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fit-PC sells a box (the Intense PC) that is rebranded as the MintBox 2, which has Linux Mint preinstalled, with the Linux Mint project getting a cut of the profits.
Clement Lefebvre, the honcho at Linux Mint, notes[1] that the firmware has a security vulnerability which needs to be patched. Hilariously, the manufacturer's instructions call out a MS Windows-only tool.
[1] In the comments there, Clem responds to Kim, saying that Linux Mint has the tools available to get the job done. In the comments attached to a clickbait article at BetaNews, it was mentioned that dd (sometimes referred to as Data Dump), an app that comes with pretty much every Linux distro, will also do the task.
[Ed Note: The vast majority of fit-PC's products also come in Windows flavors. They are NOT a Linux only company. - cmn32480]
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PC Running Linux Mint: Use MS-Only Software to Fix It?
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @12:29AM (7 children)
OK. dd is an internal command, not a separate executable file.
So, "app" isn't the ideal word; "command" would have been better.
There's no requirement for the guy who compiled -your- kernel to include it, so there's a possibility that it's not there to be run.
There are a scad of interpretations/expansions of dd.
I picked 1 that is pretty common.
Do you have 1 you like better?
Does that cover all of your eye-rolling or did I miss something?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Monday June 12 2017, @02:04AM (2 children)
On my Linux system, dd is an executable file. Specifically, /bin/dd
Or has systemd managed to screw even that up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @02:58AM
Hmmm, yeah. There that sucker is.
That would seem to strike 1 of the sighs.
(It's still possible to omit it.)
...as well as the assertion of another commenter about its app-ness.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday June 12 2017, @09:13AM
If systemd's `rm -r .*` walks up the entire filesystem-hierarchy, you can fully expect systemd's `dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda3` to nuke all your hard disks, flash drives, blank DVDs, network shares, and brain-cells.
That behaviour is just an ordinary UNIX pitfall, no? [github.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday June 12 2017, @07:58AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:50AM (2 children)
I agree that "command" would have been a more appropriate word, but for different reasons. As others noted, dd is indeed an executable file.
However in my book an app (or application) is a program which is controlled through its UI (doesn't need to be a GUI; the point is that you first start the program, and then instruct it to do what you want. There may be command line options as well, but they don't cover the complete functionality. In particular, an app is normally not suitable to be used in a script, but perfectly suitable to be started interactively from environments that don't provide the option to easily provide arbitrary arguments at startup (such as the typical desktop environment).
OTOH, a command is controlled completely through its command line. Once you submitted that command, it just does its thing. It may ask some simple questions by default (Continue (Y/N), but that can be prevented using command line options as well. A command is perfectly usable from a script, but generally cannot be used easily from a desktop environment (except of course by either opening a terminal window with shell, or a "run command" dialog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
cannot be used easily from a desktop environment
Your exception actually means that a commandline invoked executable are very easy to use from a desktop environment, with the commandline switches it is in fact often easier than hunting through ever increasing levels of menus with a mouse. This is especially true if you are using something like fish or zsh as your terminal instead of bash/dash because of their smart autocomplete.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday June 12 2017, @09:53PM
*sh are not terminals, but shells. Terminals (or rather, terminal emulators) are xterm, konsole and Gnome-Terminal.
And no, I don't consider running commands from a terminal window as "running from a desktop environment". The terminal runs on the desktop environment. The command runs on the terminal.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.