[ELECTRON] Electron Club, excess bandwidth and computers

Thu Jan 6 14:04:32 UTC 2011

Ross,

The wireless password was unchanged, as per my first email in this thread:

The room still has it's WIFI point, at the moment secured with WPA-PSK, the
details for which are on the poster on the right as you enter the room.
I plan on investigating this more at a later date.
I disabled the WIFI point on the modem running in the comms room. There was
no point in us having two.

I'm not convinced that anyone would waste time cracking the WPA passphrase,
given that there are two other open access points in the area.

I've no reason to suspect that unauthorised wireless use was the cause of
the excess. I plan on seeing if we have any spare networking kit at work,
ideally I'd like to router in the room to be running a decent firmware
(open/dd-wrt) which would allow us more control over the services and
enhanced services/WIFI security. If anyone would like to donate a working *
sensible* router that would be great ;)

I managed to telnet in to the router after getting it into debug mode, in
theory reflashing to a stock firmware would be possible, as Virgin media
have crippled it with their custom firmware. I didn't have time on the day
to investigate further, and under the old adage of 'you brick it, you bought
it' I decided it best not to leave the room without any network access, as
it was a few days to Christmas, and I had other things to be doing.

Thanks

Martin

On 6 January 2011 13:52, Ross Feilen <gm7wed at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> We had a look at Ben's shuttle-sized PC yesterday evening in the SOLDER
> group and all seemed well with it. It might have a run-out BIOS battery as
> when we booted it up, the CMOS settings including time had been forgotten.
> It seems to have a clean version of Ubuntu on it, though I've no idea which
> kernel version.
>
> It looks like quite a nice machine, certainly faster and better powered
> than the existing linux computer, so would be a very nice addition to the EC
> room.
>
> I also noticed that the wireless password for the EC was unchanged from
> before, wasn't it to get changed to prevent wireless hacking possibilities?
>
> Ross
> SOLDER group
> Radio callsign GM7WED
>
>
> On 6 January 2011 13:44, Martin McGrath <mcgrath.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've booked the room for 18/01/2010.
>>
>> I plan on building a system using the computer very kindly donated by Ben
>> (thank you), this will relace the  and rebuilding the existing linux machine
>> with a supported version of Ubuntu (from a currently unsupported version).
>>
>> Please consider this a reminder if you need anything backed up, either let
>> me know what and where it is or do it yourself before the date mentioned
>> above.
>>
>> Bob, do you have any further information on the linux machine + flat
>> screen monitor you had mentioned before? It may be a more powerful machine
>> than the existing Ubuntu machine.
>>
>> Simon, where do we stand with the bill for the excess. Is there a way
>> people can make donations to cover this?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On 22 December 2010 14:43, Martin McGrath <mcgrath.martin at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> I've spent quite some time here over the last couple of days
>>> investigating potential causes of bandwidth excess problem.
>>>
>>> There are two machines currently connected to the router in the club
>>> room.
>>>
>>> 1. Compaq 5221, AMD K6 380Mhz, 320MB RAM. Running Windows XP, missing
>>> lots of patches, no Antivirus software installed.
>>> 2. Ubuntu based machine, reasonable spec CPU, 512MB RAM. Running an
>>> unsupported (ergo unpatched) version of Ubuntu.
>>>
>>> In the interests of security please don't operate a Windows PC without
>>> anti virus software installed, it's just common sense.
>>> Please user Firefox as your default web browser.
>>>
>>> The XP machine had no application software other than uTorrent (a bit
>>> torrent client) and CClean installed.
>>> This machine is terribly slow, I've earmarked a machine to replace it
>>> which is significantly faster and we have more RAM in the cupboard which I
>>> can fit.
>>>
>>> Do we really need a Windows machine in the club? I'd like feedback on
>>> this please.
>>> A linux machine is just as easy to use for everything this machine could
>>> have been used for, and far easier to maintain.
>>>
>>> The XP machine passed a full system virus scan and three rootkit scans.
>>>
>>> I plan to upgrade the Ubuntu machine to a version of the operating system
>>> which is at least supported. If anyone has data they'd like backed up please
>>> do so, or let me know where and what it is and I'll do it for you.
>>>
>>> The room still has it's WIFI point, at the moment secured with WPA-PSK,
>>> the details for which are on the poster on the right as you enter the room.
>>> I plan on investigating this more at a later date.
>>> I disabled the WIFI point on the modem running in the comms room. There
>>> was no point in us having two.
>>>
>>> I'm not convinced that anyone would waste time cracking the WPA
>>> passphrase, given that there are two other open access points in the area.
>>>
>>> I plan on documenting and laminating some notes about EC kit, the
>>> network, the computers etc. I'll get round to this once I've fixed up the
>>> systems in question.
>>>
>>> Snail mail has arrived for the following people, I've left it in a neat
>>> pile on the table:
>>>
>>> Mitch Miller
>>> Glasgow Social centre limited (two items)
>>> Robert Hamilton
>>> Jonathan Agnew (two items)
>>>
>>> When I arrived yesterday the place was a bit of a mess. There were chairs
>>> all over the place, some rubbish on the table, an old mug of what I assume
>>> was coffee and papers scattered over the desks.
>>>
>>> I've done a little tidying but I've got other things I need to be doing
>>> at the moment.
>>> The room is a space for all of us, please tidy up before leaving.
>>>
>>> Have a nice Christmas and a safe New Year.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> members mailing list
>> members at electronclub.org
>> http://lists.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
>>
>> Instructions for changing your mailing list settings:
>> http://lists.electronclub.org/emailhowto.html
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> members mailing list
> members at electronclub.org
> http://lists.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
>
> Instructions for changing your mailing list settings:
> http://lists.electronclub.org/emailhowto.html
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electronclub.org/pipermail/members/attachments/20110106/0ead113d/attachment.htm>