Development Cycle

At the moment it may not look to good for the crew behind the Pirate Bay. Although for the site its self it still seems to be business as usual since most servers reside in the Netherlands but after finding this Google custom search for torrent files i am wondering if the Pirate bay is even needed any longer.

Back a few years ago when the Pirate bay shot to fame as they where able to aggregate the large amount of torrent files out there and categorise them but i cant help thinking the present day situation for torrents mimics the mid – late ninties for web pages normally one would surf through directories etc rather than search, is the same happening for torrents?

It was announced today that the Debian distribution has added support for the FreeBSD kernel to the Debian archive with supporting both x86 and amd64 architectures. Allowing users to choose between running a normal Linux kernel or a FreeBSD based one.

Which begs the question why would you want to run a FreeBSD kernel? BSD offers some very good security features such as BSD packet filter (pf) and jails which allow the imprisonment of processes and their children to certain parts of system.

I personally can’t wait to get some free time in order to take for a test drive. I have always loved FreeBSD, but never the greatest fan of the “ports” system of application management at least this way i will be able to handle packages with convienance of apt.

Further Reading:

kFreeBSD Why? – Debian Wiki

The man of the moment Minister for Broadband, misCommunications and the digital economy Stephen Conroy managed to get himself listed this morning for sale on Ebay by a mystery seller under the alias krudd53. The auction only lasted a few hours until Ebay pulled it around midday (either that or it got filtered?) but managed to attract quite an audience in the time it was live.

Suprisingly just before the auction was stopped the asking price was a tad over $1000, very over priced for a useless ballon of hot air i am sure many fellow Australians would agree! But never the less some of the enquiries from prospective buyers on the auction were very amusing:

Q: If I dress him in Latex and spank him, will this result in his being Refused Classification? 02-Apr-09
A: No my fellow Australian, Nothing will be censored. K Rudd.

Q: Can I pick him up and save postage? What is the quality? I don’t want to buy him and then 02-Apr-09
have him fail continuously days later.
A: Greetings Fellow Australian, Pickup is not an option on this sale. Regards K Rudd.

For those that missed the fun made at the expense of our beloved minister can find the auction here in pdf format as the auction looked at around 10am (sorry about the pdf but was at work).

You have the perfect idea for your new web based application but are disappointed to find all the domains that suit it are taken.

To find that perfect domain name in advance it may be an idea to take advantage of this service provided by Network Solutions just add the keywords you want included in your search and submit the form to get and RSS feed of expiring domain names that match your keywords.

Well it seems to have been an eventful day for the Labour Governments planned compulsory internet filter for Australians. The AMCA blacklist was said to have been leaked onto the net by Wikileaks and the news of the so called leak seems to got people wild everywhere. This SMH article reports Stephen Conroy popping out the cupbord with this rant:

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said the leak and publication of the ACMA blacklist would be “grossly irresponsible” and undermine efforts to improve cyber safety.

He said ACMA was investigating the matter and considering a range of possible actions including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Australians involved in making the content available would be at “serious risk of criminal prosecution”.

But now later in the day it seems Mr Conroys office is telling the world it wasn’t their blacklist after all, as the published list has way too many URL’s, and they are super responsible and they would never just leave the list laying around to be leaked.

But then again Mr Conroy and his “Ministry of truth”, have been found acting in an underhanded manner before so how much of their story is truth could be anyones guess.

Read More:

Electronic Frontiers Australia

No Clean Feed

No Clean Feed – Twitter

EFA Twitter Feed

After a long battle i finally have my vodafone branded Huawei K3715 3g modem working with my eeePC 701. Since i mainly use my eeePC for the commute to work, i missed having a internet connection. 3G has been around for ages but until recently all of the Australian telcos wanted you to sign a 24 month contract to get a resonable bandwidth quota at a price that wasnt prohibitive.

All this changed a few months ago when i found out Three was offering prepaid broadband, my mate worked in an office that had surplus Vodafone branded 3G modems so i just figured i would grab a Three sim card and i would be happily able to surf the net whilst travelling to an from work.

First pain was getting the sim activated and credit on the account Three seem to run their website and phone service in a style fashioned on “amatuer hour”. After jumping those hurdles i upgraded my version of eeebuntu to Intrepid Ibex as i knew this release had focused on mobile connections so i figured it would make it easier especially with a newer model modem than the standard Huawei E220.

Upon ugrading i booted up and was pleased to see Ubuntu acted like it knew what it was doing, it spotted the modem okay olthough it reported it in the logs as an E620. Because it knew i was located in Australia it gave me a list of telecommunications companies to chose my provider from. So i selected three and tried to connect but alas no luck, looking in /var/log/syslog i saw:

Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) starting connection ‘Three’
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  (ttyUSB0): device state change: 3 -> 4
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled…
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started…
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <debug> [1237375331.265910] nm_serial_device_open(): (ttyUSB0) opening device…
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  (ttyUSB0): powering up…
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Registered on Roaming network
Mar 10 22:22:11 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Associated with network: +COPS: 0,2,”50501″,0
Mar 10 22:23:12 eeelap NetworkManager: <WARN>  dial_done(): Dialing timed out
Mar 10 22:23:12 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  (ttyUSB0): device state change: 4 -> 9
Mar 10 22:23:12 eeelap NetworkManager: <debug> [1237375392.001454] nm_serial_device_close(): Closing device ‘ttyUSB0′
Mar 10 22:23:12 eeelap NetworkManager: <info>  Marking connection ‘Three’ invalid.

Naturally i looked around the internet to try and find a solution, and learnt most people where using wvdial to connect just same as dial up connections in the good old days. So i used the settings from network manager to configure wvdial but still no luck connecting:

–> Starting pppd at Wed Mar 11 18:10:25 2009
–> Pid of pppd: 6349
–> Using interface ppp0
–> Authentication (CHAP) started
–> Authentication (CHAP) successful
–> Disconnecting at Wed Mar 18 18:10:30 2009
–> The PPP daemon has died: A modem hung up the phone (exit code = 16)
–> man pppd explains pppd error codes in more detail.
–> Try again and look into /var/log/messages and the wvdial and pppd man pages for more information.
–> Auto Reconnect will be attempted in 10 seconds
–> Cannot get information for serial port.
–> Initializing modem.
–> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK

Looking at the log gave more details and for awhile i thought i just didnt have enough reception but i though this couldn’t be the case when i was at work in the middle of the CBD!

The syslog entry for wvdial:

Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: pppd 2.4.4 started by henry, uid 1000
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: using channel 2
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: Using interface ppp0
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/ttyUSB0
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: Warning – secret file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets has world and/or group access
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <pcomp> <accomp>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x3 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth chap MD5> <magic 0x7e4576> <pcomp> <accomp>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [LCP ConfRej id=0x3 <magic 0x7e4576>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <pcomp> <accomp>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x4 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth chap MD5> <pcomp> <accomp>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x4 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth chap MD5> <pcomp> <accomp>]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x0]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [LCP DiscReq id=0x5 magic=0x7e4576]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x1 <52aca456ee672d55f26502182eff7245>, name = "UMTS_CHAP_SRVR"]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: Warning – secret file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets has world and/or group access
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [CHAP Response id=0x1 <1a3a1563c31a9092d75fc73d3361a8a9>, name = "a"]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0x7e4576 00 00 00 00]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x1 ""]
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Mar 11 18:33:25 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns2 0.0.0.0>]
Mar 11 18:33:26 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x1 <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:26 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:27 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x2 <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:27 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x3 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:28 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x3 <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:28 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x4 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:29 eeelap pppd[6349]: rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x4 <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:29 eeelap pppd[6349]: sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x5 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms-dns1 10.11.12.13> <ms-dns2 10.11.12.14> <ms-wins 10.11.12.13> <ms-wins 10.11.12.14>]
Mar 11 18:33:29 eeelap pppd[6349]: Modem hangup
Mar 11 18:33:29 eeelap pppd[6349]: Connection terminated.
Mar 11 18:33:29 eeelap pppd[6349]: Exit.

I thought this was weird as it kind of looked like it was connected and the modem was just hanging up with no explanation. More hours were spent googling the issue and trying many modifications to my wvdial.conf file, only to still have no luck.

Finally when i was about to throw the project in i found a forum post that referred to the Three APN in Australia being 3services rather than 3netaccess which is what it was repeated as everywhere else i had looked. I decided one more try wouldn’t kill me so i changed the APN in my wvdial.conf file and tried to connect again:

–> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
–> Cannot get information for serial port.
–> Initializing modem.
–> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
–> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
–> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”3services”;
AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”3services”;
OK
–> Modem initialized.
–> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
–> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99***1#
CONNECT
–> Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
–> Starting pppd at Wed Mar 15 20:11:06 2009
–> Pid of pppd: 6485
–> Using interface ppp0
–> Authentication (CHAP) started
–> Authentication (CHAP) successful
–> local  IP address 10.173.110.201
–> remote IP address 10.64.64.64
–> primary   DNS address 10.176.65.70
–> secondary DNS address 10.156.38.134
–> Script /etc/ppp/ip-up run successful
–> Default route Ok.
–> Nameserver (DNS) Ok.
–> Connected… Press Ctrl-C to disconnect

It seemed i finally had a working connection and it had nothing to do with the modem or drivers after all. So a tip to those wanting to use Three 3g internet in Australia, use the APN 3services not 3netaccess. Also you may want to check out the Vodafone Betavine site they have their own Linux client which you can use for SMS functionality, i found it a bit on the heavy side but their site is full of open source programs and info related to mobile computing so is well worth a look!

Seeding torrents its not just good manners!

Drupal is a great CMS for creating websites, easy to use, extendible, great community and very powerful.
In this quick post I am going to show the reader the reader how to add a contact form to their Drupal powered
site.

First up log into your Drupal install as the “admin” user browse to Administer / Site Building / Modules in the site
back end and activate the contact module. Then be sure to click the button down the bottom of the page to save your
changes.

Now look in Administer / Site Building you will find a section named “contact form” enter this section and you can get down to the business of actually building the form.
Click on the “add category” link and add a name, I am giving mine the name “contact us”. In the next text field enter the email address that messages received through forms in this category should go to and an auto reply message for the sender if you want one. I also changed the value in the “selected” option to yes as will need one category of contact forms.

Some other options you may want to change for your form can be found in the “settings” section, such as “additional information” to display above your contact form such as instructions to the user, alternative contact details etc. Another handy option is the ability to set the maximum number of submissions a user can make through the contact form per hour to stop people spamming you.

Okay the form should now be ready to go just need to create some menu links so visitors to your site can find it. To achieve this browse to Administer / Site Building / Menus and select the “add menu item” option to create a link to your contact page. Give the link a name, maybe a description, and link to the location “/contact” click the submit button and you should now see your newly created link.
Send your self a quick test email to check its working and your done you should have a working contact form for visitors to leave feedback in under 10 minutes.

I have a eeepc 701 netbook which i use for reading ebooks, surfing the net and coding on public transport on my way to and from work. It is a great system for beating the boredom of commuting, but lately i have been having trouble writing to the 8gb sdcard i have in it for storage.

The problems seem to have come about due to my choice of file system. When i first got the card i formatted it using ext3. Logic being its pretty much the default filesystem used by Linux and i had never had any problems with it on disks before.

Seems this logic unfortunately dosn’t translate over to the world of sdcards sometimes when writing to a file, or most of the time i tried to delete data the journal seemed to chuck a wobbly and remounted the sdcard as read only.

Everything i tried to fix it, came undone and put me back at square one when i tried to delete another file. After spending some time looking around the net i now see  that although generally journaled file systems are considered superior to non-journaled filesystems, they are not generally recommended for small flash based media.

Which brings me to the process of reformatting the card to in case anyone else has made the same mistake. Its a pretty simple process but i thought it worth recording:

df -h

Note what device the sdcard is, mine was /dev/sdb1.

fdisk /dev/sdb1

With fdisk i used the “n” command first to create a new partition that occupied the whole sdcard and then the “w” option to write the table to disk.

mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1

Then formatted the drive with my new ext2 filesystem, hopefully saving me from any further issues. Only thing left to do was modify my /etc/fstab so the card would be mounted automatically on boot, i already had the line:

UUID=7922e6f5-eec6-4ad3-b87c-3202651318a1 /home/john/mount ext3  auto,exec,rw,async,user 0 0

But this line was going to have to change, not only had the filesystem type changed from ext3 but after being reformatted the filesystem would have a new UUID. So first i used the command:

tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1 | grep UUID

Which had the output:

Filesystem UUID:          32938a3e-9bf9-4914-b348-659492b4fea7

Armed with this information i modified the line in fstab to read:

UUID=32938a3e-9bf9-4914-b348-659492b4fea7 /home/john/mount ext2  auto,exec,rw,async,user 0 0

Rebooted, and it seems i have a writable sdcard once more.

Today i logged into a Ubuntu server which is not visited very
often to change the server where it stores backups (transferred over SSH) of the websites it hosts.

I first transferred a copy of its public key to the new backup server and used cat command to echo the key into the authorized_keys file in the .ssh directory, then tried to relogin from the original server.

But time and time again i continued to be prompted for a password, thinking i was starting to lose it i transfered the public key over again but was still greeted by the password prompt at login time.

Getting desperate i had a look in the authentication
log (/var/log/auth.log) and saw this line:

Feb 11 7:55:31 nsw-ultimo1 sshd[32598]: Public key
6f:92:15:01:ae:17:9a:d7:b6:ff:b3:3f:4c:ac:20:dd blacklisted (see
ssh-vulnkey(1))

Seems the server had not had its SSH keys updated after the discovery
last year that the random number generator in Debian’s openSSL
package was not quite random enough.

The fix was painless enough once i had caught on to what was wrong. It was simply a case of deleting the existing keys updating the system and regenerating all of the keys from scratch using ssh-keygen.

In order to save future pain on any other neglected server i have discovered the people at Debian have created a tool named ssh-vulnkey.

So to check for vulnerable keys on other servers i simply need to log in and use the command sudo ssh-vulnkey -a and it will look for keys in all the usual places throughout the system and let me know if they are vulnerable and need replacing.