So while on the www.debian-administration.org site today I noticed an article about Restricting access to your private Debian repository where amongst other gems, they mention that you can use "ssh://" URIs in your sources.list file. Pretty nice, yes?
Well on top of that, mixed in with the comments, someone points out there's a helper utility called ssh-copy-id which copies your SSH public key(s) to a specified machine. It takes care of appending your key to the existing authorized_keys file and fixing file permissions on .ssh and the authorized_keys file.
As Borat says: "Verry nasse!"
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Monday, 23 April 2007
Fiesty Fawns and ATI drivers
I succesfully updated Friday, my computer at home, to Fiesty Fawn! Hooray! It was only a little be of a pain. The GUI updater thing seized up during the upgrade. Sucks, but I just did "apt-get dist-upgrade" from the terminal a couple times and all was well. As an added bonus, Fiesty now boots way faster. At some point, probably since Dapper, Friday would hang waiting to connect to the directory server on siona. It would go through a half dozen exponential timeouts before it would proceed so overall, that added 5 minutes to the boot time. Anyhow, with Fiesty, Friday just boots right up!
Now on Santana, my workstation at work, apache was totally messed. I ended up having to blow away apache and all the modules before the update would proceed. I don't know what happened there. Some crazy dependancy hell.
Now in other news, I've been having problems with the proprietary ATI drivers (the fglrx drives) on my office workstation for a long time. Every time I logged out, system freezes. Argh! But I worked around that by only logging out once a week ;) Anyhow, it turns out, the Gentoo people know it's a problem and even have a solution. Well, more of a workaround. Apparently the problem stems from a memory leak or some such. Bad. So I'm going to try their work-around and if it doesn't work *shrug* I'll go to the F/OSS ATI driver. I haven't been playing much UT2004 at work recently which was the only reason I bothered with the fglrx driver in the first place.
Now on Santana, my workstation at work, apache was totally messed. I ended up having to blow away apache and all the modules before the update would proceed. I don't know what happened there. Some crazy dependancy hell.
Now in other news, I've been having problems with the proprietary ATI drivers (the fglrx drives) on my office workstation for a long time. Every time I logged out, system freezes. Argh! But I worked around that by only logging out once a week ;) Anyhow, it turns out, the Gentoo people know it's a problem and even have a solution. Well, more of a workaround. Apparently the problem stems from a memory leak or some such. Bad. So I'm going to try their work-around and if it doesn't work *shrug* I'll go to the F/OSS ATI driver. I haven't been playing much UT2004 at work recently which was the only reason I bothered with the fglrx driver in the first place.
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
Now running: Openfire
The Jive Software XMPP server has gone through a name change from Wildfire to Openfire. Gosh, I remember back in the day when it used to be called "Jive Messenger", those were the days. You had to pack your Jabber messages on your back in the hot sun with no water... Oh nevermind, the Jive XMPP server has always been a treat. The icon of "ease of use" with a good enough balance of functionality for many installations.
So anyhow, the upgrade from Wildfire 3.2.4 to Openfire 3.3.0 went great. It's up and running and seems to be in great shape!
So anyhow, the upgrade from Wildfire 3.2.4 to Openfire 3.3.0 went great. It's up and running and seems to be in great shape!
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
What time is it?
I just stumbled across this interesting page here: http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/critdate.htm. It lists all the calendar quirks we have scheduled for the foreseeable future. It's pretty cool :D This pages covers everything from relatively minor bugs, like VBScript returning the wrong week number once every 28 years, to the supposedly catastrophic including the disastrous Y2k bug and the end of 32b UNIX time in 2038. Some stuff is just quirks of computing, like the y2k bug, some are basic calendar ones, like the non-non-leap-year in 2000, and others are political/calendar changes like the change in DST in the US (and regions following adopting the change based on the US).
By the way, the end is nigh! On May 19th, MS-DOS CLOCK$ daycount 10000. Whatever that means. Oh, and June 7th works out to be the same as 1999-99-99... If that causes a bug, then someone has written some bad-bad-bad software :P
By the way, the end is nigh! On May 19th, MS-DOS CLOCK$ daycount 10000. Whatever that means. Oh, and June 7th works out to be the same as 1999-99-99... If that causes a bug, then someone has written some bad-bad-bad software :P
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
More routers = more confusion
Apparently, this whole two routers thing is a little messed up. In summary: I have an older (e.g. better) Linksys WRT54G running DDWRT as my Gateway and primary LAN router and a second Linksys WRT54G, newer and shitter, running the Linksys firmware running the WLAN. And basically, it ran as two subnets with just the DDWRT router doing any NAT.
Everything *seemed* fine. The traffic from the WLAN passed to the wired LAN then through the NAT to the Internet then back. However, we started noticing a problem were a WLAN machine was having problems accessing services on Siona when having to pass from WLAN -> LAN -> NAT -> Siona -> NAT -> LAN -> WLAN ... Not exactly the world's simplest setup, but it *should* work since LAN -> NAT -> Siona -> NAT -> LAN always works... It was just being flaky. Nine times out of ten, the connection would just disappear. Other Internet connections were fine, addressing Siona by her non-routable IP was working fine.
So after much poking and testing to identify *where* these connections were disappearing, I found they weren't disappearing at all. I guess the WLAN router just need to be reset or some such. Stupid Linksys... Ah well, what can you do, right?
When all else fails and you're using shitty firmware (or operating system), reboot!
Everything *seemed* fine. The traffic from the WLAN passed to the wired LAN then through the NAT to the Internet then back. However, we started noticing a problem were a WLAN machine was having problems accessing services on Siona when having to pass from WLAN -> LAN -> NAT -> Siona -> NAT -> LAN -> WLAN ... Not exactly the world's simplest setup, but it *should* work since LAN -> NAT -> Siona -> NAT -> LAN always works... It was just being flaky. Nine times out of ten, the connection would just disappear. Other Internet connections were fine, addressing Siona by her non-routable IP was working fine.
So after much poking and testing to identify *where* these connections were disappearing, I found they weren't disappearing at all. I guess the WLAN router just need to be reset or some such. Stupid Linksys... Ah well, what can you do, right?
When all else fails and you're using shitty firmware (or operating system), reboot!
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Mindmapping Like Cthulhu
I have finally started using a mind-mapping tool, Kdissert, and I have to say, it's pretty cool. Mindmapping tools are great for organizing many related ideas so you can map out what's what.
The other thing is that mind-maps can look kinda snazzy. In Kdissert, by default, it draws straight lines from one idea to another. However, you can make it draw splines instead and then the ideas look like they're being grappled by tentacles, it's really cool. Here's a mindmap I'm working on, apparently, my mind looks like the coming of Cthulhu:
Spooky!
The other thing is that mind-maps can look kinda snazzy. In Kdissert, by default, it draws straight lines from one idea to another. However, you can make it draw splines instead and then the ideas look like they're being grappled by tentacles, it's really cool. Here's a mindmap I'm working on, apparently, my mind looks like the coming of Cthulhu:
Spooky!
Friday, 23 March 2007
More routers = more power
As per my earlier posts, my existing wireless router has been having problems. After "playing" with the transmit power settings using DDWRT, I managed to blow my wireless. Connectivity was intermittent no matter what I did, with or without encryption running on top. In summmary, the wireless was dead.
So then came the question of replacing the router. Well, since Linksys, in their grace and wisdom, has been selling the same router (the WRT54G) for at least the two years I've had this one but stripping down the hardware to be cheaper and crappier every year, my options were to either find another router to replace the current one that would be beefy enough for my needs, or else by the cheapest wireless AP possible and run it on the LAN in addition to my current router.
After some hemming and hawing, I decided to go with the cheapest and easiest option. So I bought one of the "new and improved" Linksys WRT54Gs. Well it turns out that since Linksys has been able to cut costs, they've decided to pass those savings directly to the shareholders. I paid the same f&^$%ing price for the stripped down version of my old router. But, at the cost of 70$ plus a sore ass, I now have a working wireless router.
So since I just wanted an additional WLAN to the existing LAN, the setup was actually really easy and is working really well. On my existing router, I configured a static router pointing to the new router. I setup the new router with a static external IP addres, setup the internall network on a new subnet, and changed it from "gateway" mode to "router" mode which disables the NAT. So now I have to networks at home, 192.168.1.0/24 for the wired LAN and external gateway, and 192.168.2.0/24 for the WLAN. Worked like a charm!
The last issue was, of course, wireless security. I have to say that the WiFi group and people implementing WiFi stuff still need to uncork their collective asses. On the router, I've got the option of WEP, WPA, and WPA2. For WPA, there's "personal" and "enterprise". Now, given this is a router setup, the terms "personal" and "enterprise" tell me nothing either technically (when they should be saying "pre-shared key" or "RADIUS/802.1x" instead) or as a non-technical user. Nevertheless, this was a moot point because on the client side, after fight with Ubuntu, I couldn't get it to connect to the WLAN with WPA encryption (pre-shared key) and I just didn't have the energy to trouble-shoot. So I ended up going with WEP (the "wireless sortof-encryption protocol") which was, if not secure, at least feasible to setup. Sadly, I think most of the local WLANs are encrypted (either WEP or WPA) so we're no more and no less a target. Ugh, stupid WEP.
On the other hand, since all the systems on our LAN/WLAN are firewalled and updated and basically good for taking care of themselves, I may yet go back to running wide-open. The only people likely to piggy-back are our neighbours and they're a pretty harmless lot.
So then came the question of replacing the router. Well, since Linksys, in their grace and wisdom, has been selling the same router (the WRT54G) for at least the two years I've had this one but stripping down the hardware to be cheaper and crappier every year, my options were to either find another router to replace the current one that would be beefy enough for my needs, or else by the cheapest wireless AP possible and run it on the LAN in addition to my current router.
After some hemming and hawing, I decided to go with the cheapest and easiest option. So I bought one of the "new and improved" Linksys WRT54Gs. Well it turns out that since Linksys has been able to cut costs, they've decided to pass those savings directly to the shareholders. I paid the same f&^$%ing price for the stripped down version of my old router. But, at the cost of 70$ plus a sore ass, I now have a working wireless router.
So since I just wanted an additional WLAN to the existing LAN, the setup was actually really easy and is working really well. On my existing router, I configured a static router pointing to the new router. I setup the new router with a static external IP addres, setup the internall network on a new subnet, and changed it from "gateway" mode to "router" mode which disables the NAT. So now I have to networks at home, 192.168.1.0/24 for the wired LAN and external gateway, and 192.168.2.0/24 for the WLAN. Worked like a charm!
The last issue was, of course, wireless security. I have to say that the WiFi group and people implementing WiFi stuff still need to uncork their collective asses. On the router, I've got the option of WEP, WPA, and WPA2. For WPA, there's "personal" and "enterprise". Now, given this is a router setup, the terms "personal" and "enterprise" tell me nothing either technically (when they should be saying "pre-shared key" or "RADIUS/802.1x" instead) or as a non-technical user. Nevertheless, this was a moot point because on the client side, after fight with Ubuntu, I couldn't get it to connect to the WLAN with WPA encryption (pre-shared key) and I just didn't have the energy to trouble-shoot. So I ended up going with WEP (the "wireless sortof-encryption protocol") which was, if not secure, at least feasible to setup. Sadly, I think most of the local WLANs are encrypted (either WEP or WPA) so we're no more and no less a target. Ugh, stupid WEP.
On the other hand, since all the systems on our LAN/WLAN are firewalled and updated and basically good for taking care of themselves, I may yet go back to running wide-open. The only people likely to piggy-back are our neighbours and they're a pretty harmless lot.
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