UK Apollo Group (Further Updates)

In an earlier post I talked about some particularly flagrant spammers and data traders, UK Apollo Group a.k.a Taylor CVs, run by Keith Taylor.

After a mix up at the courts I applied for a re-hearing and - what a surprise, the defence failed to attend. Although even if they had I'm not sure it would have made any difference as I barely spoke at all.

The judge asked for 20 minutes for additional reading time, having been passed the case from another judge. After I'd sat down he simply stated the conditions under which a re-trial would be granted and that he was not there to deal with the other submissions. In under five minutes he worked his way through the reasoning for allowing the application - even noting that he was not there to decide the case, even though he deemed the defence as 'flimsy at best'.

The new trial is listed on the 21st November 2016 and I'll provide more updates nearer the time. However in the time between the last post and the application heading the defendant has spammed be yet again.

Not only that but Monster.co.uk have confirmed - after I provided them all the details of the web of companies holding UK Apollo together - that they've spoken directly to the defendant and advised them that what they're doing not only breaches the terms and conditions of their contract with Monster, but is breaking the law.

I'm yet to hear any kind of conciliatory tones from Kieth Taylor, nor do I expect to. Perhaps having a CCJ listed against his company for the next 6 years will adjust his attitude towards stealing personal data for profit.

Running VMWare Player on an Ubuntu 16 SP4

I had some minor headaches trying to get a decent hypervisor working on Linux desktop, and figured out a more manageable approach whilst retaining secure boot & UEFI.

One of the initial challenges is actually getting to the download for the VMW Player - rather than the full (paid for) Workstation etc. but can be found here at the time of writing. VMWare seem to have made it far simpler to access than when I first dug it out. NB this is only for non-commercial use, otherwise you'll need the paid-for Pro version.

Had to use Chromium as FF didn't want to play with vmware.com

Of concern for me was the lack of checksum or PGP verification for the download, something VMWare need to work on. The other major annoyance is that every time the kernel is updated this process needs to be repeated.

High-Level Views

The reason you may need to do this is that you've tried to use VMWare Player / Worktation but the networking does not work. After digging into your logs you'll see that the drivers couldn't be loaded at boot time.

Unlike VirtualBox et al VMWare seems a lot more stable on my SP4 i7 16GB, and can run multiple VMs without the need to have their UI windows open. It also seems to handle host-guest device management (e.g. USB) far better.

Personally, I was tired of VB being flakey and am used to VMware and Hyper-V.

Step-by-Step

1. Download the VMWare bundle from the link listed above
2. Apply executable permissions via sudo chmod ug+x <vmw.bundle> 
3. Run the .bundle (it's just a shell script) via sudo ./<vmw.bundle
4. Once the installer has completed you may need a reboot - if you do you'll see systemd errors relating to failed service starts for the vmware.service due to the unsigned network drivers vmmon / vmnet 
5. You'll need to run the kernel module updater - either via GUI or via sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all - this ensures that the modules VMWare needs to operate it's core networking capability are available

GUI version of the installer is invoked if you try and run the player at this point

This step should produce a script output ending something like this:
Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                            failed
   Virtual machine communication interface                             done
   VM communication interface socket family                            done
   Blocking file system                                                done
   Virtual ethernet                                                   failed
   VMware Authentication Daemon                                        done
Unable to start services 

Checking the status of system services should show vmware loaded but unable to run.

This indicates that everything is ready for signing now the modules are ready. After step #5 download or clone a copy of this signer script and follow the instructions. You will be asked to create a password during generation, which is then requested during MOK install after you reboot.

Expanding on That

The last item on that list is a bit abrupt but there's a couple of things you must do. Firstly you need to adapt the certificate definition to your own needs.

Change the subject of each of the certificates from "/C=CountyCode/ST=OfficeState/L=OfficeCity/O=Dept/CN=local.yourdomain.ext" on line 9 as appropriate to your specific needs. Ensure that these details are not accessible by anyone other than yourself.

Two certificates are generated - one for each driver. You can simplify to one certificate if you prefer.

Problems

1. Errors during step 5 could mean issues with VMware version and the Linux version. I upgraded to Ubuntu 16.10 which upgraded the kernel. To solve issues in error messages with the VMW kernel module updater download the latest version of the VMware player
2. I found that a reboot was needed between dist-upgrade of Ubuntu and VMware re-sign, otherwise something would get itself tied up in knots and have no effect on the player.

Old News

I noticed a few news articles recently that bemused me....relating to the addition of updates to v4.8 of the Linux kernel to support touch screen on Surface Pro 3.

This is strange to me because when I dual-booted my SP3 a couple of years ago with Ubuntu 15, touch screen worked out-of-the-box. Unity and Gnome UIs don't really deal with touch-screen input very well (but Linux doesn't really have the designers that Microsoft or Apple do), but it's not too bad. The SP 3 pen right-click isn't recognised at all so you'll need a mouse anyway. I included a photo of this in operation from a much earlier blog post.

Ubuntu 15, using the SP3 pen as a mouse

 However touch-screen input doesn't work at all with the SP4 - Running Ubuntu 16.04 and Gnome - no direct touch or pen input is detected. I can't find a touch-screen device registered by the OS either so am guessing this is the lack of drivers / support from Intel for the Iris 540 and touch-screen itself.

When I get some time later this month I'll look at the Intel Linux driver programme and the latest kernel to see if there's progress.