I apologize for not having the time to make this shorter;
it's stolen from an email (hi craigbro). I
always plan to do far too much... Skip to the end, if you don't
like hearing people whine about their personal lives.
How To Dissapear Completely
Well, I have my computer back. Here's the whole story...
Apparently last week some senior was working on a project
and needed a
DHCP server. So he started it up, but didn't configure it
properly.
Suddenly, the whole network grinds to a halt as people
plugging their
Win98 laptops in get DHCPOFFERS back from him with
already-assigned
IPs and non-existing DNS servers.
Here's where the bogons suddenly align themselves and impact
into some
administrator's skull. "Oh no, what do we do? Quick, scan
the network
for anything odd and cut it off!" Well, I had rather
stupidly decided
to expiriment with Samba that week, because the "domain
controller"[1]
wouldn't recognize me and set up an entry in DNS like it
would for
everyone else's Win98 setup. (I was trying to get this
because (a) it
was a pain changing my IP with NickServ and eggdrops all the
time on
various IRC networks, and (b) master(.debian.org) wouldn't
let me log
in unless I connected indirectly through some
less-strictly-configured
machine.)
So there the clueless-administrator-monkeys are, sweeping
through our
whole subnet. They hit on my machine and notice that the
"windows
version" is being reported as 4.2. "Oh my God! That's not
possible!"
(from what I was told, apparently no one knows about Samba.)
Obviously
whoever set this thing up is Evil and Must Be Stopped.
Fortunately for
them, I made a rather stupid mistake setting samba up, and put
"Decklin" in the comment field. Phone calls ensue. "Do you
have a
student, named, uh, *squint* Decklin?" "Yes..." A few hours
later I
find security guards at my door.
Now, you would think that *someone* involved might have had the
intelligence to contact me, ask me if I knew anything, ask me to
disconnect until they figured it out, something. Fat chance.
As far as
they were concerned, it was perfectly acceptable to barge in and
forcibly seize my equipment. I was at least handed a
"warrant", which
turned out to be completely full of false information. I am
still
trying to track down the legality of that with some other
college
people.
In Limbo
Naturally, the first thing I ask is when I can even find out
what the
hell I'm being subjected to this confiscation of property
for. I'm
told that I will have to wait until Monday to even make an
appointment, and that the dean is out until Tuesday. Keep in
mind this
is Friday evening. So I run up to Res Life and find the
assistant
dean, who is still there but packing up to go home. "Ah
*yessss*, the
computer. You'll have to call me on Monday. Here's my card."
Two days pass... I get homework done far into the future and
make my
way through an entire Sunday Times for the first time in the
semester.
Idioteque
So I make my appointment, finally see Assistant-Dean-guy,
and get sent
back to Network-Wonk-guy ("this is technical stuff, I don't
understand
it."). It takes quite a bit of waiting to actually *find*
him. Now
things get interesting. I should point out that this guy is
not simply
an underpaid MCSE but a senior CS professor. I hear the
whole story
about what happened just before I was raided. He goes on to
ask me why
I'm running Linux, as that's a "server" operating system,
and running
"servers" is specifically[2] prohibited.
I give him the 60-second version of why I will not allow any
closed-source software to touch my desktop, ever. I list
every open
port on my box from memory and explain what they do (and
don't do,
without my password). This is pretty much like talking to a
wall.
Yeah, that's all well and nice, but it's a *server*! It
could do *bad
things*! I at least get him to admit it was wrong to take my
property
without even figuring out if I was behind the disruption or
not. It's
not like it takes a genius to read an IP off of DHCP packets.
Perhaps the worst part was telling him that the computer science
department should be *encouraging* students to run a free
operating
system. He said, roughly, "well, that's probably true, but
it should
be disconnected from the network or behind a firewall or
something." I
let him know that I was very offended. Open source is not
some toy or
something I occasionally dabble in; it's what runs my
network-life
24/7.
At this point I am offered a "deal". If I, or anyone else,
wants to
run Linux or *BSD or whatever, we will have to sign up, get
a static
IP, list exactly what daemons will be running, and leave our
phone
number and physical location. Of course, I thought this was
completely
absurd. So I said, "Fine. Just give me my property back" --
I wasn't
really in a position to argue with them keeping my hardware.
"Oh no, I
think we'll keep your computer locked up until we have this
policy
written." Here I just blew up and told him in no uncertain
terms that
there was no fscking way that they could keep my property when I
wasn't responsible for the offense on my "warrant". He gave
in pretty
easily. I still can't connect to the network, though.
So on monday evening I finally have my computer back. I floppy
whatever's important back and forth. The ridiculous part is
that my
school-issue laptop has been online all weekend. No one
could possible
tell the difference from outside, except perhaps that port
7101 is
open (and useless) on the laptop since I haven't installed
XF4 yet.
However, I'm not about to assume the Gestapo won't barge in
at random.
Now that they couldn't twist my arm with the locked-up
computer, I
wrote a very strongly-worded email to Network-guy (CCing my
professor,
who seems to be the only one on my side, but doesn't have
final word
in the department). The gist of it was that I am being unfairly
discriminated against, and there is no such thing as a "server"
operating system -- I know exactly what I'm running and I
could easily
download a Win32 proxy/DHCP server/whatever and wreak just
as much
havoc as any Linux user.
Wednesday (the next day after), I was able to catch up with my
professor,
and explain myself further. He calls the other professor and
I finally
get permission to connect to the network. I spent a really
long time
going over why I feel that having to do *anything* special just
because I'm running a different OS is unfair. I'm told that
the line
from those who want to set up this new policy is that a "large"
proportion of students and admins have screwed the network
over using
non-Windows operatings systems, but relatively no Windows
users have
done so. (Well, no shit, 90% of the people with Win98
laptops don't
install software themselves).
Oh, and I forgot to mention, the kid who installed the DHCP
server has
had network access the whole time. And didn't have his computer
stolen.
Optimistic
So now I'm just waiting for the policy so I can formally
complain
and/or threaten to sue. I'm composing a message to go out on the
school spam-list in the hopes of organizing some of the
people running
other servers. And regardless of what happens, I will not be
paying
this school tuition any longer. (Yes, looking for a school
the first
time sucked, and I wasn't even happy with my results at the
time.
Looking for a place to transfer to still sucks, and I have
my horrid
first-semester grades hanging over me.)
[1] See, I know this is the real MS phrase, but it helps a
lot if you
do it like Dr. Evil says "la-ser"... ;-)
[2] Read: vaguely. In a section of policy with the heading "Web
Servers".
Everything In Its Right
Place
In software news, I have become extremely frustrated with
the amount of important Moz chrome stuff that lives inside
packages (which I don't want to rewrite or try to work on in
the tree, until I dust off the minimal-browser project
again) and skins (which I can muck around with). Just
reorganizing files is driving me up the wall. Also started a few
more aewm fixes including (finally) forking properly. The
amount of bad WM_SIZE hints out there is staggering. I have
actually considered adding something like
-DSTUPID_TOOLKIT_KLUDGE that ignores any PSize of 200x200.
Trying to think up of a clever and/or bizarre way to
implement wc for class.
The National Anthem
I still think it's incredibly amusing that I had 4 people
sent into my dorm for computer-related "offenses" and not
one of them recognized the DeCSS source code printed out on
my door.