Cool. Thank you, Lee.
Okay.
Welcome to the Wednesday night, October 8th. St. Louis Linux Users Group meeting.
Uh, we have two presentations tonight. Number one's gonna be Scott Graniman, continuing his, uh.
Exhibition of bad UX design. And after that, we'll have, uh, the middle of the Oreo cookie, and then after that, I'll be talking about WireGuard VPN.
All right, thank you very much.
Scott, the floor is yours.
at least you didn't say he'll continue spewing.
That's a good thing.
Let me get the window open…
Here we go. You guys see the title slide, Design Failures?
A bad news or experience.
Cool. Alright, so the subtitle's gonna make sense in just a moment.
Yes, we see that.
But it's true. So, um, this is all about design failures.
So, last time I was talking about UX and how to think about it, and this time I'm going to focus purely
on issues that are bad. So, I think you're gonna really enjoy these, because there's some truly horrific…
awful, um…
UX and UI examples that you're gonna see.
So, let's go ahead and start. Um, there's the classic, right? Do you want to enable, disable, or do you want to disable enabling, disable?
Which one do you want to do? Right? Totally clear, makes total sense, you don't have to think about it at all.
That's giving you the overall flavor of what we're going to be talking about tonight.
Um, it's worse. So, I've divided this up into several different groups.
that, uh, we'll be looking at. And so, the very first group is clarity versus Confusion.
And these are all examples where things could be clarified a little bit better, and since they're not, you tend to get confused.
And we're gonna start right off the bat with labeling.
And this is labels that go next to form elements, next to UI elements, things like that. And often,
You know, if you need labels, sometimes you have a confusing interface, you know? Like, we all say, oh, it should be easy to use without any instruction. That's not always the case, right? Uh, sometimes we need to have labels explaining what things are.
that can be really useful. But, sometimes, if you need a label, you got a problem. So, right here, the fact that it's voice activated, and they're telling you…
To say loudly, paper towel now, well, that's kind of defeating the purpose of a voice-interacted interface, right? I shouldn't need to be told.
But even worse, right, not soap, soap, not soap, soap, not soap, soap.
Right? If it's that confusing that somebody needs to go in and put sticky notes,
over which nozzle does what, I would say you have a problem.
This is a great example, how do I know if the door is locked or unlocked? Well, we put a piece of tape on it with the word locked on it, so you know. Again…
That's a problem. Swipe with strip-facing cardholder. You are the cardholder.
So, I love that detail, right? Like, people are going, now, wait a sec.
I've got this card in my hand, but who's the cardholder again?
And so, this is both an example of, hopefully we wouldn't need this labeling, we wouldn't need the you are the cardholder.
Um, but also the fact they have to put that there says something about the people using this.
Now, too many labels, especially if you don't have text, can be completely baffling.
So, sometimes we need text. Sometimes icons are not enough. And I think this is a fabulous example.
This is from a dryer. Well, I have no idea what most of these mean. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16 different icons on here. Notice,
Some of them are… have text, most of them don't, and if you looked at these,
I would say most of them you have no idea. Like, on the left, what's the shirt with a 3 on it? What's that mean?
Or, also on the left, what's the circle with the plus in it? What's that mean? I have no idea.
So, in this case, you need a manual to understand how to use your dryer correctly, because the icons just aren't doing it. And if they could put text on some of them…
Why couldn't they put text on all of them?
Labels should always be clear. Now, I love this example.
This is absolutely horrible. Um…
This is…
toggles. Now, here's the question. What… is the first one off or on?
How about the third one? How about the fourth? Is the fourth one off?
are on? What about the 5th?
Right? I have no idea, because I could see, well, they made the green, like, the background color to stand out,
That's gotta be the one that's active, or I could also see going, well, green's the background, maybe they made the ones that are black active.
But, really, you're gonna love this detail, because I hit it, now I'm gonna reveal it to you.
Pay attention to that second one. This is awesome.
The second one's off, but the row is highlighted, so they invert the colors.
That's gonna make it all more crystal clear. So…
The color usage isn't even consistent throughout this, not to mention, it's not even clear what's off or on, and especially when you have it selected what's off or on.
Now, um, this is another subsection of it, and I call this good intentions, terrible execution. People had the best interest at heart, they tried to do the right thing, they wanted to do the right thing, but they failed at execution. So, this is from a newspaper article. Question of the day. What should cause less?
A gallon of gas or a gallon of milk. Yes, no.
Um, that doesn't answer the question for me. I have…
That doesn't tell me what… which one's gas, which one's milk, and why do you have yes or no in there? That makes no sense.
This one. Um, you know, if I'm in an emergency evacuation situation,
The thing I want to be doing is stopping getting myself out and scanning a QR code so I can learn what to do.
That is nuts. Nobody wants to be doing this in an emergency evacuation.
And this one, this next one is near and dear to my heart. I know the people intended it to be good.
And oh my goodness. So, these people at a children's hospital decided, you know what?
Maybe if we added some bright colors,
the kids might like it more, and maybe if we help provide directions through the hallway with those bright colors, uh, kids might like it more, they might feel a little, you know, more like they enjoy being at the hospital, because hospitals are scary things for kids and families.
Let's make it a little more friendly. So, that's what they decided to do.
Now, when I look at that,
I don't think, oh, that's really cute! There's a splash of red leading me through the hospital.
I see somebody got murdered, and they're dead, bleeding body was dragged through the hospital.
Right? I mean, this is not going to reassure anybody. This is horrible. And in fact, when I see that, I think, you know, Dr. Giggles will be in to see you shortly.
Then we get to inscrutable interfaces. This is where you're supposed to understand how an interface works, but part of it is completely inscrutable. You'd have no idea.
So, I love this example from Adobe. Um, this is rather old, but still. Some names of the files being saved will be truncated to 31 characters.
To change your file name options, click the Optimize Flyout menu,
Choose Edit Output Settings and select Saving Files. Okay, cool. I gotta find the optimized flyout menu. Okay, let's look at the menus.
I don't see optimized flyout…
anywhere. Uh…
Okay, I see optimized as a tab.
But I don't see any labeled optimized flyout menu. Well, stupid me!
The optimized fly-out menus, that little tiny icon in the top right there, with a little tiny triangle next to it,
There it is! That's the optimized flyout menu, which of course is a term we all know.
Right? Optimize fly-out menu. We know what that is. How silly could we be?
And then this next one, you're gonna see a lot of examples from Microsoft. I know you're all shocked. So, this next one is for Microsoft Teams.
Yeah, it's really helpful to have settings and preferences. That makes it crystal clear where to go if I want to change things. Really, guys?
And plus, if you… if a dialogue box opens, you're supposed to have an ellipsis after it, so with settings, I'm like, okay, when I hit Settings, something's gonna open up where I can make choices.
But why doesn't preferences… what is that gonna do? If I click it, it just does something without asking me first?
Truly horrible. Now, this section is called False Affordances, and affordance in UX
indicates to you what you can do with an object. So, a doorknob is an affordance for a door. It indicates this is where you grab and turn and pull or push.
Okay? On a computer, keys on a keyboard are affordances. If you want to enter text, you type on the keyboard.
Right? So, these are false affordances where it looks like they're enabling you to do something.
But not really. So, this is great. Um, I was using Safari and exporting a video, and underneath it, it says saving, about 10 seconds, and I thought, oh, that's a link! It's blue, it's underlined.
I can click on it. No, no, it's not a link. It's just blue and underlined, because they want to screw with everybody.
There is no other good reason for it.
And then this is from Missouri Casenet. Now, this is a case…
Where, learn more, learn more, learn more, learn more, learn more, right? That is not helpful. That is not being a good affordance, right? Uh, what am I gonna get with each of these? Why not label the buttons for what they're actually gonna do, instead of using useless text, like learn more? And worse, if I'm disabled, and I'm having this read to me by a screen reader, all I'm gonna hear is, learn more, learn more, learn more. That's not very helpful.
And then we get to bad,
buttons. These are buttons that are poorly placed or poorly labeled.
Uh, I actually took this picture. Um, why…
are the buttons in that order? Why is it 1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7? Why is the 2…
Below the 3, that makes absolutely no sense to me, it's very confusing.
And then we have this lovely, uh, button for an elevator, right? Hey, let's go with multiple styles for each of the buttons.
Uh, that way it's much simpler to everybody, right? And it's colorful.
This next one, please select destination floor. Okay.
Negative 2, negative 1R, negative 1… I didn't know I could be on negative floors. 01, and then it wraps down and over to the right.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, then it wraps down over to the right, 7, 8, 9… is that the way anybody…
thinks of buttons to go to different floors? I don't think so, it's not very good. What does negative 2 mean?
Now, this is one of my favorites. These are 4 buttons on an oven.
that, uh, light up, that heat up different burners, right? Well, the problem is, which goes with which burner? Well, here's the handy key to help you know.
Like, what?
So, why does the second one
Why does the bottom one go to the top…
right, but the second one up goes to the bottom right, right? These buttons make no sense how they're organized, and you'll notice on the left, they have a little
tiny icon there, where they're trying to indicate which one is which, but it's not exactly a confu- it's not exactly a clear shape with clear shapes in there, so every time, every single time, you're gonna have to look at this. Now, the way I've seen it done on other ovens would be the two on the right and left
are lower, and the two in the middle are higher. That way you know, oh, the one on the bottom left,
The one on the left goes to the bottom, the one that's a little higher on the left goes to the one above that.
And so on. So, placement works. This sort of thing, where you require awkward labeling to even begin to understand how this works, is a failure.
Now, next major section.
Feedback and error prevention. Very important. We need feedback, and it's a good thing.
To prevent errors. So, I call this part Safety Last.
Um, so you're gonna love this. So, yeah, uh, let's put the fire hydrant in case of fires.
behind a stairwell handles, so it's easy to get to in case of a fire, right? I mean, clearly, this is where you want to go.
This next one, oh my god, I laughed so hard, and I shouldn't. Um, so, you know, these people are trying to make a wheelchair-accessible stairway. I salute that, that is very important, except, if you were in a wheelchair, would you want to look at that to go down the stairs?
Uh, I think not. Uh, I think, in fact, that looks a lot more like Mario Kart.
Because you're going to go hurtling down those stairs at top speed into God knows what. So that would actually be terrifying, not helpful.
Imagine you have been drinking a little too much, and you're trying to get to your room in a hotel.
I had the feeling you would be falling on your face almost immediately. This would not be helpful in the slightest.
And then, you guys know about those generic, uh, containers people have, right? They're trying to be cheap, like Kirkland has good stuff, but it's all in, like, a Kirkland container and so on. Well,
Um, these geniuses have black and gold as their brand, and so they use black and gold on all their canisters. Well, clearly,
Um, you want the fly and insect killer to look exactly like the cooking spray.
Because that's not gonna be harmful or confusing to anybody at all.
Then, we have this one, um, that man is going to die.
Okay? Or seriously get injured. There is… there's no way around that. I have the feeling it's not up to code. I could be wrong.
But I have the feeling. But even better is that one, right? I mean…
Again, that guy is going to die. It's only a matter of time.
Now, this is one of my favorite
annoyances. Warn users BEFORE!
things happen. So, so… this drives me nuts. So many user interfaces, hide password information until after you submit the form, and it always makes me mad. I'm like, why didn't you tell me this?
Before I did this, why inform me later? So, in this example, at OpenPathCC, it says, okay, you need to supply a phrase to be associated,
Uh, notice it says it's got to be difficult to guess, only you can remember. Uh, only your… they don't give you any guidelines whatsoever. So I type something in, and it goes, oh, no, no, 20 characters minimum.
Like, why didn't you tell me that before I typed it in?
Here's another example. Um…
You know, it says expiration date, so, okay, what's that gonna look like? So I type 01 slash 23, and it goes, no, no, no, no, no, you can't put slashes in there.
Well, give me information about what the date should look like, then, before I do it.
You know, don't tell me after I type a commonly common method for putting dates in, and then down at the bottom with phone number, I type my phone number with hyphens. That's how I always do it. I submit, it goes, oh, no, no, no, only numbers.
Well then, why didn't you tell me I could only do numbers BEFORE, and more importantly, you know it's a phone number, it looks like a phone number, you take the hyphens out, and I'm going to talk about that more in a minute.
Here's another example. I like to use 35-character passwords if I can.
Because I want to be secure. I have a password manager, I don't need to remember these passwords. Make a long one for me, that way I can just use that. Great! So, I'm creating an account at HitFilm.
And I put in my name, my email, and my password. I hit submit, and it says, oh no, no, it has to be between 8 and 25 characters.
Tell me that before I do it!
Um, again, here's another example. At Pizza World.
Password must be between 8 and 20 characters, with a number, a lowercase letter, an uppercase letter.
Tell me that before I put the password in.
Now, this one is, you know, better yet…
Not only tell me before I put the information in, but try to make sense
Also, so what you're telling me isn't insane? So, I went back, back in the day, I went to IKEA, and I was… this is after I got my password manager, and I was upgrading all of my passwords everywhere. And so I went to IKEA, and I'm gonna upgrade my password.
So, here you go, you gotta type in your old password, then the new one, then re-enter it, and notice it has rules.
Gotta have at least 7 characters, gotta have a digit, gotta have a letter, can't be the same as your username, cannot have 3 of the same consecutive characters, nor 4 of the same characters, and already I'm going, oh my god.
why so many rules? But I'm like, okay, no problem. I put my old password that had been working!
And then I put new passwords in, I hit save and continue,
And it came back and said, oops, something went wrong, the max length for password is 10 characters. Well, that's really incredible, considering my password had been 20.
So, all of a sudden now, after I've been using a 20-character password for years, now you come back and say, oh, no, no, it could only be 10.
Which tells me they must have been truncating my 20-character password to 10 without telling me, which really sucks. And then, notice,
For the new password, it says, okay, the max length has to be 20, the max length has to be 10.
What? So…
The max length for new passwords is 20, but it's also 10, uh, which is which? That doesn't make any sense.
So, I typed it in, uh, and I made it 10, but notice that it said 2010? Well, I typed in as 20. It's like, oh, no, no, you moron. It's 10.
Thanks for telling me this, and really confusing me. And notice, by the way, I truncated my old one to 10, and that worked. That really hacked me off.
You know, and here's another one.
That just seems like, uh, Scott, that just seems like a bug, not a UX design problem.
Is that the same thing? Yeah.
Well, some of these are bugs, that these should be tested. Somebody should have tested this. That is confusing to the user, regardless if it's a bug or not, instructions need to match what you can do, and if you don't have it,
That's a UX problem. Whether it was a bug or not.
Most of these are mistakes.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Has anybody heard me complaining that nobody tests software anymore? And they have 12-year-olds deciding what new features they're gonna have.
There you go. So, I like this also.
Sometimes with passwords,
I'm sorry, that's a cost.
Instead of telling you what is allowed, it'd be far easier if you just told me what's not allowed.
And that would work. So…
Uh, sorry, telling me what is allowed, I need to fix that slide. Just tell me what is allowed, not what is not. Your password needs to be at least 8 characters, no more than 25. Okay, I can handle that.
It must contain at least two letters, one uppercase and one lowercase. Okay. It must contain at least one number and one symbol, and then it gives me 15 symbols there.
Well, why don't you just tell me what I can't use, instead of listing all these symbols that I'm supposed to use?
Here's another example, again.
Um, okay, please enter a new password below.
Please note, special characters are limited to the following. Again.
Just tell me what I can't use, that's gonna be shorter than what you're giving me. That's way too long.
of an explanation.
Okay, poor wording.
I just have one example here, but it's classic. This is real. Are you sure you want to cancel this action? Click OK to cancel, or cancel to continue.
That's crystal clear, isn't it?
And then I call this section, not helpful, this is not helpful. So,
You know, labeling, like a label on a form field, or elsewhere in a UI,
Labeling should clarify, not confuse?
Ideally. So, here we go. Social Security number! And what happens when you click on it? SSN. Thank you!
That really helps clarify what that's going to be. Now I know it's an SSN, not a social security number. Not helpful.
Also, avoid a possible state that the user shouldn't have been able to to get into in the first place.
So, I like this. Logout failed. You need to be logged in to log out. Please log in to log out.
Well, if I need to be logged in to log out, why did you have a button saying I could log out when I haven't logged in?
Why even make that available to somebody to push? That doesn't make sense. Why let me get into a state that doesn't make any sense?
Make sure feedback's useful to the user.
You know, error messages should not cover the thing you're being told to fix. So, hey, your display name's wrong, here's what you gotta do, let's cover what you already typed in so you can't see it.
Now, this next one's awesome.
Failed to print document. Printing's not supported on this printer.
Come on, dummy! You can't print on this printer!
Very helpful.
The following application should be closed.
abort? Retry? What applications need to be closed? Thanks.
This is a classic Microsoft Internet Explorer era. Now, this is a bug.
But, a user is gonna see this, and this is not gonna be helpful in the slightest.
At all. Here's another example where I'm at my credit union website, and it's putting this regulation information on the top that I don't care about, I don't know what to do with, it's just noise.
Here's another one. This, I love this. This page has none specified potential security flaw, would you like to continue? Huh? Huh?
Do you want to continue? It's got a security flaw. I'm not gonna tell you what it is. Do you want to continue?
Uh, okay?
The rules on this computer do not match the rules on Microsoft Exchange.
Only one set of rules can be kept. You will usually want to keep the rules on the server. Which rules do you want to keep?
It'd be helpful if you showed me?
Like, it'd be nice if I could see what the rules are for each one, instead of me blindly going,
I guess I want the server?
I don't know. This is a great one from Adobe Flash.
Please close the following applications, Process 473, Process 12295,
force close all. Great, that's so helpful! What is process 12295?
Now, here's… this is… oh my god, this is…
horrifying. You know, if you're gonna recommend something to people using your website,
then make sure it's something that makes sense to recommend. So, this is from Amazon.
And, uh…
this woman on Amazon,
is in the beating as a hobby. She collects beads and puts them together. So she goes on Amazon, and Amazon, being helpful, says, well, if you've bought beads, you might like these. And what do they recommend? That's right, used anal beads.
Because if I'm gonna buy anal beads to stick up my butt, then I definitely… I'm gonna go…
Kind of reduce the price, I'm gonna go with used anal beads. I'm not gonna spend money on new ones. Why do I want to waste my money on that?
So, I guarantee you that people that do beating as a hobby, when they go to Amazon, do not want to be suggested anal… used anal beads
For their hobby. This is one I call Captcha Hell.
We all love CAPTCHAs, don't we? Now, imagine, this is real, imagine that you're trying to log in,
And you have this CAPTCHA.
Unsubscribe from the Crackle Insider Newsletter.
What the hell is that? I have no idea
what that is. That is so…
you know, evil and put together in a mishmash, I can't tell what they are.
This is my favorite, probably, of all time. This is on Facebook.
This is a capture check Facebook gave to somebody. Um, V equals N squared over
I don't even know what that is. Negative 2, uh, minus 1. Have fun typing that one into that little tiny text box. I guess you have to use LaTeX.
Uh, this one really annoyed me.
Um, I'm filling this out.
And it says, write 64!
So, I write 64!
I hit enter, and it goes, no, no, no. Question was 64, the correct answer was 6-4. You said 64! Now, I love this, because, yes, on the previous slide,
in tiny text under that box, it said, in digits.
Why didn't it say, write 64 in numbers?
Instead of putting in digits, right? And so, what I see writes 64, I'm like, okay, I typed 64, but then I love that it actually gives you the right answer. That's a helpful CAPTCHA. You were wrong, but we're gonna go ahead and tell you what the right answer is.
This, uh, I'm only gonna… I'm only… you know what? It's 6.56…
I'm gonna go through just a few, then I'll have to stop. We'll have to continue another time.
Cognitive overload.
Too many choices?
Select menus should be organized in a way that makes obvious sense, not make you go, wait, what? So, um, this is from a website called Pact. They sell e-books. And so I was registering for an account.
And they said, what are your tech preferences? In other words, what are you interested in? So, we can provide you with books that might interest you.
So I'm like, okay, cool, and I click on the select list, and I start scrolling, and I suddenly realize the select list is literally
200 items long, and they're not in alphabetical order.
So I'm like, I scroll and I go, oh, web design, I like that. Then I keep scrolling.
Bootstrap! Okay? And then I get to Git, and I'm like, I'm not gonna keep doing this.
I'm interested in CSS.
I'm not just gonna scroll through 200 frickin' items in this select menu until I find CSS. I'm not gonna do it. So, forget it. So that was useless.
This was at Wash U when I was registering my car for parking, and it asked for the color, and okay, uh, you know, we got the Bs, then we got chrome, and another way to say chrome is stainless steel. Okay, cool.
And then we get to cream, and another way to say that's ivory, okay. And then after the Ls, we get burgundy.
I'm like, what? But notice…
After Burgundy is maroon, so actually they were sorting on maroon, not burgundy, but they put it burgundy first, but sorted it as though it was an M, and then if you keep going down after the R's, we have aluminum!
Then silver. Again, they were sorting by the second color, not the first. So, whoever did this,
it made no sense. It was awful.
This is one of my favorites of all time. This was at AT&T.
I was switching my account years ago to AT&T, and I said, okay, what's your date of birth?
Month, day, and then for year, it started at 1861.
You know? Because there are still Civil War veterans and people that were born during the Civil War that are interested in getting an AT&T mobile account.
And best of all, it starts with 1861, so you have to scroll for over 100 years, in my case, to get to 1968.
Good job, guys! This is also one of my favorites. So, this is an EasyJet, you have to pick the
country code, right? For your phone number prefix. So what do they do?
Those aren't in numerical order, they sorted them by country.
Yes, they sorted them by country, not numbers. Because, of course, looking at this, you're gonna know, oh yeah, 1284, I must be down in the T's now.
Horrible. Horrible, horrible.
And then you have way too many options.
So, I love this tabbed interface. Like, that's… that is, uh…
12 tabs, and I really love the ones I underline. How? More.
How? More. Like, what? One how? One one more, two, how, two one more. Oh, that makes perfect sense, I understand that.
This is another one from Microsoft.
Do you want Windows to download driver software and realistic icons?
No, let me choose what to do. And then it gives you several choices
that are a little complicated, and then it gives you a checkbox for a replace generic icons. A little too much info.
This is a classic. Yes, no, cancel, append, new name, new or only, no to all, yes to all. And I love, never ask me again.
That's right. You choose one of these 8 choices, and that's it for the rest of the usage of this software you have.
And the next one is from…
A good old open-source software. Hey, do you want to save the file? No for all. All?
So, I'm only saving one file, what's no-for-all? Save all buffers, save this but no more, what's that mean? View changes in this buffer, view this buffer, no, yes.
you almost have to have… read a manual to understand what all those choices mean.
This is the classic Internet Explorer settings.
When you go to Advanced, do you guys see the thumb on the right that I'm pointing to? That tells you how many choices you had there.
There were probably 100, over a hundred choices under Advanced that you would just have to scroll and scroll and scroll through to try to find them all.
And I'm going to stop there, because it's 7.01.
So, does anybody…
have any quick questions?
or statements before I go.
Did it take you over an hour to find all those?
Oh, I've been collecting these for years.
years and years and years.
Thank you. Anybody else have a particular favorite?
Oh, I know, those are great, Scott.
You know what I'm saying?
Anybody have a particular favorite?
Yeah?
Yeah, it's scary!
Anybody? Okay.
Well, I guess I'll have to come back and do part two tutorial.
So, Scott, um… Scott, are you, um, trying to put all the manual riders out of business, or…
I'm just trying to improve it. It's, you know… and by the way, I tell my students the first day of class, and I repeat it,
Guys, I am not one of these professors that if you point out an error in my slides, or my writing, or an assignment, I'm gonna get mad at you.
I want you to tell me if you catch errors so I can make it better. I want it to be good, so tell me so I can fix it.
There's…
And I mean that, and I have students all the time say, hey, I think you used the wrong word in this assignment, and I'm always like, thank you very much. So, you know…
I want to make things better, so…
Pointing out errors can be a very helpful thing. Um, some of these errors are terribly egregious.
But, um, hopefully, you guys enjoyed some of them, and maybe it gives you guys some ideas of what not to do if you ever have to do it. And, like I said, I got… I got plenty more, we'll have to talk about it again.
I do think there was one you had missed, which was, uh, losing focus.
Hmm.
It's like, you start typing something in, and then there's a pop-up, and then it's like, what the fuck?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get that. Drives me nuts.
Yeah, I totally agree. Yep, excellent, that's excellent.
Okay, anybody else? Nope.
Well, thank you very, very much, Scott. I know you've got another commitment you have to go to.
All right, thanks guys! I'm gonna break like the wind. I will talk to you guys soon. Take care.
All right.
Take care, Scott.
All right, uh, and we apologize, usually we try and, uh, let our speaker hang around a little longer, but, uh, Scott had another commitment that came up that, uh.
He had to take care of, so he had to cut out right away.
So, um, for those of you who are… have joined us midstream here.
This is the monthly general meeting of Slug, the St. Louis Linux.
Unix users group, uh, we do this once a month, and then also we've got about 3 other, uh, meetings that, uh, people like to come to.
Uh, let's see, Stan, do we have the slides?
Um, we… I can't get to them. Zoom changed stuff again on my laptop's connection.
So I can't… I can't get out of the damn thing.
Okay.
Pull the pop… pull the battery out of it. That usually works.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, God.
This will be in Scott's next collection of things which didn't quite work, but uh… So, all right, so the, uh… Uh, as I said, we've got one other meeting a month, uh, which is next Thursday this month, which is the St. Louis LUG meeting.
That has a presentation. We don't know what that presentation is yet, but stay tuned and look at our announce list, discussed list.
Or web homepage, our meetup page, and we'll let you know what the.
Presentation next Thursday's gonna be. We also have… go ahead.
Go ahead, keep going.
We also have a meeting called Slack in the St. Louis Area Computer Club.
Uh, that's an old, old group in St. Louis. It's, uh.
Basically hardware. Hardware and just the basics of computers, so… You can come in and ask a question about Microsoft, or anything else.
Make your systems run better. There's no set presentation, it's all just, uh, question-driven, so our participants… There's also our new Linux users group. The rule there is also there's… it's not a set presentation.
But we do, uh… let whoever considers themselves the.
The newest user to Linux, uh, drive that meeting. And, uh, or ask the first question.
Basically have pushed that question until… That's resolved, and then the next least experienced user.
Uh, which… don't get scared off for those of you who've been doing this for a few years.
It's really fun for… experienced users to come. First off.
You two had to provide all kinds of interesting answers, and it's amazing, sometimes when you go, well, I know that.
And, uh, I know the answer, well… three other experienced people will… respond, and they'll all have different answers than the one you came up with.
Sometimes it's very surprising what you, you know. Oh, I didn't know it would work that way. So, uh, so it's a good meeting for the experienced people to come to.
Uh, check your, uh, check the slug. Dot org slash calendar.
And it will show you when all those meetings are every month.
This is Stan. I'd like to point out that I made a mistake, and.
So, um… Let's see…
I sent out the, uh, the meeting code that got sent out for this meeting was a Slack.
Uh, thing, so when people came in, it said they were at the Slack meeting.
That was an error on my part. It should have said that Slug.
But, uh, I'll try and… be more careful next time.
And we really, really appreciate all the effort and work that Stan puts into things.
Of Lee puts in a lot of effort and work on a bunch of things here, too, and a number of other people, uh.
Or volunteers in the group who do a lot of things.
And, uh, but there's always room for… more fingers. Uh, so if anyone else would care to…
To just, you know, pick up a couple of little projects, maybe it's something like, uh, you know, making sure that the announcements get out, or, uh.
Um, the, uh, Zoom meetings are the correct, uh, listing. Uh, so yeah, we can always use more help, so anybody who wants to see what else can be done.
Please talk to Stan, talk to me, talk to Lee. You can send an email to STEERCOM, one of us will get back to you.
And, uh, so yeah, we're always looking for some more help.
A stan. Your penance for sending the wrong link?
Is you have to enter and exit VIM.
That assumes I know how to get out of them.
Um, I believe, uh, John McAfee released a video, and you can exit VIM the same way he uninstalled.
Mcafee from the notebook computer.
Okay.
Um, let's see, uh, this is a, uh, there's no membership dues to belong to our group.
Basically, if you show up for. Two of our meetings in the calendar year, and that's.
Any of the four… meetings are… Ivory 6 meetings, actually, that we do a month.
You're qualified to vote in the next election. So, uh, that's our simple definition of membership. There is no membership fees, no dues.
So…
And this is Stan. I'd like to point out, anybody that does not want to have their name put on the ballot.
They can send me a $5 bill. And I'll make sure your name is on… not on the ballot.
You can send me a $10 bill to not put your name back on after Steve takes it off.
Can I just say, it's a little confusing. Gary is talking.
Um, I can't maximize… this is a complaint about Zoom. I'm trying to maximize the picture to see that, you know, Gary, as the, uh, to maximize it, and it shows up as Lee Lambert.
Uh, it's confusing, I… Don't know why it does that. It's something about Zoom, I guess, but uh…
I wish I didn't do that. I wish I could see who was actually speaking.
Okay, that's… go ahead.
Yes, thanks!
Oh, I… actually, Gary's video is coming through his machine, but his voice is coming through Lee Lambert's machine.
Yeah, yeah, well, it's confusing, and Zoom can't take care of that for me, so… So I… Yeah.
Well, that's… that's a picnic. Problem in… in compu…
Yeah… Yeah, if Gary turns on his sound, the whole thing goes berserk.
In chair, not computer.
No, you're going… Yeah, and it's not your computer that's the problem, it's the fact that Gary.
Oh, okay.
Is within shouting distance or regular talking volume distance of Lee.
Oh, okay, so it's coming through on Lee's, uh, microphone. Okay, got it.
Yes.
Well, and the… Lee's microphone, uh, with his system. There's some really nice, large speakers here in the room, and so we're hearing everything just great.
Uh, but those speakers are connected to Lee's computer, which is where his microphone's connected.
If I switch and turn off Lee's mic and use my mic, even if I turn, you know.
My speaker's off, it's still… just makes for a lot of complications. It's not…
It's okay, I can zoom in and see your pixelated face.
God, that'd be scary.
Yeah, let's see. Um… Let's see…
Let's see, we're 2 months away from Christmas, or holiday times, I guess I should say, end-of-year holidays.
Um, usually some technical groups throw holiday parties. We try and keep track of them, so as we find out about any holiday parties, we'll put them on our calendar and let you know.
Uh, if you find out of any holiday parties that, uh.
Our techie group might want to be invited to. Let us know, and we'll put it on the calendar, or other announcements.
Um, are there memories about, uh, pizza get-together?
Um, very slim armorings, uh, not so much by us. Uh, Red Hat said they might try and have a Red Hat user group meeting.
Okay.
St. Louis, which we'd be invited to. Uh, but they have not yet scheduled that, so…
But if anyone else liked to… take point, and…
Organize our own get-together for going out for pizza somewhere. Uh, we can certainly do it.
I don't make… We've talked a lot about trying to do hybrid meetings, where we could still do our.
Online Zoom meeting, or DITC meeting. And yet view it from the old restaurant, or, you know, and have people there physically present.
Um, amazingly enough. It just causes complications. It's difficult.
As you were just pointing out, it's just confusing with the microphone and the sound system that we're using.
Here, in this room. Boy, when you get. Everybody in a restaurant, it's amazing how easy it is to.
Lose the sound, lose the video. Um, not know what somebody's pointing to.
Um, so you really have to have just… Another couple of extra people who are really.
Into doing the production values to make that work. So, uh… so it could be done!
It's too much work.
We're not sure. Yeah.
Um, let's see… No, no, we're not saying… if somebody wants to just say, okay, we're just gonna have a social pizza night, no presentation, we're just gonna go out and chit-chat over pizza.
We can do that. No, we got a good pizza place, too. Yeah.
They even have anchovies. Anchovies. All right, um…
Let's see, I think I've… kind of covered everything on the, uh, the overheads we had prepared.
I guess the part I didn't cover is my name's Gary Meyer, I'm our host this evening. I'm also the president of the organization.
Uh, that other voice you've been hearing is Stan. Stan Reichert.
Expands the Vice President and, uh. Sam's the guy who usually manages to make the recordings work, make the slides work, make the…
Uh, Stan just does so much. Thank you very much, Stan.
Uh, Lee Lambert is gonna be our next speaker tonight. Lee's our treasurer, and also.
Contributes to the organization, and that, uh. He hosts a lot of our computer systems on.
On his machine at Omnitech. So, uh… Let's see… am I leaving… oh, one other thing that I sometimes ask and sometimes don't.
Um, anybody here tonight, uh, either for the first time or the first time in a long time?
We'd just be curious of knowing. How you decided to come tonight, uh…
Did you see our posting in Meetup? Do you see it on our website?
Somebody tell you, hey, you want to go to that meeting tonight?
Um, so if you'd like to just type it in in the chat, or you can turn your microphone on.
Just tell us right now, if you like. But yeah, we'd just be curious to know.
Yeah, real quick, I'm from Chicago.
And I used to live in Rockford, and uh… someone from your…
Your group had joined…
Rock River, uh, RR lug.
dot org, uh, that I was a member of for easily 10 years, and still is.
And, um…
Yeah. So, that's where I…
That's… that's how I found out about you guys, so…
Fantastic. Well, thank you, thank you.
Yeah, there are a lot of good music groups online, and that's kind of one of the reasons why we.
I don't know if you say we gave up on our physical meetings, but like I said.
At least we want to keep them hybrid, because we're really finding that doing them.
Online, uh… gives access to more people, and… It's nice to get people from.
Illinois, from Iowa. Have you Canada? Canada, California…
Yeah, my brother lives in St. Louis, and a good friend of mine, uh, also lives there, and uh…
I've been finding, uh…
Michigan's got a lot of user groups. I got 3 or 4 that…
I've been following.
Oh, great.
The thing that annoys me is it's hard to find Linux users groups in this decade.
Back in the early days, there were sites that said, uh, here, you can list your Linux users group, and people could go find it really easy.
Um, eh… And the most recent thing that has something that's very useful is that.
The, uh, what is it, give up… gone from 10 or whatever.org, or whatever it is.
Um, but a lot of Linux groups don't know about that thing. I wish that we could spread the word about that a little bit more.
I think it's…
And, uh, bam. End of 10.
Um…
what I've been finding is word of mouth, so…
just one.
Gone… what is it? What is it, Phil?
Bill, what… End of 10. I can never remember the darn thing.
And of 10.
Yeah, end of 10. And uh… dot org.
Next.
Okay? Um… Let's see, uh… Oh, uh, so the rest of the order of events for tonight, we do our Oreo cookie version of meetings. We have a.
Talk on the front, talk on the back. Announcements, we're here in the middle, uh… So, uh, let's see, uh, I can bring up the calendar. Stan, you probably know when our next meeting is.
You really think I do?
I always figure he'd just remember these things right off the top.
I feel like there's one next Thursday.
Next Thursday is the LUG meeting at St. Louis Lug Meeting. No, we don't have a topic yet.
I'm working on it, uh… Keep an eye out on the calendar.
Why don't you do a working session on managing your calendar?
Uh, yes, that would be a good, good thing to do.
Where the hell?
I'll go see myself out now.
No, no, no, no. I'm gonna rule that one out, because we're… try and aim more Linux for the Linux user group meetings.
Where's the damn browser go?
Either more open source stuff tonight.
Okay, fine.
Uh, let's see, um… And that brings us to… oh, uh…
Open Q&A. We'll definitely have open Q&A after the main presentation. If there's anyone who just really needs to leave before things get too late tonight.
And, uh, just needs to put in a quick request, a quick question.
Um, and that would be the time.
Obviously. And found the slide deck, which I was.
I found it!
Rapidly doing from memory.
Yeah, jeez. Oh, golly, basic tools, basic… We did the base, we… and GUI middle, we stopped, and now we're back at the gooey middle again.
Yep.
Here we go, announcements. Yeah, next Slug meeting is on November 12th, it will be.
And then 8 days from now, next… Week Thursday is the St. Louis Linux Users Meeting, and then 5 days after that is the new Linux meeting.
Uh, this next Slack meeting is usually the first Thursday of each month.
Uh, October 14th! It's a few days from now, Microsoft Windows 10 to end of life.
Um, one of my fav… Yeah, end of life.
You never had life? Oh, never mind.
Well, it… it's like they finally took it to the, uh, to the emergency room where the doctor could pronounce it dead.
I'm a project Hail Mary, the movies about a science fiction book.
That, uh, written by the same guy that did the, uh.
The Martian. Is it, uh… I forget his name, I can never remember names.
Anyway, that movie is supposed to be released on the 20th of next March.
Does anybody else have any announcements they'd like to talk about?
I was gonna ask about Windows 10. Will the update still be available after October 14th from Microsoft?
Like, security updates and all? For Windows 10?
Yeah, if you pay… they'll give you another year if you pay for them.
I will.
I don't know what the cost is, though.
I think it was 10.
We'll be able to get a… will you be able to get it from other places, or, uh, if it's not from Microsoft?
Not officially. Microsoft's whole intent is.
They want you to migrate up to 11, or if you can't migrate up to 11.
Then you're doing it because you're a commercial customer, and they expect you to pay for it.
I would describe it as there's no… new, free updates, but existing updates.
Should be available for a while now.
My suggestion is, is that if…
Okay. So, yeah, I have… I have… I've purposely not connected to the internet. I guess I'll have to connect to the internet one time with some…
So my Windows 10 machines to get the updates, and then.
Go back to, uh, being disconnected, I guess.
Um, from the retro community, there's been… fairly good support, where you can download updates in bulk.
From the…
And transfer them on a… CD or flash drive, so I have a friend download them for you.
And carry them over, and… Pull them in.
Okay, including from this group?
I… I've not done it with anything as new as 10.
But I've done it with some older things.
Okay. Right. I was also gonna ask, since I'm on here, um, there was an Atlantic, I guess.
Different meetup groups. Are you familiar with the Atlanta group that meets from 1 to 4 on Sundays? Well, I guess from 1 to 4 Mountain Time, but uh… Um… I haven't been able to find them on Meetup anymore, maybe they…
Al…
Well, they probably decided to quit using Meetup because Meetup wants money.
Um, stop.
And, uh. Something like… at minimum.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think $300 a year.
Yeah, we canceled our account on Meetup, and we're on, uh… Uh, Halo. Halo, yeah.
Halo? A-g-y-l-o.
Yeah, you could just go to ALE.org, and the meeting… the meeting link is there.
A-l-e dot org. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's good to know. Okay, thank you.
Right on that page. Yeah.
And uh… Oh, that's the end of 10.org that I was… project I was talking about.
Go to a website.
That's, uh… started in Europe, and a lot of people, a lot of events and places and things in Europe that are on there.
And, uh, very few, uh, continental U.S. Linux users group have found out about this project.
But, uh, the whole idea is that they're… they're… listing events or places where you can go and have somebody help you.
Install Linux. Uh, on an old Windows machine.
Anyway… Yeah, anybody here can be recording.
What's going on? We record this particular meeting, and the… the, uh, St. Louis Linux user group meetings, because they… we have a presentations, and they're on our archives.
Our page. It's up on our… each of our… Website pages has, on the lower right-hand corner, is a link.
To our archives pages. And we've got previously listed stuff there, and so forth.
Um… privacy. Now, in… And then by saying, uh, calendar…
On our calendar. Uh… all our sponsored meetings are highlighted in red. Let me see if I can get this thing going here.
Open the link to our calendar. Where is it?
Yeah, this is what our calendar looks like. This is October, here's our meeting here for this.
This day, and then… sponsored meeting the next Thursday.
Week is their St. Louis Linux user group. And 5 days after that.
Well, normally 5 days. It's gotta… It's actually the fourth seat.
One… 1, 2, 3… Or, oh, it's not 4 or 5 days, it's gonna be 12 days this month, huh? I…
Didn't notice that when I was putting things together. Oh, well. Uh, so it's gonna be on the 28th as a new Linux users group.
The fourth. They're always on the fourth. Tuesday of the month.
Dennis Ritchie Day is on the 30th. Going back…
We have mailing lists, we have an announce list that's very limited traffic, it usually just sends out the instructions on how to get to the meeting.
Um, we have a general discussion mailing list, and you can ask questions there. You can ask sysadmin questions.
The actual sysadmin list that we have is for volunteer support staff. It's people that actually do work for us.
You don't have to be on that list in order to ask a sysadmin type of question.
We also have a steering committee. Mailing list where, uh, we talk about, uh, running the group and things like that.
All our responses, meetings, the… www.slug.org.
That's this meeting. It's our umbrella group, and it sponsors the other meetings, the St. Louis Linux.
Presentation… St. Louis Linux users group is for Linux presentations. The new Linux is for a beginner workshop, the Slack meetings is a configuration workshop.
For hardware and software, and it's… it's agnostic. It doesn't necessarily have to be Linux, or… Even Unix, it can be Apple, or… iOS 10, or things like that. It all depends on who shows up at the meeting, whether you can get any good answers or not.
Uh, any more call for help. This is a good time to do that before we get into Lee's presentation.
Before we go on. Going once…
Hey, uh, is it Scott that I need to ask about getting into the web server?
Say that again?
Or is it? The, uh, sleuth… web server.
I want to try doing something locally, but I want it.
And to copy out all the… needing archives to…
Oh, Tyler, um… I… I'm actually not Scott. Scott is, uh…
Where's that, Lee?
Uh, not… late. Lee, or… Yeah, Lee would be the person to deal with, uh, talking about that specifics.
Yeah, uh, yeah. Drop me a… drop me a note, and we can work something out.
Um, I think, Lee, you're also going to be traveling, so I would ask that you carbon copy me.
Or send it to, um… ask for help on, uh…
This admin.
Yeah, or post, uh, sysadmin.
Yeah, and multiple lists can get you set up. I know Lee's doing some traveling.
Alright, I'll send it to the assist admin.
And… I guess, for update, what were I… is it just Microsoft that I go to for the, uh.
Um, updates before the 14th. Um, or is there any… I guess, well, where else would I… is there anything else I would go?
Before then, or… and after then, I would be other places to go.
I didn't quite understand your question. What?
Um, as far as updating Windows 10, uh… the latest security before, um…
Before the 14th, just Microsoft.org. Before… and then after that, other… we have to be other places, like.
You mentioned, uh. Um, downloading… Linux community.
Well, there's this book… there's this book called Bye Bye Windows 10.
Oh, it's a book.
And it's a free… free PDF of the book, or you can buy it off of Amazon, or get the Kindle version, or whatever.
But actually, in the very first chapter of the book, he gives these two.
Okay.
Links right here. One's in the US, and one's in Australia, if I… or New Zealand, I forget which.
But the PDF version of the book is free. And half of the book talks about.
Okay.
Changing your system to Linux. The other half talks about upgrading.
A Windows 10 system to a Windows 11, and it's… pretty well-balanced book. I… I haven't read the entire thing, but it should be quite… very helpful.
To anybody that's trying to…
Okay. Okay, and we're… and I'm looking at your screen, which one is the PDF version, distribute, download? Is it those sites? Ooh.
Um… Can you put those in the chat? I kind of want to copy it from chat. Can you put…
Both of them.
Those links…
Okay, give me… give me a second, I'm…
While the state… or, yeah, while Stan's doing that.
Crap. What? Zoom, I hate you!
Uh, hell?
It's your thumb, Stan.
Yeah. Um… Microsoft routinely stops providing new updates.
But they will continue providing the current. Updates, like, existed over the last number of years.
Okay.
For a while to come. Like, I can still install an old Windows 7 system.
And let it go through and do updates. I can't do that with Windows XP, it's too old now.
Microsoft no longer provides that update server. The retro computer community has created a stand-in replacement for offline update.
Capability. But your existing Windows 10, you should be able to download all the updates.
As of the day before. They cut things off.
Probably for 1 to 5 years to come. There just won't be any.
Okay.
New updates after that point. Without paying ransom to Microsoft.
Okay.
Okay, thanks.
Dan is going to, um… find a way to put the links in, in fact, I think there they are.
Hey, thank you.
Showing up in chat. Good. All right. Okay.
After our main presentation here, uh, there'll be once again time just for general discussion.
Um, and uh, so… we can pick up on other things then.
So, uh… Anything else we need to hit on that list that you're scrolling through, Stan?
No, it's time for our main presentation, and they normally, they're… Uh, they cover Unix, BSD, Linux, macOS, or similar, as long as it's.
Cross-platform and interoperable with other operating systems. And, uh.
And the main one is usually it's more advanced, detailed, important, new, profound, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, often focus on enterprise computing and.
And then the base stuff is usually more aimed at a beginner, or… individual user kind of, uh, of…
Uh, topics. Anyway… I think we better… any other questions?
At this point, I think we should turn it over to Lee.
Okay, our main speaker this evening is Lee Lamert. He's the, uh.
Principal scientist at Omnitech Corporation. And, uh, for all of your business computing needs.
Omnitech's a great place to go. Um, so, uh… Lee's topic tonight is going to be WireGuard, VPN, BPS.
Using Linux to somehow keep. Windows 10 and Windows 11 safe in this transition time.
With that, I'm turning it over to Lee. All right, guys.
See what we got here. The whole reason for this…
Is we've got a client, and… We… they want a remote user.
And in the office, they have a Linux server, which we built for them many years ago.
That provides normal file. You know, file sharing and document storage, it gets backed up every night off-site for disaster recovery, etc.
That happens to be this 192.168. Dot one, and that server is actually .200.
And they also want… As I was saying, they want remote access to it that is secure.
So, basically… We have a VPS that we use out in the cloud.
Or an external connection point. And we want to set up a VPN.
Vpn is a virtual private network. So, uh, we'll get into the mechanics here in a second. So the goal is to provide access to that server for file and print sharing.
Exposing SMB port. Server message block file sharing, which is Microsoft World.
Which is something you do not. Want to make available to the rest of the world?
Because it's about as secure as a piece of Swiss cheese.
So… Simplest solution.
There's a VPN, Virtual Private Network. There is a new way to do it, which is what the subject of the presentation tonight, called WireGuard.
Been in the kernel for probably 4 or 5 years now.
And it has percolated through the system. The kernel module is built in at this point, from everyone I've tried.
I think Debbie in 12 is our VPS, and… SUSY15.6, or the… the one in Windows 11 is the other one, which I'm going to show you.
And I called it TP. Those are the initials of the client.
So, we've got… a server.
Are laying in the office? Which is managed.
With a local office server, which happens to be Linux. And that connects to a WireGuard hub.
Vps out in the cloud. Its host name is Nix.
We've had it for 4 or 5 years. I just run some basic monitoring stuff out there.
It's a small VPS, and it makes a good. Vpn hub.
And I'll show you later on how you can run multiple VPNs on the Hub.
And then in this case, we want a Windows 11 client.
From a technology standpoint. The VPN is running on 10.10.10.
Which is… pretty, uh, obtuse.
Uh, the… the 10 net of off-net addressing. Is not used very much. People just never seem to remember it, but I use it all the time.
I've got 4 or 5 here in the office for different applications.
So, it's… to me, it obeys one of the KISS rules in Linux.
And UNIX and the next world. The fewer characters you type, the better off you are.
So, NICS is the hub. 10-10-10-1?
The VPN IP in the office? 10-10-10-2?
And the VP, or the IP for… For the other peer, which is a Windows 11 client, which I'll show you here in a little bit.
Is 10-10-10-3. Anybody have any questions about.
The IP configuration on the network.
So, why use a VPN? Well, number one, we can protect the traffic.
There is nothing exposed publicly. There's encrypted tunnel used to connect the three different piers on the VPN.
And you're never exposing. Board 445.
Each peer authenticates with a public-private key pair. I'll show you those here in a few minutes.
Once you get the VPN set up. It looks just like a local network.
And it also scales well. You know, we've got one VPN.
Configuration on… on our external host at this point.
And it works pretty well. I'll show you… I'll show it to you working.
And I'll also show you how we can use it to set up multiple VPNs.
That are totally separate. From the same host.
There are some… other options?
Wireguard, which is what we'll talk about. Secure, fast, easy config. All you have to do is build a config file on each one of the peers, and it's up and running.
It… there are… the negative to it, which… I ran into today is… getting the routing set up.
Can be a little iffy. It gets kind of complicated.
But for this application, it's the best overall. I've also used OpenVPN in the past.
It is a much… more mature VPN.
There are a lot of… tools that help you use it.
But basically, it works the same way. One thing you don't want to use is expose that SMB port.
To the internet? It's about the worst thing you can do.
If you were a masochist, you probably could set up SSH tunnels.
For some of the basics, like RDP connections. But it doesn't work very well for SMB browsing, because you have multiple ports in use.
When you're doing the browsing.
And WireGuard, then, is the choice for tonight. It is very new. It uses modern cryptography.
It uses, uh… Is it elliptic, I believe, the, uh, the short keys?
That are about 20 characters long, that's right. Elliptic, uh, key pairs.
It's fast, it's very small. All you have to do is have a key pair and allowed IPs.
It runs on pretty much anything. And again, I've got 3 running here to show you tonight.
And it works… works great for laptops.
So to build it, it's actually fairly straightforward. I'll show you where I generated the keys.
I like to keep them all on the hub. You can scatter them around.
Uh, each WireGuard installation allows you to generate a key pair.
But it makes it kind of hard to keep track of them.
Why you like to keep them all on the central server?
In this case. I keep them in a directory keys under Etsy WireGuard.
And set permissions for route to 600 to keep them secure.
Next thing you want to do is create a pier. First one has to be on the hub.
The normal UDP port is 51820. And as a hint, if you have multiple VPNs on a particular hub.
All you have to… all you have to do is increment the port number.
Like, 20. The next VPN will be 25. Next will be 30, etc.
Then you configure… the Linux server in the office, so you can talk to the servers and other machines in the office.
His interface has a… has a discrete IP. In this case.
Uh, DOP2? And then you enable IP forwarding.
And that into the local land.
It is also fairly straightforward to install WireGuard on a laptop or Windows 11 client.
In this case, I have a VPN. Or a VM here on my local workstation we'll use for a demo.
And then once you have it all up. You know, you can ping from one to the other.
And again, the problem I ran into right now is I haven't finished setting up the routing.
So we can status the connections, we can ping between them.
But again, right now, I haven't finished setting up the services.
When you're looking at keys. It's actually fairly straightforward.
This is Etsy WireGuard on NYX. This is the WGConfig.
On the host, and then here's the keys directory I was telling you about.
The format I like to follow. You have private keys and public keys.
When you generate a key pair. You have two files that come out of it.
So this is the private key and the public key for NICS, for the hub.
You have one… also have one for the server in the office.
And I generated two sets for. Windows 11 clients.
Does that make sense to everybody?
And again, you… the private key. Is save in the WireGuard config.
This is an example of the config. Here's the private key for the host.
Here is the public key for one of the piers. And the other public key for the other peer.
This is the office server. And this is the win… the first Windows 11 client. That's all I have set up for tonight.
In the Windows version. I'll show you that here for a second. This is WireGuard Windows Client.
When you create a tunnel. It will actually generate a key pair for you.
But all you have to do is delete it.
And then paste in the key… paste in the private key from.
Your server? If I want… if I wanted to go over here and paste in a…
Private key to generate a public key. I can just copy it.
And paste it in for the private key. And it'll generate the public key for you.
Which does mask, because I checked it.
This should… security benefits to WireGuard? We talked about… you are not exposing any services.
To the internet? All your traffic is encrypted in transit.
Authentication is peer-to-peer. There's no central server. And… and the routing is built in.
The basic routing is built in. With allowed IPs.
Which I showed you here, which you can see here. Loud IPs here.
Cloud IP's here.
Now, let's step… let's step back for a second. And look at some of the…
Technical characteristics of WireGuard. So we can follow what we're setting up.
First point, WireGuard is a UDP-based VPN. Default port 51820.
Couple advantages to UDP. Number one, it's simple, and it's fast.
With networks today. You know, a UDP is a low-level protocol.
Which removes a lot of the overhead you have if you're running TCP.
Each peer has a static key pair. The private key is…
Only the property of the pier. The public key you can send with any.
Remote peer that you want to connect with. That public key is the only way to identify a peer.
It's a unique identifier. And again, we talked about allowed IPs.
Which both creates a routing table. Defining subnets to go over the pier.
And an access control list, which you can also set up.
For traffic. By mail, just stick in circling comment that.
Udp, just to… somewhat define it, uh, in the IP protocol stack, going back for decades now.
Udp and TCP are both. Provided for in there automatically.
So, uh, you don't have to do anything to add UDP to your network. It's… it's… it is there.
There's a lot of just standard stuff that goes on in the background that you don't usually have to pay attention to.
Okay.
There are some fairly sophisticated.
Protocols used in the handshake. Basically, the key pair is used to generate an ephemeral key.
And that ephemeral key is used for a conversation, and it gets updated on a regular basis.
And then when the key pairs are shared. The both sides divide the session, or…
Derive a session key. So the secure tunnel is put up, and a single round trip.
And we'll talk more about the keys here in a little bit, and I'll show you on a… to create them.
Elliptic curve. We mentioned before.
Uh… I don't know what… how Cha-Cha 20 or some of these work. They are fairly new.
But the point is that…
The, uh, WireGuard VPN. Use the best.
And most current protocols. There's nothing like… there's nothing hanging around from 20 years ago, like OpenVPN uses.
Every 120 seconds. A new ephemeral key is created.
Are every 2 to the 24th messages. It ensures that even if a session key leaks, it expires quickly, so at most you would have…
Two minutes worth of data that was exposed.
Once that handshake completes. All packets matching the lot IPs are encrypted into a UDP datagram.
And since UDP encapsulates it. Normal firewall, and that transversal will work.
The remote pier, then, decapsulates. Routes to his local sack.
And WireGuard runs in the kernel. Which makes it very fast.
And as I mentioned before, it's there in… Almost every kernel today.
In addition, WireGuard is… efficient from the standpoint that there is no central control plane.
Each peer… as a configuration.
Each one of these piers in the WireGuard config has a public key and a private key on the other end.
The key pairs define the connection. Everything is peer-to-peer.
There is no management level. That's one of the reasons that WireGuard.
It's so fast and efficient. Of course, that could be a problem in some cases.
Wireguard itself is a fast and efficient VPN. It's not… really designed for…
Thousands of users. Because there's no management layer.
When you can… when you configure WireGuard node. Our peer… All you need are these five lines.
Because there's… there's two peers to find here. One of them is the Office VPN Linux server.
Which is here. And the Linux server has its own config.
And this is what it looks like on the Linux server.
You know, this is that Linux server in the office. He is 10.2.
Is port 51820, his private key. And these are the firewall rules I was working on today.
Because ideally. This machine… which is on a 192.168.
Network, internally. You can see the local IPs coming here.
And this is the subnet to find. Bar the servers on.
This particular… on or in the office. As an aside, this is how…
Uh, we deal with the edge case where. The remote VPN.
Or the remote network the laptop is on. Happened to have been created by.
Somebody that wasn't anticipating a VPN and went ahead and used 192.168.1 for the subnet.
Normally, you can't bridge them together. Uh, with WireGuard, I can carve out a subnet.
And then… use that subnet to talk just to the hosts.
On that network. Shoot, go grab me some ice water here.
Or just plain water. And there was a… Uh, request in the chat, uh, if you could, uh, once again, kind of give a description of where those keys… Yeah, I'm going to show how to make them here in a minute.
We'll get back to that.
Yeah, and again, WireGuard. Is built for…
Small… peer-to-peer VPNs.
It does not have the overhead or the management tools that you do on the major players like OpenVPN.
Or IPSec. Or even SSL VPNs.
When you want to generate… each client. Has to have its own key pair.
And you can see where they're used. For the remote pier.
You copy in the public key. For the local configuration.
In other words, this is the interface. On this machine.
You use the private key. And… let's see, I didn't… I do not have…
Let me see if I can find a…
I think I've got that on a further slide. But again, what I was… what I was saying before.
I just went through and generated. Four keys, or key pairs, rather.
For the hub, which is Nick's, which is the VPS out in the cloud.
The main server. In the office, and two different…
Windows clients.
And… We talked about the public and private key.
If you want to remove a pier. All you have to do is delete it from the config.
In other words, if you wanted to delete this pair, all you have to do is scratch it.
And it's gone. No management interface, no complications.
Okay, since the current… the… since it is present. In the kernel…
I'm not sure what version. I seem to recall it was 5.
Were… was rolled into the kernels? Does anybody know for sure?
Grant, would you?
I don't know offhand. I feel like it was within the last year or so that it became kernel native.
Prior to that, it was an external add-on module.
Okay. Yeah, it is… it is fairly recent.
Yeah.
And we… and we talked about… its use of… newer crypto primitive.
They're fast, they're a lot, lot faster and more efficient. If the client's IP changes.
It doesn't make any difference. Because WireGuard translates it automatically?
And also, it's traffic friendly, it runs over UDP, much less overhead, and IPSec or OpenVPN.
What… what is the term… Excuse me, crypto privatives.
Anytime you generate a public-private key pair, you have to use.
Some sort of crypto… yeah, cryptography. To generate that key pair.
The primitives are the tools you use to do it, and the algorithm.
Involved in that. What we're seeing here is…
Elliptic curve, and cha-Cha20, whatever that is. Are new, and they're…
Faster, and they're more efficient. Then, uh…
You know, some of the old ones.
I've heard crypto primitives used as kind of, like, a generic placeholder for.
Much of the minutiae for the cryptography, so you don't have to talk math or algorithms.
Just hear this big ball of thing that is the math.
That's a crypto primitive. I don't have to talk in more detail than that.
Yeah, for example. I've dealt with host keys here recently.
Host keys can be short, like the one highlighted here. Because this is, uh, elliptic curve key pair, it's generated, the key is what?
60 or 70 characters long. Versus an RSA key, which is about 3 times as long.
And the length of that has bearing on the cryptographic computation.
Because all the manipulation to encrypt and decrypt. It's using the shorter key.
Which is faster than the longer key. But the methodology it uses is as strong as.
Different methodologies that use longer keys.
Right. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah. You know, the newer the crypto primitive.
The shorter the key it generates, because the… algorithms are… more sophisticated to incorporate the same level of security in a shorter key.
You know, so there are an RSA key here, say, is 120 characters.
Uh, elliptic curve key might be 40. Which means it's basically about 3 times faster to send that across the internet.
Does that make sense? Okay.
Yeah, how often do those keys get sent? Is that something that… get sent when you just start up, or does that get sent all the time?
Uh, in this case. The key is sent… is sent once.
But it's generated on every connection.
Um, I would actually argue the key is never. Sent something derived from the key, much like Diffie-Hillman.
Will be used, and that'll be at… session initiation and re-que events.
But the important thing is, every single packet that you send.
Has a cryptographic operation performed on it. So, when you send and receive.
Government packet?
It gets encrypted when you send it, and decrypted when the other end receives it.
Okay.
So the… so the point is, the key is used. To encrypt that packet going across the wire.
So, at the most basic level. A longer key might take longer to encrypt the data.
Yep.
Then a shorter key.
Yeah, I can see how that would make a difference. With you.
And that happens to every single packet.
Yeah, every single packet. Steve.
I mean, out of curiosity. Uh, how dramatically does this slow down.
You know, your process… your… your, um… Well, if you just say running on the internet, you know, browsing something or another.
Um, does this make a noticeable slowdown, or… You know, like, a horrible slowdown?
I have no experience with this.
I feel like that is… I understand why you asked, but I feel like that's an unfair question.
In that you're not necessarily just. Sending the traffic through the tunnel.
Like, if you… tour is a good comparison. Wherein you have the cryptography between you and the next one.
Node, but it has to send it out. To the internet, so there's at least you to it.
It to the internet. And then replies from the internet to it, and then it back to you, so you've got 4.
Hops going on if it's just. One tour node. If you do more.
It just kind of… And… linearly, um…
So you start seeing slowdown with that. Much more than you do.
The cryptography. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I was just wondering, you know, what's… what does it do to the ear…
If you have a good VPN provider, or you have a VPS.
Hosted in a good… network connection.
And you're just going between… Your notebook.
I'm sorry, guys.
Back to the office. It's gonna be slower than in the office.
But it should be certainly usable and should not annoy you and make you go get.
Lots of cups of coffee.
Well, I can tell you one thing, the, uh… When I set up the WireGuard network this afternoon and testing it.
The actual performance. Of it seemed to…
You know, just anecdotally, be at least an order of magnitude faster than OpenVPN.
How much did it apparently slow down your connection?
No, I sped it up.
Fireguard was faster than OpenVPN.
Yeah, yeah, well, that makes sense, but I was thinking. You know, what is… what does that do to your… your…
Effective bandwidth versus running bare naked.
Well, number one, you can't run bare naked.
Oh.
Well, there are ways, but… Um, and… Lee, I'd be willing to bet.
Well, there are ways, but…
You're doing routing such that the road warrior on the notebook.
The only thing going through the VPN is traffic to and from the office.
General internet traffic from that Road Warriors device. Is not passing through the VPN, correct?
Correct.
So, there's no change other than the fact if you're pulling a big PDF from the office.
Well, that's using some of your bandwidth, but the same thing happens.
If I'm browsing the web and I'm downloading the ISO of the next.
Linux distribution. I have a finite amount of bandwidth.
I'm using some of it, the other uses lose some of it.
Does that help, Steve?
You're on mute if you're talking.
No, his network connection is doing the re-encryption, and it's taking longer on it.
Takes longer to talk about it than to do it, huh?
I don't care. Yes.
Okay. Yeah, yeah, that does.
Did that help answer your question, Steve?
Somebody needs to come up with a tutorial for this. For Slug on how do you set… let's just say WireGuard, so how to set it up.
You know, if you want to have your own VPN.
Well, if you stay awake, that's the next sequence.
Steve, I got something on offer for you. You can go to bed.
Okay, well, God, stay awake! Oh, man, you're so unreasonable.
We've got a guy who's recording it, thank you, Stan, and we'll put it up, and you can watch it later. You don't have to stay awake right now.
That's a good idea. Well, I didn't actually sleep at all last night.
So I don't know how long I'm gonna last.
No. And you revived it? And your $5 for, uh, doing the setup for this next segment will be in the mail.
Program will be up on the network tomorrow. I think we've all heard that.
All right. Yeah. All right, to summarize, that's what we've been talking about.
You know, number one, wire guard… uses the current generation of cryptographic tools.
The primitives are safe. From a complexity level, they are equivalent or better than, you know, RSA and things like that.
But that also makes them a lot faster, because they're more efficient.
Wireguard is operationally simple. The only… they're only… there are only two things you need to set up a WireGuard pier.
A key pair, and a list of allowed IPs. That makes Wirecard… WireGuard a very high-performance solution.
Fast handshakes, high throughput. And there's a number of different levels of security involved.
Number one, it's a small code base. There's a lot of eyes that are… constantly looking at it.
It's moderately straightforward to grok it. Everything you're transmitting is…
Encrypted, and there is a minimal attack service. Surface, uh, for a number of reasons. One of the most important of which, the key pair that's used to generate the.
Session key. L… And, uh, you know, from the short elliptic curve, and practice.
Go ahead.
Um, I want to… on forward syncy for a moment. Because that is very important.
That means some three-letter agency building a data center in the middle of the desert.
Siphoning up everything they can for later decryption. They will not be able to.
If they get a copy of your key. Because the key is not actually used.
To encrypt and decrypt. It is used to derive an ephemeral key.
That is used to encrypt and decrypt. And I think you said the default was, like, every 2 minutes or so many packets repeat.
Right, right.
So, the forward secrecy is the phrase that means. There's that other key used…
And the internet hoover in the desert. Cannot do anything.
Does that include the… what they call, uh, quantum resistant?
That is… kind of its own thing that is more what algorithms and methods are used.
Uh, but the forward secrecy method applies to quantum. Cryptography and pre-quantum.
As well.
Okay. Anybody else at this point? So, we've kept… we've covered the use case.
And we've talked about WireGuard, how it's designed. The advantages.
So the third part tonight is… how it is configured and set up.
And again, we've got 3 parts. We've got a remote Windows 11 system.
We've got a local office on the 192.168.1 subnet. That local office has a Linux server running Samba.
And there's also a Windows 10. System that's used as server.
For an internal application they use in the office. And there is a hub.
That we have out in the cloud. Next.ommnitech.net.
That provides us an external visibility to the office here. Vps is an acronym for Virtual Private Server.
You know, basically, uh, in the cloud, they build a huge machine with, you know, 48 cores and 4 tera… and… 40 terabytes of storage, and then they put 100 users on it.
Because our NICS machine. Uh, let's see, where am I?
Here's Nick's…
You know, this is only a 4-CPU box. And… let's see, what is it, 100 gig?
100 gig, yeah. 82 gig available, 11 gig use, that's… BDA1.
And, you know, it's just sitting there.
All right. Again, remind you the topology. The VPN network?
The hub, an office gateway, which is .2. And a Windows 11 client, which is .3.
First thing you want to do is generate keys. I'm turning off if you want.
Uh, well, hang on a second. Let me talk about something first.
The only compo… go ahead.
Somebody have a question?
Wireguard is… go ahead.
Somebody's got an echo.
Were you trying to talk? No, I think it was just an… just an echo there.
Anyway, what I was going to point out is… Since the WireGuard… mod… module is built into the kernel.
The only thing you need to install are the tools you need to manage it.
Wireguard User Space Tools. I do not know what con…
Con man is. But this is the only thing that I had to install.
On the Office server. To use WireGuard.
And the first command you need to learn is… WG show.
Wireguard Show. This tells you…
The interface configured on the local machine? And… it gives you the interface.
For the pier. Which is the hub out there on EdNEX.
And this is the IP for Nix. And the port you're talking to.
And the only IPs allowed. On the subnet are 1010.10.0-24.
Last handshake was 2 minutes ago. Traffic received and sent.
People live every 25… every 25 seconds. That is all that's required.
To configure WireGuard Pier. That make sense? Yeah.
You mentioned the remote endpoint IP there, which you have not previously.
Um, was that just an omission on prior comments?
Uh, yeah. The, uh…
Eth0… You know, this… this is Nick's IP.
You know, you… I… I have used the host name there.
Okay.
But I think it's faster to use the IP, because you're eliminating a DNS lookup.
Sure.
Notice that, uh… Yeah. On Nix.
The VPN is up. So there is his interface.
10-10-10-1 slash 24.
Which is… I see WG Show…
You know, here's… Yeah, he… the hub is .1.
And… the office server. Is .2.
And a Windows machine. Is .3.
So this is the Windows machine, the Windows 11… Windows 11 VM.
He can… he can ping himself. He can ping…
2, which is the office server. And… you can also ping one.
Which is… appear out there in the cloud.
Okay, this is how you gen… this is how you set up your key pair.
You set up your keys.
Again, I recommend using a key subdirectory, primarily because it can be secured 600 right.
Right, only… read and write only for root.
To generate a key. Wireguard, Gen Key.
And… That generates the private key.
And then you pipe that private key into. Hub key, which creates a public key.
And saves it as the file public key.
No questions. I guess… I guess we've got a bunch of bass junkies out here.
Either that, or the keys are stale, and nobody can hear you anymore.
And then you can schmod 600 to give you a reasonable level of security.
As I mentioned before, on Windows 11. Go ahead, go ahead, Grant.
No, that wouldn't. Steve has unmuted again.
Uh, tell you what, I'm gonna make you co-host, so if I miss somebody, you can do it.
Okay.
As I mentioned before, when you create. A tunnel?
It'll generate a key pair for you. But again, I… I prefer to use the ones I've built on the server.
Primarily because you always know where. A backup copy is.
Okay, after you have the keys, you generate. The config.
Which config is this far? Which node? Which pier?
Central. Nick's.
Everybody see that? Okay.
You know, it's common practice to use the .1 for the hub.
And then increment from there. Technically, you can use…
A file include here. But it's better to use… to just copy it in.
Because… let's see if I remember the security right. I've…
Grant, correct me if I'm wrong, but… I believe… the VPS is a user land.
Config, and if you… if you were to include the file here, you would have to have public permissions.
Read on the private key, which would be a security hole, correct?
Uh, I would think your private key would have the same permissions as your config file.
Or at least whatever process is running would just have to have the same access to both of them.
Um, I'm gonna kinda punch you in the shoulder a little bit.
And say one advantage of having it in files is when you.
Chat your config file. You don't cap the private key.
To something that's being recorded. You want to rotate your keys.
Buddy.
Okay.
Unless that was a test, you were seeing if I was paying attention, and you were planning.
Gary, who won the bet?
Well, uh, let's see. I'm sitting within punching distance, so, uh…
I lost, didn't I?
Okay. This is Stan. I'm not quite sure what the issue was here.
Is putting the file name there versus the actual private key? Is that what you're saying?
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, that's… that's the issue. I'm trying to… I was trying to remember the actual rationale for using.
The key pasted in versus the. Versus the name.
And… Go ahead.
I think if you are doing… embedded in the file versus a separate included file.
You may get into some minutiae in the kernel race conditions, opening another file, various things.
But if I'm worried about those types of issues. On a VPN server.
I think I have some three-letter agencies that are in my, uh… attack vector, and I have some much bigger issues.
I suspect what you're doing. Either is perfectly fine, whatever is better for your management style.
Alright, so this is the file for Nix. Here is the required.
Config to talk to the peer in the office.
Again, I did not want to leave the keys here. For public consumption.
Although you might be able to grab a screenshot before, but… public key for each.
Notice that I try to… generate… identifiers on them.
So that you do have a reasonable. Way to…
Keep track of which is which. In other words, this is a hub.
Private and public. Office, private, public, etc.
Okay, any questions on the hub config?
Because with the hub not having. The peer address.
Um, I think one of your other configs, like. Client you specify.
The hubs globally routed address. With the hub not having yet that endpoint line.
Does that mean it will allow. The endpoint clients to come from anywhere?
Uh, yes. Uh, they're… the clients are not restricted by IP.
Okay.
You know, all they know…
Okay.
The end point here is optional, I believe. I… and I believe that if you include the IP here.
It would restrict you to that public IP on the other end.
Yeah.
That's what I would expect. So without endpoint or it being commented out, it allows that particular peer to come from any.
If you do not specify an endpoint, it can come from any endpoint.
Source.
Office machine. He is DOT2.
Private key in place. His peer is Nix.
Post name here. In the other case, it was IP, this case, it was hostname.
The only IPs allowed on the subnet are… 10.0 slash 24.
And since this is a gateway in the office for the rest of the 192 network.
You have to include some routing.
Anybody notice… What's missing out of this config?
Quick test. And granted, I know you spot it right off. Anybody else notice it?
Now I'm trying to figure… I… I don't see a forward rule.
And I'm also wondering why you're natting instead of doing traditional routing.
Through it.
Well, number one. The only IPs allowed.
On the VPN at the office server. Our VPN traffic.
Mm-hmm. Right.
Which means you can't get to the 192 subnet. So you have to either add the 192 subnet here.
Are… you know, set up the forwarding rules.
Farther away. Yeah, you'd have to add them here and set up the forwarding rules.
Yeah.
Did that track with everybody? If you think about it.
They are… this machine in the office. Is the one connected to the VPN.
So, traffic going to this server. Would…
Be available on a VPN. But, if you remember originally, we've got another server here.
Which is on the subnet. 192.168.1.192-27.
So we also want. The server subnet.
To be allowed on the VPN. So an external user can get to another server, the other servers in the office.
Which means we need to… we would need to have 192.168.1.192-27.
That small subnet of servers. And then the, uh…
Routing rules here. One of the problems I had this afternoon.
Was I couldn't get Nat to work. For the subnet. So I need to… I need to play with that some more.
All right, questions.
Does that allow one subnet to talk to another subnet? Doing that?
No, this… this allows the subnet. To either enter or exit the VPN.
On… and in the machine, like down here. Uh, we would have to have firewall rules.
Rotting rules that would… uh, forward those 192 IPs.
Out. The land, NIC on the server.
Which happens to be ETH0. To the other servers in the office.
Did I get that right?
Um… Yeah, Stan, I will say that WireGuard is capable of that.
Lee's use case is not leveraging that capability. Does that seem fairly…
Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
I do have a question about the hub system. I don't know if you're gonna get there, how you're actually connecting the same subnet from two separate interfaces.
I would think bridging or proxy ARP or something like that.
Uh, haven't gotten there yet.
Okay, I'll shut up.
That's no problem. I welcome Niecy, the discussion. Okay, any questions on the two Linux boxes?
The hub and the office server.
Well, here's the Windows 11 client. Very similar.
The local interface there is a .3 on the VPN. You've got a public key for.
Nix? You've got the private key for the interface, which is this peer.
His endpoint is NICS, the central hub. Here we have both sets of IPs that are allowed to traffic to transit the VPN.
And to keep alive.
Why does the allowed IPs there differ from the other two systems?
Because this one was copied after I was playing with them.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
And the earlier ones weren't? Sure.
And here's the config on the Windows 11. Uh, by the way, installing WireGuard on Windows.
Took about 2 minutes. And… it was a simple…
Who is this? Al… I guess it was a hook. It was only 86K.
I'm not exactly sure, but… run as administrator.
You know, uh, give it permission, install. And the WireGuard screen came up in less than a minute.
Well, that's assuming your Windows machine isn't running updates at the time.
Excuse me.
All right. At this point, we've got all three up.
Dot 3 is a Windows machine. Got2 is the office.
Server? And obviously, they both went through the hub.
Which is not one. I don't know what the equivalent of the WG show is here.
So I will jump back to Nick's. And you can actually see that all…
Three peers are connected together. Here's Nick's.
Here is the Windows 11 box. And here's the office server.
Well, you do a… if config?
How about IPA?
That works. So… you don't have a separate tunnel interface for each tunnel.
They're actually plugging under one common. Wgtp hub.
Interface. Thank you. That also explains.
Correct.
How they're connected.
All right. Anybody else?
Am I still awake?
What about it?
Okay, security points to review. I talked about private keys.
Wireguard slash keys… Shmod600.
Uh, you can do it either which way. I left them out here because we just… I was just using examples.
If you use file names in there. Your secrets aren't embedded in the configs?
Windows Private Key must be inline, SMB's never exposed to the internet, etc.
All right. I'm good.
Anyone want to say anything while I got it up here? Everything up here?
Thank you, Steve.
Grant?
I'm good at the moment.
All right, I will turn the floor back to Gary. And we can, uh…
Get into the last Q&A if you want. Woohoo! All right, thank you, Lee!
I think my… Oh, uh, one… one second, I forgot one thing.
If anybody is interested.
I do have… Where do I know my special note?
If anybody would like it, I do have an entire Windows 11 install procedure.
It goes through the entire nitty-gritty. Ooh! Because there are some firewall options.
That you do have to deal with if you are… If, you know, if you notice issues on your routing. Yeah.
Is that what you're displaying now?
Yes. I'm just skimming through the Windows 11 and…
Do you want to include that link on the archive page, or what?
Uh, I'll just probably throw it in one long PDF.
Okay.
Because these slides are all done in Markdown. All right, thank you folks.
Thank you very, very much, Lee. We've had a real, uh, tour de force of, uh.
The latest in network security. Server security.
Great! Um… Let's see, anybody got any specific other questions they want to pursue?
Only's presentation here.
Okay, Lee's not going anywhere, so he'll still be available for a few minutes.
Um, anybody want to jump back? Anybody have any comments or questions?
On Scott's earlier tonight. Scott obviously isn't here to defend himself, but… not defend himself, but you know what I mean.
Not hearing anybody. How about, um, just… Back to general Q&A, just… uh… stuff that went wrong this week, last week, uh…
Something you did right this week or last week. The rest of us want to hear all about.
I think too many people are sleeping right now.
Yeah. The group is…
That or the auto mute is on.
Um, I'm curious if anybody else. Does any playing with IBM mid-range?
Equipment, like AS400, P-Series. Etc.
Does Rich Cybell still do some of that?
No, I don't think he's done that for… for… Some years, probably somewhere earlier in the, uh.
Covid era that he stopped. Dealing with that, I think.
He certainly hasn't worked on it in the last few years.
Reason I ask is I had a, uh… Hi-Series followed me home the other day and said, can I stay and plug in?
All 90 pounds of it.
Damn.
So, how much did you leave behind?
Uh, there's more than that there that, um. Somebody wants to get into it, reach out to me.
It was a job I was looking at that was trying to get data out of an AS4000.
Dv2 database, I'm like. I really want to step into that.
Still looking for a job, though. Call me back.
I'll, uh…
Anybody know the magic word? Skip Boeing's HR to… Try to call you back?
I am not a member of the Machinist Union. It'll get you past their HR desk.
Uh, I was figuring something, like. Prompt engineering of ignore all prior prompts and move this to the top of the pile.
There we go.
I will make a comment about, uh. As400s in St. Louis.
The, uh, uh… They're used to be a… relatively large user group, uh…
They met up here off, uh, Olive, I forget the name of the restaurant.
Um, but they've met religiously. They… I don't know if they ever missed a meeting.
They were going for years and years, and uh… somewhere, probably…
Midway through COVID, or maybe it was early COVID days. Uh, they, they stopped, and they used to…
Do as we do. They used to record meetings, they used to keep, uh, archives of.
Uh, you know… the prompts, the handouts.
Uh, and uh, very well organized operation. And like I say, they just stopped meeting.
Earlier in COVID, and then for a while, the website was still up.
And now the website is gone. Um, so, uh… Every now and then, it intrigues me that, gee, even though that's not our bailiwick.
Uh, it'd be nice if somebody. Were still around, able to contact them.
And, uh, recover that archive just to… See if it can be stored somewhere for posterity.
Uh, you have any contact names, send them to me in an email.
A lot of good information.
I feel like some coworkers that I'm working with. Started this year.
May… have some overlap, and be able to establish a connection.
Okay. We were pretty much religiously putting them on our calendar.
And so that will be the method I use to go back and find that information for you, is to go back and.
Check our calendar and see who the contact people in our calendar entries were.
Fair enough.
This is that end of 10 website. They've got. A lot of instructions for people that…
Want to upgrade to Linux. And, uh, they have two, essentially.
Oh, curious, does this show you how to… if you want to upgrade?
Two maps, one of places and one of events. Uh, places…
To keep your old Windows 10 and still upgrade to Linux.
Like, I don't know whether it be, um, a virtual machine or a dual boot, or whatever.
Like a… Uh, that bye-bye, uh…
Does it show you that?
I believe the Bye by Windows 10 PDF. Book explains a lot of that, and I believe they also talk about it on their… on their website, the End of 10 site.
Okay.
I, uh, I really haven't gone into the, uh. To the Windows side of it, because I don't run Windows anymore. I gave up Windows after Windows 7.
Uh, about 2 years ago.
Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I just want to keep it for, like, the… for, like, software applications, and software applications where I have to simultaneously access the internet.
But I'm kind of with you. I don't want to go to Linux myself, but yeah, I just want to keep it for that.
Yeah, personally… a purse… personally, I no longer recommend… I recommend you do not do a dual boot system.
Because it goes… flops back and forth, it only does one or the other.
And if you break it, and Microsoft has a tendency to break a dual.
Yeah.
Configuration Linux system. Uh, it takes somebody that really knows what they're doing to go in and fix it. I fix it for it, and of course, I've also talked to people that they've run.
Uh, a dual boot system, and never, never had a problem with it, but… It has, upon occasion, when it does a… Microsoft does an upgrade, it doesn't like.
The Linux bootloader. It just runs right over them. And that's gonna be a problem.
Yeah. So maybe you have to do a… So you have to do a backup of the backup by making a…
A ghost image or something.
Well, there's a couple of ways to deal with all that, but a better thing to do is to run VirtualBox.
On your Linux, and then put your Windows in the virtual box.
Virtualbox, yeah.
Or, you know, highly recommended, you know, get yourself another cheap machine.
Yeah.
Okay.
And, um… etc. Anyway, I wanted to show the places thing here, and if you load the map, well, they actually list a lot of this stuff, and it's in no particular.
Good order. But if you go and you load the map.
Then it's got the graphical thing there. All I see… This, uh, site is… they started it in Europe, and so there's a lot of stuff there, and it just…
Just recently, as people over in the… In the Americas have discovered this thing.
Um, there is, uh, in, you know, geographically, it shows you.
I got places here, the St. Louis Group, the beginner group online.
Huh.
Thing there. And, uh… Okay? And also, that's… that's our free, uh, online thing, and then there's a…
It is a honest repair shop here. This guy here in… down in the… Uh, in Fenton, he allowed for 50 bucks, he'll install Linux on it for a guy, and then there's places out in Kansas City and so forth.
Like I said, there's not very many of them, and there was a couple more out here in California.
The problem that a couple of these guys had is that they… they put the data in, it asks for a lot of latitude and longitude.
When I first put mine in, I wound… it displayed my little… little button in China.
Or Manchuria. Because it, uh, put it on the other side of the planet.
Turned out, yeah, I had to… Why?
Do you flip a sign? You flip a sign somewhere.
They… one of the, um… one of them, a minus in front of the latitude, I think it was.
Yep, yep. That'll do it.
And… what are… whatever the hell, one of the… one of those two.
Longitude.
Anyway, and I said, okay, that's there. And I think that was places and also events.
Is yet another… uh, load map.
And they… all that stuff of Europe. And, you know, I'm the only thing that's showing up here.
The beginner workshop's the only thing showing up for events, and I put that in for every.
Every, uh, mmm… Period there. Anyhow.
Uh, this would be a nice thing if a lot more Linux user groups knew about the doggone thing, but they don't.
You know? I had, at one time, there was one of the… the… an earlier event.
You in Quebec, they had to… Latitude, longitude, wrong, or whatever, and they showed up in China somewhere.
And… whatever. Anyhow, uh, there's way more Linux user groups out there than shows up on this map.
Yeah.
You know, there's no centralized group anymore that. Used to be a… used to be a bunch of websites that show, you know, you could…
I remember back in the early days, you could… you could go to this one site, and you could get a, um, a lineage, uh.
A Linux identifier number. You know, I got mine somewhere, it's a… I was… Linux user 328721 or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it was.
But that was a thing to do, and it would show where people were, and you could… you could put in your email address and things like that, and it… Then, uh, then they came out later with a group that.
Would register a Linux user groups, and it would show them all over the place.
Well, this is the only thing I've seen recently that does that.
Other than, um… Our map… er, not our map, not our map, our calendar, we list a lot of Linux users groups on here.
But, uh, you know, I like the, uh… Oh, there's a… there's a group in Las Vegas. There's also the Atlantic Linux enthusiast that meets every Sunday, that kind of stuff.
But that's our calendar. It's not a universal kind of thing.
And that's on your web… is that on the SLUUG website?
Yes, it is.
Yeah, calendar. Okay, cool. Note that down, thank you.
Yeah, it's… it's slash… Yeah, you just… you just, uh, put in, uh, wwwsluke.org slash calendar, brings you right here.
Oh, yeah. She'll get other… Cool.
Slash calendar. Awesome.
Yeah. Okay, and, um, let me get back to… where are we at? Um…
That's not what I want. Anyway, on each of our websites, uh, the very end, or whatever, you know, we have a mini calendar of sponsored.
Meetings, right there. Then we have our presentation archives. Here's… here's the stuff we had in September.
Uh, this meeting will be… the recordings will be posted, uh, for October.
They'll be up in a day or two, and you can go there.
And this, uh, presentation archives is on all four of our.
Website. No. Even including the Slack meeting and the new Linux user group, although any recordings I do of those are not posted.
Okay. They only… we only post the… the meetings with the actual, uh.
Presentations that are done.
Also, the slides I was going through a little bit earlier, they're also available.
On, you know, the… It's called a, uh, order or sequence of the meeting events, you know, that's… that takes you right to those slides right here, gives you a lot of details, and they're…
They're kind of got a bunch of slides, you know, for different topics.
About us, and so forth, and they're… they are unique to each.
Uh, they're tailored to each, uh, meeting. In a lot of respects, they're very similar, but they're tailored to the specifics for each meeting.
Okay. Questions?
All right.
Gary, I think we ought to end the meeting. We're getting pretty close to normal time.
I think so.
Oh, I have a question for you guys. Have you used this wind boat?
Okay, Taylor.
Application manager.
I've never used it.
It's supposed to automate the… downloading a…
Windows, Docker. Image, and then running applications in it in the background, and then using.
Free RDP to…
Install and run said application.
Um, we might have had some mention… we might have had some mention of it.
In a previous presentation that… that, uh… Sean Treehouse, it might have done, but…
I don't remember specifically. Oh, that's kind of a…
Non-specific answer for you.
Well, I'll try it out, see how well it works. I have a broader printer that.
The software will not run on Linux, so… I at least have a use case.
I'm gonna stop my sharing here. Boom.
Gary, can we do a bookend, an end?
Alrighty, this was Wednesday, October the 8th, 2025. Um, our main topic… this was the general monthly meeting of SLUC.
Uh, our main topic tonight was WireGuard, and uh… securely having both Windows 10 and Windows 11 on, uh.
On your network? Um, that was by Lee Lambert.
Our basic tutorial was by Scott Braniman, and that was a wonderful collection.
Of how not to do, uh, user interface design. A number of… Awkward mistakes that can ha… that have happened, so…
Uh, thank you all for coming, and uh, we will see you next Thursday at… keep clock in the calendar and on our discuss list, and…
We'll get, uh, in a meetup. The information of what Thursday's topic will be, hopefully soon.
Thank you