating on a sat phone must require some interesting
cooperation.


I have two Couriers. :)

(and no POTS)


This looks kind of neat - the head of the screw breaks off after installation:

http://www.securityfasteners.net/Security-Machine-Screws/Security-Shear-Screws-Security-Breakaway-Screw.html

C

Re: Crypto Anarchy

George Rosamond — 2013-04-30T23:52:38

Charles Sprickman:

Well, in terms of unfiltered internet, the most common solutions are
VPNs from external countries plus Tor.  Satellite data is costly for the
average person.

For the US military and associated, they do use a lot of satellite
comms, with the still horrible latency, AFAIK.


The real scary thing about satellite comms is the tracking.  A bunch of
phones were apparently sent to assist some dissidents in one particular
country, and meanwhile, their adversary bought the access codes from
another country, which turned them into essentially homing devices.

"Hey, here's a sat phone!" was replaced with "Hey, here's a target on
your head!"


I think a lot of dated solutions are relevant again.  Need to bypass a
country shutting down internet access?  Dial-up modems.  A bunch of ISPs
were providing free dial-up numbers in Egypt when the pipes were shut,
and it worked.

Someone who used to be around NYC*BUG but moved far away was stockpiling
"analog" hardware, and I mocked him.  Well, a lot of decen