Sudo Show

SUDO Show 76, “ABCs of CVEs,” breaks down how modern Linux vulnerabilities go from scary headlines to real-world fixes. Bill, Neal, and Brandon start with conferences and Neal’s new Framework 13 Pro running Fedora, then dive into AI‑assisted security research and what tools like Claude and others are actually doing in the CVE pipeline. Neal walks through recent high‑profile issues like Pack2TheRoot in PackageKit, the copy.fail kernel optimization bug, and the Dirty Frag vulnerability, explaining how disclosure, embargoes, and coordination really work from a distro maintainer’s perspective. Brandon then focuses on CVE patching best practices, testing and release strategies, tools like Foreman and Uyuni for managing updates, and how to interpret CVSS scores and risk without panicking, before the crew wraps with advice for new grads who want to get into security without setting their hair—or their clusters—on fire.

Show Links:

Foreman – https://theforeman.org/

Uyuni – https://www.uyuni-project.org/

Pack2TheRoot – Linux local privilege escalation write‑up

https://github.security.telekom.com/2026/04/pack2theroot-linux-local-privilege-escalation.html

copy.fail – kernel copy‑on‑write vulnerability

https://copy.fail/

Dirty Frag – universal Linux LPE PoC

https://github.com/V4bel/dirtyfrag#dirty-frag-universal-linux-lpe

Connect with the Hosts:

Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon

Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon

Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 75, “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee,” is a full‑on April Fools special where “business meets Linux” takes a back seat to pranks, retro war stories, and questionable life choices. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with open source airplanes, HDMI‑to‑floppy adapters, and whether airplane wings actually flap, then quickly descend into cargo‑class containers, VM‑matrix jokes, and vintage Linux desktop pain with FVWM95 and XFree86. From decaf‑only coffee stunts, BashRC logout traps, PC speaker torture, and ping‑flooded LAN parties to PACMAN.BAT in the school lab, Gentoo use‑flag accidents, OpenStack root‑password “oops” moments, and a threat to invent Fedora.js, they share their most devious tech and non‑tech pranks. Along the way, they talk MSP coffee culture, two‑pots‑a‑day network engineering, Kubernetes as “all YAML,” and close by reminding you not to try any of this at work—no matter how good that April Fools itch feels.

Show Links:

FVWM95 – https://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/

ReactOS – https://reactos.org/

Kata Containers – https://katacontainers.io

podman – https://podman.io

Chapters:

00:00:00 Intro – Off the Rails April Fools

00:00:55 Open Source Airplanes and HDMI-to-Floppy

00:01:50 Do Airplane Wings Flap?

00:04:28 Cargo Class and the VM Matrix

00:05:22 Best Tech and Non-Tech Pranks

00:08:49 FVWM95, XFree86, and Fake Windows Desktops

00:14:22 ReactOS and Retro Linux Adventures

00:15:01 Going Vintage in the Future

00:18:09 Bill’s Decaf Coffee and BashRC Pranks

00:19:56 PC Speaker Torture and Random Beeps

00:20:58 Old-School LAN Parties

00:23:05 Ping-Flood LAN Parties and ZipSlack

00:24:21 PSA System Rollback – April Fools

00:25:58 Noel’s PACMAN.BAT and Lab Ban

00:32:02 Linux ISOs and School Network Quotas

00:35:07 Office Built from Old Optiplex Cases

00:39:28 First Home PCs and Gateway Cow Boxes

00:42:06 Serial Mice Still in Production

00:42:56 Gentoo Use Flags and history

00:46:22 OpenStack Cluster and Lost Root Password

00:48:41 Ranking Pranks and Coffee + Desktop Combo

00:50:45 Noel Hates Coffee

00:52:26 MSP Coffee Culture and “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee”

00:55:51 Weaponized Iced Coffee

00:58:52 /30 Subnets per Phone and Two Pots of Coffee

01:01:10 No Rails

01:02:06 May Your BBQ Sauce Be Watery

01:03:36 Kubernetes Is All YAML

01:04:04 Fedora.js

01:04:57 Disclaimer – Do Not Try This at Work

01:06:01 Ball Pits, Ball.js, and Bouncy Balls

01:07:29 Outro – Where Business Meets Terrible Jokes

Connect with the Hosts:

Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon

Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon

Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

Moving to the cloud was easy; getting out is the hard part. In SUDO Show 74, Bill, Neal, and Noel dig into “The Great Cloud Breakup” and why more teams are rethinking cloud‑first dogma as exit fees rise and data residency laws go live across the US, EU, UK, and beyond. They talk through how modern Linux, NVMe‑over‑Fabrics, and on‑prem hardware make repatriation realistic again, spotlight rclone and Nick Craig‑Wood for making data movement sane, and share hard‑won stories about ugly data transfers and hybrid architectures. The episode wraps with a tongue‑in‑cheek “repatriate AWS onto three Raspberry Pis” action item and a NetHogs quick fix you can run today to catch chatty services before egress fees blow up your budget.

Show Links:

Red Hat - https://www.redhat.com​

rclone - https://rclone.org​

rclone (commercial) - https://rclone.com​

restic backup - https://restic.net​

Oxide Computer Company - https://oxide.computer/​

nethogs (NetHogs) - https://github.com/raboof/nethogs​

Chapters:

00:00:00 Intro – The Great Cloud Breakup

00:02:11 Standup – Data Residency Laws and Exit Fees

00:06:36 Are We Ready to Repatriate? Linux and NVMe-over-Fabrics

00:15:37 Where Are the Future Jobs?

00:23:29 Supporter Spotlight – rclone and Nick Craig-Wood

00:30:17 Bill’s Nightmare Data Transfer Story

00:36:11 Main Topic – The Great Cloud Breakup

01:12:31 Action Item – Repatriate AWS onto MicroShift (on Three Pis)

01:14:12 Quick Fix – NetHogs to Catch Chatty Services

01:17:13 Looking Forward to the Next Episode

01:18:32 Outro – Where Business Meets Linux

Connect with the Hosts:

Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon

Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon

Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 73 revisits the classic “Career Pipeline” topic with a fresh panel and an updated roadmap for building a Linux and open source career today. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with the “Wayland-only” future of the Linux desktop, spotlight Red Hat’s work on fwupd and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, then dive into education, certifications, homelabs, open source contributions, and soft skills that turn curiosity into real-world tech jobs. They wrap up with a practical systemd-analyze “quick win” you can run right now to understand and improve your system’s boot performance.

Show Links:

Red Hat – Company site:

https://www.redhat.com

fwupd project:

https://fwupd.org

LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service):

https://fwupd.org/lvfs

CompTIA A+ Certification:

https://www.comptia.org/en-us/certifications/a/

AWS Certification:

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/

RHCSA Training and Certification:

https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/rhcsa

SUSE SCA (SLES 15):

https://www.suse.com/training/exam/sca-sles-15/

Linux Professional Institute (LPIC):

https://www.lpi.org

systemd-analyze documentation:

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-analyze.html

Commands discussed:

systemd-analyze – “Odometer” (total boot time)

systemd-analyze blame – “Leaderboard” (slowest services)

systemd-analyze critical-chain – “Timeline” (dependency chain)

systemd-analyze critical-chain --system

systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg – “Visualizer” (boot chart)