Ask DACS
May 2012

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

AskDACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

Q – Can an iPhone that has no active cellular service account be used with Wi-Fi like an iPod Touch?
A - No one had direct experience with any "no account" smartphone so the suggestion was to try it. The questioner was unable to connect to the hospital network, hence the question. Rob Limbaugh reported that some older versions of iOS had problems connecting to Cisco Wi-Fi access points and that could be the problem in the auditorium. The iOS to Cisco incompatibility was fixed in the most recent versions of iOS. Another member turned off the cellular service radio in his iPhone (with current version iOS) and Wi-Fi continued to work just fine; however the problem iPhone was not on the current iOS. The next question was if it would be possible to update the iOS operating system using iTunes without the phone having an active cellular account. Again, no one has this experience. As I write this, I realized that my original Motorola Droid has this exact situation as I moved my Verizon account to my current Droid 3. Once I found a battery with sufficient charge, the phone booted up and immediately connected to my home Wi-Fi. It then downloaded and installed a new version of the Android operating system. After the reboot, it started to download email so Wi-Fi was clearly working without any cellular account. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Q - I tried to update an Ubuntu installation on an older laptop to the latest version (12.04) using the built-in update service (analogues to Windows Update). After the update, the screen is blank (no desktop) although the machine seems to boot.
A - Discussion rapidly centered on the video driver. Our resident Linux guru, Drew Kwashnak (aka: Dragonbyte on the DACS Forums) suggested booting the laptop using the 12.04 live CD. If the desktop appears, then the problem would likely be from the installation. If the live CD gives the same result as the installation (a blank screen or X-windows does not start), then Ubuntu 12.04 may not support the laptop's video chip. Searching for similar issues on the Ubuntu forums would be a good place to start to resolve an installation problem or ask about driver support (know your video chip when you ask). If there are no personal files on the disk, it may be easier to remove the failed installation and do a clean install to an empty disk.

The questioner then mentioned that he can log in to the guest account and the desktop appears just fine. This rules out a problem with the video driver, but now the problem is a configuration issue in the main user account. The next suggestion was to create a new user account. If that user account works, then just use the new account. Since you cannot create new users from the guest account, log in to a text console using the main user's credentials then use command-line utilities to create the new user account. If the new user works with the graphical user interface, then you're done.

Q - As a follow up to the previous question, does Ubuntu have a program than can detect the hardware in a machine (video, network, etc.) and then locate the best drivers?
A - In a quick search of the Ubuntu website (where full documentation is available), I could not find such a utility. According to the documentation, the installation program does detect the system hardware several times during the install process. Unfortunately I could not find a separate program to do this that would run under either Linux or Windows. Booting up Ubuntu 12.04 from a live CD would test whether that version includes the drivers needed for your computer.

Q - Are [open source] applications developed to run under Linux less secure than programs developed to run under Windows?
A - This is the classic open source versus closed source question and generated interesting discussion. The Open Source community has always claimed that the peer review made possible by the fact that the source code is available to everyone results in more secure software than the secrecy used by "conventional" software vendors. Yes, the code is available to the bad guys, but more than half of all websites run on Linux and this would not continue year after year if companies found that this made them more vulnerable. The questioner then added that the application in question is not open source but runs on Linux. This pointed out that not all Linux software is open source and the fact that it runs on Linux does not make it inherently less secure. Now the question becomes a comparison between Linux and Windows when both are properly configured with all up-to-date security updates. It boils down to which is more powerful - Zen or Karma? There is no clear answer.

Q - My website has disappeared. I received a message that my domain name was about to expire and by the time I looked, it had expired. Now my hosting service says they cannot renew the domain name.
A - Several members in the audience checked the domain in question and found that the domain name registration has expired. This is a serious situation because it is possible to lose the domain name. When the registration expires, the Domain Name System (DNS) removes the entry for the domain name from the root servers and the website and anything else related to the domain, like email, becomes unreachable. Except for pages cached by the search engines and possibly timemachine.com, it can appear as if the entire domain never existed. As one member pointed out, once the domain registration has expired, anyone can register that exact name. If the domain name appears valuable, companies called "drop-catchers" will poach the name the instant the registration expires. Until recently, they could then hold the domain for ransom, often extracting thousands of dollars. Changes in the regulations have resulted in a short grace period for the rightful owner to reclaim the name. The DACS website is now hosted at Bluehost.com and they act as our registrar as well because the domain registration is included with the hosting service. If you prefer a separate registrar, I have been using Register4Less.com for many years. They start sending warning emails about six months before a domain name expires, helping to avert a crisis. A quick check while writing this revealed that the questioner has regained control of the domain and the website is visible once again.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warranty as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!