Anybody use the Dell 3010??

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:49:46 +0100, Lucas B. Cohen wrote:
> On 2012.11.18 09:58, Gary Kline wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 	I probably should cc the hardward guys about this.  first, see if it
> > 	geta  any traction here, tho.  my tech guy got me a Delll 3010
> > 	that has an "improved" [[meaning screwed up]] BIOS with some 
> > 	hardware mess called the UEFI.
> > 
> > 	Trying to get ssh to work *bi-directionally* i royally f'ked up my
> > 	installation for well over 27 hours.  ssh still fails to connect going
> > 	in to my "new tao"; but this time I know what to avoid.  my 
> > 	question is simple: of what use is this new/improved POS setup?
> > 
> > 	im sure its the same for every flavor of unix. my view is that it
> > 	mjust makes using non-windozw that much more painful. 
> > 
> > 	gary
> > 
> 
> Gary,
> 
> UEFI is more than a modified BIOS, it's something to get rid of the BIOS
> altogether. It's the x86 BIOS that arguably deserves much more to be
> called a screwed up POS, as it carries with it 30 years worth of legacy
> weirdness, kludges to go around them in modern systems, and a whole
> catalog of vendor-specific bugs and non-compliant implementations. UEFI
> was designed to solve a bunch of problems for manufacturers and advanced
> users, I'm not so sure that it deserves so much heat.

The positive aspects you've mentioned about UEFI, the potential
to solve problems originating back to half-baked solutions and
"hacks" on BIOS level are well mentioned. Still I fear that UEFI
will not bring them to reality. Instead it will be worse.

Allow me to provide just one example:

	More in the series of bizarre UEFI bugs
	http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20187.html

As the title suggests, there are many more. :-)



> What I'm sure of, is that there's no relationship between your new
> machine's UEFI and your ssh issues.

That sounds possible, but still UEFI _can_ be used to interfere
with any level of the machine, as far as I know. As it is somehow
a kind of "micro-OS", it can surely detect network traffic and
motify or deny it if desired. There are many aspects of "security"
that can be realized with UEFI. Avoiding "uncertified" traffic
could be one of them.

Still in _this_ particular case I would not assume UEFI to be
the source of the problem.





> I'm also sure that this has nothing to do with FreeBSD.

FreeBSD's ssh implementation (client and server) usually are
simple to set up, providing a good "out of the box experience".
Checking settings on both sides, using the -vvv option or
maybe even using tcpdump or Wireshark to examine the traffic
could help to spot the problem.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...