prawn

.bashrc settings

2011-09-10T17:16:00.001+01:00

In the unlikely event of me losing my custom .bashrc settings, I shall post a copy here as a backup :-)
I tend to use whatever settings come with the distro that I'm using and bung this on the end.

NNTPSERVER='localhost' && export NNTPSERVER
#home server
ORAC='my.home.server.fqdn' && export ORAC

#BAD TYPING KLAXON.
alias suod='sudo'
alias yums='yum search'
alias yumi='sudo yum install'
alias yumsync='sudo yum distro-sync'
alias yumu='sudo yum upgrade'
alias apti='sudo apt-get install'
alias aptu='sudo apt-get upgrade'
alias sshh='gnome-terminal --profile=ssh --title="ssh home" -e "ssh $ORAC"'

alias pacu='sudo pacman -Syu'
alias paci='sudo pacman -S'

#-------------------------------------------------------------
# File functions:
#-------------------------------------------------------------

# Find a file with a pattern in file name
function ff() { find . -type f -iname '*'$*'*' -ls ; }

# Find a file with pattern $1 & Execute $2 on it:
function fe()
{ find . -type f -iname '*'${1:-}'*' -exec ${2:-file} {} \; ; }

# Find a pattern in a set of files
function fstr()
{
OPTIND=1
local case=""
local usage="fstr: find string in files.
Usage: fstr [-i] \"pattern\" [\"filename pattern\"] "
while getopts :it opt
do
case "$opt" in
i) case="-i " ;;
*) echo "$usage"; return;;
esac
done
shift $(( $OPTIND - 1 ))
if [ "$#" -lt 1 ]; then
echo "$usage"
return;
fi
find . -type f -name "${2:-*}" -print0 | \
xargs -0 egrep --color=always -sn ${case} "$1" 2>&- | more

}
# Useful? You bet.
function extract()
{
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) unrar x $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xvf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "'$1' cannot be extracted." ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
fi
}

#londonriots

2011-08-09T00:03:00.011+01:00

                        pwntterstats


Run on:..........  Thu Aug 11 14:19:47 BST 2011
Stats from:......  08-08-2011
Stats to:........  08-08-2011
Total tweets:....  593
Bytes tweeted:...  57,121

               Most popular hashtags in feed

 1. #londonriots...................................:      104
 2. #enfield.......................................:       12
 3. #vinb..........................................:       11
 4. #tottenham.....................................:        6
 5. #cpfc..........................................:        5
 6. #ubuntu........................................:        4
 7. #debtcrisis....................................:        3
 8. #suckers.......................................:        3
 9. #sigh..........................................:        2
10. #cdwm..........................................:        2
11. #horizon.......................................:        2
12. #motogp........................................:        2
13. #medicalfilms..................................:        2
14. #londonriot....................................:        2
15. #thatsall......................................:        1
16. #leeds.........................................:        1
17. #bbc4..........................................:        1
18. #keepsmilin....................................:        1
19. #crawley.......................................:        1
20. #lameprexercise................................:        1

Hashtag Cloud

#backofthethroat#bbc4#bcci#brnoorbust#cdwm#cpfc#crawley#debtcrisis#diskriminacija#dontgiveafuggnews#edl#enfield#horizon#justsayin#keepsmilin#klf#lameprexercise#leeds#letthegamesbegin#lhc#londonriot#londonriots#londonsburning#medicalfilms#motogp#ms#multiplesclerosis#murdocracy#newsnight#newspeak#newtwitter#nowshowing#nufc#pbd#peopleofheaven#perspective#physics#randomtweet#raybans#reallysadface#riots#sigh#suckers#thatsall#toomanytweets#tottenham#ubuntu#uk#ukriots#vinb

Generated by pwntterstats version 0.2

pwntterstats

2011-08-01T17:54:00.027+01:00

Introducing pwntterstats

pwntterstats is an extension which generates reports from data collected by pwntter.

You will need a working installation of pwntter in order to run this utility.

Download

pwntterstats can be downloaded here.

A sample report is below.

                 pwntterstats Sample Report


Run on:..........  Tue Aug  2 09:06:00 BST 2011
Stats from:......  29-07-2011
Stats to:........  02-08-2011
Total tweets:....  2,176
Bytes tweeted:...  198,112

                 Tweets per Twitter client

 1. TweetDeck......................................:      647
 2. Twitter for iPhone.............................:      525
 3. Tweetlogix.....................................:      458
 4. Twittelator....................................:      103
 5. TTYtter (pr4wn)................................:       66
 6. Twitter for BlackBerry®........................:       66
 7. FBtoTweet......................................:       47
 8. Mobile Web.....................................:       38
 9. Twidroyd for Android...........................:       35
10. Tweet Button...................................:       22
11. Echofon........................................:       22
12. Instagram......................................:       20
13. Seesmic........................................:       16
14. Twitter for iPad...............................:       13
15. Facebook.......................................:       12
16. Tweetbot for iPhone............................:       12
17. Twitter for Mac................................:       12
18. Twitpic........................................:       11
19. Google.........................................:       11
20. HootSuite......................................:        9
21. Twitter for Android............................:        7
22. b2evolution tweet plugin.......................:        4
23. TTYtter........................................:        4
24. twitterfeed....................................:        4
25. bitly..........................................:        3
26. TweetPic for iPhone............................:        3
27. web............................................:        2
28. Choqok.........................................:        2
29. The Guardian iPhone App........................:        1
30. Twitterrific...................................:        1

                   Busiest users in feed

 1. aaaaa..........................................:      287
 2. bbbbbbbb.......................................:      220
 3. cccccccccccccc.................................:      182
 4. ddddddd........................................:      129
 5. eeeeeeee.......................................:      123
 6. fffffffffffffff................................:      108
 7. ggggggggggggg..................................:       90
 8. hhhhhhhhhh.....................................:       70
 9. iiiiiii........................................:       69
10. jjjjjjjjjjj....................................:       63
11. kkkkkkkkkkkkk..................................:       59
12. lllllllllllllll................................:       57
13. mmmmmmmmmm.....................................:       52
14. nnnnnnnnnn.....................................:       52
15. ooooooooooooooo................................:       47
16. ppppppppp......................................:       46
17. qqqqqqqqq......................................:       43
18. rrrrrrrrr......................................:       40
19. sssss..........................................:       38
20. ttttttttttt....................................:       31

               Most popular hashtags in feed

 1. #fridaytwiz....................................:       58
 2. #EngvInd.......................................:       34
 3. #cpfc..........................................:       21
 4. #NUFC..........................................:       14
 5. #celebrityheadchef.............................:       12
 6. #FridayTwiz....................................:       10
 7. #CDWM..........................................:        9
 8. #CDWMIE........................................:        8
 9. #Iran..........................................:        7
10. #F1............................................:        7
11. #bbccricket....................................:        6
12. #newsnight.....................................:        5
13. #ubuntu........................................:        5
14. #ClassicMurdoch................................:        5
15. #Bahrain.......................................:        5
16. #tms...........................................:        5
17. #Papua.........................................:        5
18. #ssj...........................................:        5
19. #weareallanarchists............................:        5
20. #USdebt........................................:        5

                   Busiest hours in feed

 1. 16:00..........................................:      169
 2. 22:00..........................................:      148
 3. 14:00..........................................:      147
 4. 11:00..........................................:      146
 5. 12:00..........................................:      145

                   Quietest hours in feed

 1. 05:00..........................................:        3
 2. 06:00..........................................:        7
 3. 03:00..........................................:        9
 4. 02:00..........................................:       10
 5. 04:00..........................................:       12

                    Busiest days in feed

 1. 2011-07-29.....................................:      625
 2. 2011-07-31.....................................:      521
 3. 2011-07-30.....................................:      508
 4. 2011-08-01.....................................:      458
 5. 2011-08-02.....................................:       64

                   Quietest days in feed

 1. 2011-08-02.....................................:       64
 2. 2011-08-01.....................................:      458
 3. 2011-07-30.....................................:      508
 4. 2011-07-31.....................................:      521
 5. 2011-07-29.....................................:      625

                Posts by day of week in feed

 1. Fri............................................:      625
 2. Sun............................................:      521
 3. Sat............................................:      508
 4. Mon............................................:      458
 5. Tue............................................:       64

Generated by pwntterstats version 0.1

Command Line Options

To demonstrate the flexibility of pwntterstats, here are the command line options:


pwntterstats --help

Usage: $0 [options]
--usage, --help, -h, -? Print this message
--from, -f From date YYYYMMDD [yesterday]
--to, -t To date YYYYMMDD [yesterday)]
--output, -o Output filename
--title, -e Report title [pwntterstats]
--width, -w Report Width [72]
--html, -l Simple HTML output
--all, -a Runs all reports except the hashtag cloud
report unless --html arguent is used
--dow, -w Day of week report
--hashtag, -ht Hashtag report
--client, -c Twitter client report
--user, -u User report
--hours, -ho Busy/quiet hours report
--days, -d Busy/quiet day report
--cloud, -cl Run a hashtag cloud report in html
The rest of the report will be in html too.
--cloudwords Maximum number of words in hashtag cloud [50]
--nocss Do not print CSS code with cloud report

example:

pwntterstats --from 20110701 --to 20110731 --all --html --title "July 2011 Statistics" --output /var/www/stats/201107.html

Wiki

I've created a wiki for any urgent notifications relating to pwntter here.

I draw your attention to this article to reconfigure your time_zone field to allow NULL items to be returned by the twitter API.

Hello Mint

2011-07-29T18:03:00.012+01:00

Having got fed up with the direction Canonical are taking with Ubuntu, I have spent the last month flirting with other distros to see which would be a good fit. My only requirement was that it had to have Gnome 2 out of the box and a fairly hassle free install on my laptop.

For the time being, I have gone with Linux Mint Debian Edition which is a heady cocktail of Mint, Debian and Debian-Multimedia repositories and suits my pragmatic approach to non-free extras. So, it's installed and I have got everything to work – in fact, my desktop looks identical and only the Mint branded GDM login screen gives the game away.

Hardware Issues

Sound

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

This was the first distro not to play nicely with my soundcard and was fixed by downloading hda-verb and appending the following to

/etc/rc.local

/usr/local/sbin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_MASK 3
/usr/local/sbin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DIRECTION 1

/usr/local/sbin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DATA 1

Don't ask me why, but it just worked.

Broadcom

05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

As ever, my BCM4311 wifi card failed to be detected and was quickly fixed by:

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installersudo modprobe b43

Here's a screenshot.

Setting up TTYtter

2011-03-18T09:33:00.009Z

I've been using TTYtter on my laptop solidly for 24 hours now and have got it set up just so.

For my perfect recipe, add extension libnotifyperl and install CPAN module Term::ReadLine::TTYtter.

My .ttytterrc file looks like this:
ansi=1

readline=Term::ReadLine::TTYtter
vcheck=1
slowpost=4
exts=/usr/local/bin/libnotifyperl.pl
notifytype=libnotifyperl
notifies=dm,reply
#sod ASCII art, I opted to call eye of gnome to view avatars ;-)
avatar=curl -s %U > /tmp/ttytter-%N.%E; eog /tmp/ttytter-%N.%E &

Introducing pwntter

2011-03-14T10:03:00.007Z

I discovered a great little CLI based twitter app called TTYtter a couple of days ago and discovered, i) it is written using Perl, and, ii) one can write extensions for it. For a gentleman with some free time over a weekend, this is a Bad Thing™.

Having a read through the TTYtter documnentation, I discovered that it was an extraordinarily flexible little tool and one could also run it in daemon mode. Which then made me think that storing my twitter stream into a MySQL database would be a Good Thing™.

So, here is the result of my efforts, namely, pwntter. I am adopting the maxim "Release early, release often" with this project and am hosting it in a Google Code repository.

What you need

A Perl interpreter.
The following CPAN modules: DBD::mysql, Date::Manip and HTML::Entities.
A working installation of TTYtter.
To read the TTYtter documentation. And then read it again. And again, probably.
A MySQL database.

Installing pwntter

Download and unpack project from the download section.

Create or use an an existing MySQL database and execute the pwntter.sql file. The self-explanatory table names are: users, tweets and direct_messages.
Edit pwntter.pl with hostname, database, userid and password for your MySQL database:


# mysql database config.
my $host     = "localhost";
my $db       = "pwntter";
my $user_id  = "mysqluserid";
my $password = "mysqlpassword";

`

If they are not already installed, install Perl modules DB, Date::Manip and HTML::Entities.

Run TTYtter with the pwntter extension. For example:ttytter -exts=pwntter.pl -hold -daemon
Fill your database.

Screenshot

Ha! It really doesn't do anything graphical or textual. Here's a query instead...

Concatenate two avi files

2010-11-11T12:26:00.003Z

Just a quicky

I had two avi files from a *cough* friend and a single subtitle file from *cough* another friend and needed to splice the two avi files before applying subtitles.

Mencoder to the rescue:mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o out.avi in1.avi in2.aviProceed with subtitling as normal.

Fun with find

2010-06-02T06:11:00.027+01:00

I found (ha) myself with a sticky problem. I had a directory tree of mp3 files that I wanted to play in directory order and filename order within the directories. From the outset, it seemed a trivial enough problem: use find and exec and off you go.

Except some of the files had spaces in them, meaning that I had to use the -print0 arg which then meant that I had to wrap the output in quotes, replace the NULL char with a \n char before I could finally pass it on to sort and xargs.

After much scratching of head, I came up with this:

find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 printf "\"%s\"\n"| sort
"./01/01 Track.mp3"
"./01/02 Track.mp3"
"./01/03 Track.mp3"
"./01/04 Track.mp3"
"./01/05 Track.mp3"
"./01/06 Track.mp3"
"./01/07 Track.mp3"
"./01/09 Track.mp3"
"./02/01 Track.mp3"
:
etc

Which sorts by directory and file. Simply pipe to what ever it is you want do with it. Eg:

find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 printf "\"%s\"\n"| sort | xargs mplayer

Further reading on similar issues and different approaches can be found here on the unixjunkie blog.

man find, man xargs and man printf are also your friend.

TMS Widget

2010-05-27T14:24:00.003+01:00

[Off Topic]

Ah, summer is here and Aggers has just mentioned that there is a TMS Widget "whatever one of those is".

Well, here it is...

BBC iPlayer beta

2010-05-27T01:00:00.005+01:00

I eagerly downloaded the new beta version of the BBC iPlayer in the hope that they will have allowed the rendering and placement of system menus (minimize maximize) el al to be controlled by the operating system.

As it happens, I have been using my Ubuntu desktop with a Mac OSX-like theme with these menus on the left-hand side for many years. I draw this to their attention because as from version 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) of Ubuntu the out-of-the-box settings for placement of these icons now matches mine.

At the tine of writing, not only does the iPlayer place these icons in the wrong place, but they use their own artwork for these icons too. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY? Please trust the operating system to do the job and don't presume that you know better. Because you don't.

This is what they should be doing on my system: (Tweetdeck another Adobe AIR application)

This is what they are doing:

Of the countless applications I have used, this is the only one that I have encountered that knows better than the window manager and puts the system menu buttons in the wrong place (for me).

Please, please fix this before you release this version into the wild as a little part of me dies every time I try to minimize your application.

Gwibber – some intial thoughts.

2010-03-26T08:36:00.011Z

I started using Gwibber yesterday as an alternative to Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a lovely app but getting AIR apps to run on 64 bit boxes requires effort and I keep losing the URL on how to do it properly. (I know)

Anyway as Canonical are pushing Gwibber, I thought I'd run it for a day and see how I got on. Here are some of my (constructive, I hope) comments.

Integration with the desktop

You can now tweet or update your statuses etc from the notification area. I'm sure that this sounds like a Good Thing in a meeting but the reality is you have a 20 character window in which to type or paste your pearls of wisdom. This, in itself, is bearable, but you would still have to remember which social networks you have enabled and which ones you have disabled - leaving you open to all kinds of inappropriate social interaction. It's not going to go away as a feature, but I would personally AVOID, AVOID, AVOID using it.

The must have integration feature that is missing is being able to dock Gwibber to the notification area. When new notifications arrive and are being acknowledged, the mouse pointer will be in that part of the screen anyway, so a quick click a few cm away would bring Gwibber to the fore making for happy users. Please implement.

Look and feel

It's harmless enough on the eyes. Some of the text takes up too much screen real estate and could be a little smaller. I notice that there are two themes installed from the get-go, so I am guessing that it will be skin-able to one's taste. I'll investigate further if I feel the need.

Facebook

The Facebook feed Message filter is too noisy for me. Can you add a Status Update notification filter as well as the Message filter too? It is in the Facebook API.

I do not have an imax for a screen nor is my monitor spotless nor is my eyesight perfect

Can you really tell which one of these accounts is enabled and which is disabled at a quick glance? Really? Good for you. Srsly, can you overlay a red cross or something over the disabled accounts?

UK only tor exit nodes

2010-03-16T07:27:00.012Z

In light of last night's Panorama I thought that I'd investigate setting up onion routing to only exit in UK exit nodes so that I could enjoy UK-centric content with the benefit of a degree of anonymity.

Installation

Is very simple for debian-type systems. Simply follow the instructions here.

Configuration for UK only exit nodes:

Edit file /etc/tor/torrc and insert these lines at the end.

ExitNodes {GB}
StrictExitNodes 1
NumEntryGuards 6
KeepalivePeriod 60
NewCircuitPeriod 15

Restart torsudo /etc/init.d/tor restartThat's it. It works like a charm.

ksplice means never having to reboot

2010-02-10T10:14:00.013Z

Honestly, I can live with reboots on my home server when a new kernel is applied, but I can see its appeal in more demanding environments. The good people from kspice have written a utility that manages to apply kernel patches in situ meaning that you don't need to reboot when patches are applied. As it is free for Ubuntu 9.10, I thought I'd install it on my server and see how it gets on.

Download and install instructions are here and are a piece of cake.

10/10 for simplicity and I'll be interested to see how it goes.

My uptime, such as it is, can be monitored here.

I see that howtoforge have added a article for this. If you like pointy-clicky instructions, then this is the article for you.

Playing MP3 files with amarok

2010-02-10T00:08:00.003Z

It has been ages since I have done a fresh OS install and I had forgotten that Amarok needs a little encouragement in order to play mp3 files.

So, for future reference:

sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg
At the time of writing, Ubuntu version was 9.10.

One step forward, one step back.

2009-09-17T13:42:00.010+01:00

I have been playing around with the pre-release versions of Ubuntu 9.10 and the good news is that the off-the-shelf functionality of ATI/Radeon Xnnn cards is superb. The bad news is that support for BCM43xx devices is no longer automagic, so I had to do it myself. Again.

Here's a quickie guide for installing B43 drivers for Ubuntu 9.10.

My device is a BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01) and the current kernel version is 2.6.31-10.

Taking this article as inspiration, here is the quickie guide for my setup.

cd ~
mkdir b43
cd b43
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
tar xjf b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-012
make

cd ..
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
sudo ../../b43-fwcutter-012/b43-fwcutter -w "/lib/firmware" wl_apsta_mimo.o
sudo modprobe b43

Don't forget the modprobe b43 at the end (not in the guide).

I have also managed to install the Broadcom STA drivers which is 'better'. Follow the README instructions and off you go.

Linux screen flicker Radeon X1200 Series

2009-09-11T21:09:00.019+01:00

This is a public service announcement.

If you have an ATI Radeon Xnnnn graphics card, I suggest that update to the latest (at the time of writing) version 2.6.31 of the Linux kernel and you won't get dodgy screen flicker when viewing mostly black/grey content any more.

Again, at the time of writing, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) comes with this kernel version off the shelf and will be properly released in about a month from now.

Commended to the house.

For details of which of the Xnnnn graphics cards have improved support, look here.

FWIW, my device is:

lspci | grep Radeon
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc \
RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]

That is all.

Electric Sheep on Ubuntu 9.04

2009-09-06T07:26:00.017+01:00

Electric Sheep is a lovely screen saver that I've been using for some time. I had a small amount of difficulty to get it to work with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), though it is simple enough to fix.

The authors of Electric Sheep have kindly provided a makesheep.sh script that doesn't quite work with Jaunty. In order to get it to work with this distro, do the following:

# If you don't have subversion installed:
sudo apt-get install subversion

sudo apt-get install libavutil49
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev
sudo apt-get install libavformat-dev
wget http://electricsheep.org/makesheep.sh
chmod 755 makesheep.sh
./makesheep.sh

That's all there is to it.

Note: makesheep.sh works off the shelf with a vanilla install of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

Managing tunnels

2009-04-27T10:00:00.032+01:00

Introduction

My laptop tunnels through to my home server for three services: smtp, imap and nntp. I thought it was about time that I managed these services in a completely automated and reliable fashion.

Objectives

I wanted my laptop to initiate the three tunnels every time a new network connection was established. The best place to do this is after if-up processes have been completed. Happily, the Network Manager executes scripts in /etc/network/if-up.d/ directory when such an event occurs.

I am assuming that you have a id_rsa.pub key in /root/.ssh already set up on the laptop and that this key has been appended to the file /root/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server. [TODO write this up]

Listing 1: /etc/network/if-up.d/tunnel

Is called after any if-up event. Calls the kill process first and then initiates new tunnels.

#!/bin/sh

# /etc/network/if-up.d/tunnel

KILL=/usr/local/bin/kill-tunnels
TUNN=/usr/local/bin/start-tunnels

# quit if we're called for the loopback
if [ "$IFACE" = lo ]; then
     exit 0
fi
# kill tunnel processes
if [ -x $KILL ]; then
     $KILL
fi

if [ -x $TUNN ]; then
     $TUNN
fi

Listing 2: /usr/local/bin/kill-tunnels

Kills the existing tunnel processes if they are running.

#!/bin/sh

#/usr/local/bin/kill-tunnels

ps aux | grep "143\:localhost\:143" \
| sed 's/  */\t/g' | cut -f2 | xargs -r kill -15

ps aux | grep "25\:localhost\:25"   \
| sed 's/  */\t/g' | cut -f2 | xargs -r kill -15

ps aux | grep "119\:localhost\:119" \
| sed 's/  */\t/g' | cut -f2 | xargs -r kill -15

Listing 3: /usr/local/bin/start-tunnels

Starts the new tunnels.

#!/bin/sh

#/usr/local/bin/start-tunnels

HOST=my.server.fqdn

/usr/bin/ssh -f -N -q -L 143:localhost:143 $HOST

/usr/bin/ssh -f -N -q -L 25:localhost:25 $HOST

/usr/bin/ssh -f -N -q -L 119:localhost:119 $HOST

PROC=`basename $0`

logger -i -t $PROC Tunnels started

So it all works automagically, now and is particularly useful when in hotspots and changing connections.

As these procedures are called by root, I can use the ports numbered below 1024, which is handy.

So for nntp access, localhost:119 on my laptop is actually port 119 on my server.

Using Alias

2009-04-06T18:26:00.012+01:00

I am forever using ssh to do something or other on another box from my laptop. Of course, whenever I need to run an X application to display on my machine I find out that I have forgotten to type the -X argumentssh -X 192.168.blahSo setting up alias to do this for me by default was the ideal solution.

First of all, edit ~./bashrc and uncomment the following lines:

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
. ~/.bash_aliases
fi

Then create a file ~/.bash_aliases to insert your alias comands.alias ssh='ssh -X'That's it. As an aside: for ssh -X to work, ensure you have the directive X11Forwarding yes enabled in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the remote machine.

Alias in action

Simple CLI alarm clock using crontab and mplayer

2009-03-31T00:14:00.046+01:00

Well, it had to be done, I suppose. I fancied an alarm clock which would wake me up with a music file of my choice and which would start off quietly and gradually get louder.

Getting started

In order to get the volume to increase gradually from the command line, you need to install aumix. If you don't have mplayer installed, then install it as well unless you wish to use something else.

sudo apt-get install aumix mplayer

Volume Script

Next, create a script /usr/local/bin/wakeup-volume to increase the volume over time. Amend the sleep intervals and increments of I to suit.

#!/bin/bash
for((I=1;I<=100;I+=1)); do
     /usr/bin/aumix -v$I -p100 -w100
     sleep 5
done

Playing Script

Then create a script /usr/local/bin/alarm-clock and select your command line and music file you wish to wake up to. I am using mplayer and looping the music file five times in this example.

This script kills all wakeup-volume processes and starts a new wakeup-volume process before playing your tune of choice.

#!/bin/bash
PLAYER=/usr/bin/mplayer
SONG="$HOME/Music/alarm clock song.ogg"
killall wakeup-volume
/usr/local/bin/wakeup-volume&
$PLAYER -loop 5 "$SONG"

Last of all, set up crontab to wake you up. I have set mine to wake me up at 06:59 Monday to Friday.crontab -e

59 6 * * 1-5 /usr/bin/X11/xterm -display :0 \
-bg black -fg green -e /usr/local/bin/alarm-clock

Note: crontab expects the above to be on one line. I have put a continuation escape character in because I don't have enough width on this here blog.

Don't forget to set execute rights on the two scripts...

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/alarm-clock
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/wakeup-volume

Alarm clock in action

Further Reading:

mplayer documentation,
man aumix.

Sweet dreams.

Acer Crystal Eye image capture

2009-03-28T12:46:00.016Z

Intro
I have been idly attempting to get a utility to grab a frame from my laptop webcam (an Acer Crystal Eye).

Whilst the webcam works fine with the likes of Cheese, the act of perfoming an automated grab with the likes of CamE was unsuccessful. There is, I believe a problem with CamE, Ubuntu, the web cam and V4l2 working in harmony.

After trawling through the repositories, I finally found fswebcam which worked a treat.

Installingsudo apt-get install fswebcam
Configuring

In your home directory, create a file .fswc.conf

input 0
top-banner
title "Prawn Cam"
timestamp "%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S (%Z)"
font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMono.ttf

Running

To demonstrate the flexibility of fswebcam, I generated a shell script to save a time-stamped file and copy the time-stamped file to another machine using scp.

#!/bin/sh

TARGET_DIR="$HOME/.webcam"
OFFSITE_DIR="remote.server.name:/path/to/.webcam"
CONFIG_FILE="$HOME/.fswc.conf"

EXT="jpg"
FILE_TIME=`date +%H%M%S`
FILE_NAME=$FILE_TIME.$EXT

if [ ! -d $TARGET_DIR ]; then

 mkdir $TARGET_DIR

fi

cd $TARGET_DIR

fswebcam -c $CONFIG_FILE --save $FILE_NAME
scp $FILE_NAME $OFFSITE_DIR/$FILE_NAME

That's it. Setup crontab to run the task as frequently as you wish.

crontab -e

*/1 * * * * /usr/local/bin/webcap.sh

Will run the task every minute. (A little extreme, perhaps).

Install AWStats

2008-12-11T09:17:00.023Z

My home web server is a very quiet corner of the Internet and the last thing it needs is web stats. It goes without saying that I decided to install some.

Gettingsudo apt-get install awstats
Configuration

Using your favourite editor, create a file/etc/awstats/awstats.local.conf.

HostAliases="localhost 127.0.0.1"
LogFile="/var/log/apache2/access.log"
LogFormat=1
DNSLookup=1
DirData="/var/cache/awstats/"
DirCgi="/cgi-bin"
DirIcons="/icon"
SiteDomain="prawn.mine.nu"
AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0
AllowFullYearView=3
SkipHosts="REGEX[^127\.0] REGEX[^192\.168\.]"

I have configured mine to ignore any traffic on my subnet using SkipHosts parameter and a simple regex.

Create a directory /var/cache/awstats

mkdir /var/cache/awstats
chmod 700 /var/cache/awstats
chown www-data:www-data /var/cache/awstats

Next Step is copying the awstats icons to the relevant apache directory.

sudo cp -r /usr/share/awstats/icon /var/www/icon

Testing the stats updatesudo /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=local -updateThe -config= parameter is the middle bit of your config filename. In this instance, the -config=local instructs the program to read the file /etc/awstats/awstats.local.conf.

Now you should be able to view your stats. Point your favourite browser at http://your.host.name/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=local and enjoy.

Scheduling updates

Set up crontab to run an update as often a you think sensible.

sudo crontab -uroot -e
#mine looks something like this:
#update at 3 am
* 3 * * * /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=local \
-update

To admire the full glory of awstats and the lack of traffic on my home web server, here it is...

Further reading

You could do worse than the awstats sourceforge page and here for configuration directives.

Deer santah

2008-12-10T21:59:00.007Z

Oh Hai, santah! Can I has manbag?

kthxbai.

Code::Blocks

2008-12-10T21:00:00.012Z

Ooh-err, missus.

I have been tinkering around with Code::Blocks which is a cross platform development tool. Embedded in its genes is the wxWidgets set of classes. I have only had a 24 hour tinker with it and, to be frank, have not coded in C++ for over four years - but it looks promising. My only gripe is the faffing about you have to do when converting from C++ string classes to wxString classes and vice versa.

It is early days yet and a more fully formed opinion will out in due course.

On the plus side it will work as an IDE with other idioms than the wx... family.

Lolcat 404

2008-12-10T19:12:00.017Z

Oh Noes!

I have, despite my age and sensibilities, developed a rather weird fascination for the whole Lolcat meme. As a silent homage to all things Lolcat, I have created a 404 page in honour of the phenomenon. Point your bowser here for the full asinine horror and accept my apologies pro tempore. I'll get over it in the fullness of time.

If you want to see a demonstration of how the Internet could suck up one's time on a biblical scale, you could do worse than peruse the LOLCAT Bible project for a demonstration. I have not the words.

Update: It seems that teh Ceiling Cat has a Twitter account. Follow the tweets here.

AWStats

2008-12-10T18:05:00.011Z

My home server is a very quiet corner of the Internet which is handy as it gave me the opportunity to install AWStats without upsetting anyone. If you have a prurient disposition, the stats can be viewed here. My first impressions are pretty favourable. I have configured it to ignore any visits via my own subnet so you will see how quiet it really is. Be that as it may, I have rather optimistically set it up to update every fifteen minutes so come back real soon, you hear? /tumbleweed

~~Install writeup to follow.~~ Done.

Can I has IP?

2008-11-28T00:18:00.019Z

A quicky Perl utility that interrogates the DNS-O-Matic IP page which returns your public IP address.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# cihip (Can I Has IP?)

use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple;

  my ( $address, $error ) = get_address();

  if ( $error ) {
    
    print ( "$error\n" );
    die "cihip failed: $error\n";

  }

sub get_address {

  $address = get( "http://myip.dnsomatic.com/" );

  if ($address) {

    print "$address\n";

  } else {

    $address = 0;
    $error = "IP address query failed:\n";

}
  
  return ( $address, $error );

}

DNS-O-Matic Updater

2008-11-26T22:28:00.049Z

News: update-dnsomatic stable version 0.1 released 29 November 2008 at 13:00 GMT. I have moved the project to Goggle Code as my home server is only up 90% as a rule.

As I am a user of both opendns and dyndns I realized a while ago that it was a bit of a chore to keep them both up-to-date with my ever fluctuating home IP address. On discovering that DNS-O-Matic will update them at one fell swoop, I was hooked.

Time passed and as I was writing up installing ddclient, I was inspired to see if I could knock up a client of my own which would be designed specifically with DNS-O-Matic in mind.

Well, 24 hours and one abuse report from dyndns (sorry guys) later and it is done.

Specs

It's written in Perl and doesn't use any fancy modules so should work out of the box once installed.

It is written very much with Unix/Linux in mind but is simple enough to amend for other operating systems.

It only perfoms update notifications if your IP address has changed since it was last run.

Where?

The whole package complete with README, a sample configuration file and install.sh script can be found here.

How?

After downloading, extract the file update-dnsomatic-0.1.2.tar.gz and then edit the file config with a minimum of your DNS-O-Matic user id and password.

tar xvzf update-dnsomatic-0.1.2.tar.gz
cd update-dnsomatic-0.1.2/

#   edit ./config with your editor of choice
#   A sample config file:
  user = my_user_id
  pass = my_password
#

# as root or sudo:
./install.sh

You may wish to assign the myhost configuration item with your domain name if you only wish to update that domain. If you don't assign myhost then all your DNS-O-Matic services will be updated.

A picture of the DNS-O-Matic status information. One update done by me and two by them.

OpenDNS and Ubuntu

2008-11-25T17:53:00.013Z

I have been using OpenDNS for a few months now and it's about time that I wrote it up.

If you want to be able to use all the facilities that OpenDNS offer, then ideally you need to setup a DynDNS account and an OpenDNS account.

First things first, I have configured my router to use the OpenDNS nameservers 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Configuring DynDNS

You may wish to use my own DNS-O-Matic updater, which I have written about here.

Having created a free account with DynDNS, I needed to install ddclient on my home server.

Installing ddclient on the server

If your router can talk to dyndns, ignore this section.
sudo apt-get install ddclient
Configuring ddclient

Edit the contents of /etc/ddclient.conf using sudo

The contents of my file looks something like this:

daemon=600
cache=/tmp/ddclient.cache
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address'
login=my_dyndns_account_name
password=my_dyndns_password
protocol=dyndns2
server=members.dyndns.org
wildcard=YES
my.dyndns.domain

It is worth checking file /etc/default/ddclient to see if ddclient is run as a daemon.

# Configuration for ddclient scripts
# generated from debconf on Tue Oct 14 15:19:15 BST 2008
#
# /etc/default/ddclient

# Set to "true" if ddclient should be run every time a
# new ppp connection is
# established. This might be useful, if you are using
# dial-on-demand
run_ipup="false"

# Set to "true" if ddclient should run in daemon mode
run_daemon="true"

# Set the time interval between the updates of the
# dynamic DNS name in seconds.
# This option only takes effect if the ddclient runs in
# daemon mode.
daemon_interval="300"

Configuring OpenDNS

Having created an OpenDNS account, visit https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/networks/ and click the ADD THIS NETWORK button.

Updating OpenDNS

Now that your two accounts are up and running, your need to periodically notify OpenDNS of your current IP address and your account name. This can be done using a script that I took from the OpenDNS forum here. I have a tidy and slightly different script on my home server here. Simply follow the instructions at the top of the file and away you go.

To check that OpenDNS is working, visit this link for a report: http://www.opendns.com/welcome/

Setting up Leafnode on Ubuntu

2008-10-31T16:31:00.039Z

One of the things that I frequently use tunneling for is Usenet access - particularly as quite a few ISPs block port 119 these days and I can't get on with the Google Groups interface.

Leafnode is a simple and light weight NNTP server which adequately handles my needs.

Installing

From the command line:
sudo apt-get install leafnode
and enter details as necessary.

Configuration

This will very much depend on which upstream NNTP server you use. In my case, I use the cheesy server or
motzarella.org
eternal-september.org as it more formally known. I have an account with them and it is free which works for me.

A note about FQDN and Leafnode.

Leafnode insists that you have an FQDN assigned on your machine which Ubuntu does not necessarily set during installation. Solution 1 is to edit /etc/hosts and assign the FQDN there.

My hosts file looks like this:

127.0.0.1     localhost
127.0.1.1     my.fqdn localname

to check what your FQDN is, from the command line type:

hostname -f
Naturally, you will have to use your own FQDN.

Alternatively, you can configure the FQDN using the hostname= parameter in the leafnode config file. Personally, I prefer the former method rather than the cheat.

Breaking news: It appears that the cheesy server allows registered users to also reserve an FQDN which could be useful for some.

Configuring Leafnode

I shall put in the details I have configured to use the cheesy server.

Edit the file /etc/news/leafnode/config

expire = 60
server = news.eternal-september.org
username = my_username
password = my_password
# optional
hostname = my.fqdn
# ignores some x-posted chaff from Usenet trolls :-)
maxcrosspost = 4

Fetching news

fetchnews likes to be run as user news and I have set my cron job to run every 15 minutes. I have also set the texpire task to run at noon every day to remove expired articles.
sudo crontab -u news -e

# Sets texpire to clean out news at noon:
0 12 * * * /usr/sbin/texpire 1>/dev/null
# Sets fetchnews to run every 15 minutes:
*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/fetchnews -vv 2>&1 >> /dev/null

For setting up the tunnel, read my IMAP tunnel article and use port 119 instead :-)
Further reading on automating tunnels can be found on this blog here.

favicon

2008-10-29T20:04:00.007Z

I have been meaning to sort out a favicon.ico for my home websever and quite fancied a Tux to do the job. A quick search using my favourite search engine revelaed this which I have altered to have a pink background to match the, erm, house style.

One less thing to worry about for when the inevitable re-build comes around.

Onion Routing

2008-04-11T15:48:00.043+01:00

I was reading up on Onion Routing the other day and thought that I'd try it out to see if a) it was any good and b) how useful it might be. Before I go any further, perhaps I should explain that I'm not one of the Tin Foil Hat brigade and, frankly, don't care who knows where I visit or what I do when I'm on-line. Be that as it may, my curiosity was piqued and I installed Tor and Privoxy on my laptop to give it a whirl.

A note for Firefox 3 Beta users: at the time of writing, I noticed that a few of the Tor plug-ins wouldn't install for version 3 but FoxyProxy worked just fine.

Having got it all installed and configured, I set about testing it all. As far as I could tell, it did a bloody good job at making me anonymous and my exit node seemed to change approximately every 10 minutes. The performance through some nodes was pretty poor (I was not surprised by this and was expecting it, to be honest - some of the nodes are run by enthusiasts and are very far away).

This made using sites like Google interesting: one minute they thought I was German, the next minute Belgian, the owner of a compromised computer, Chinese and so on. Surfing from behind The Great Fire Wall of China was, erm, interesting and that got me really thinking. How often would this happen? This was a big disadvantage to the whole experience and made me think that Onion Routing should only be used on a need to use basis. (If I'm stating the obvious, so be it).

To surmise, I think that it should only be switched on if there's a desperate need to visit somewhere anonymously.

In order to get a feel for how annoying it could be, I generated a script to monitor the GEO-IP of whatever exit nodes were being used over a period of time so that I could determine how many of the exit nodes were very distant or censored and get a feel for how the surfing experience would be diminished. The results of my labours are here.

This is the code that I wrote to do the analysis and a pie chart of the outcomes is below (you have to have pie charts, you know).

Over the 18 hours, 78 unique IP addresses were used as Tor Exit Nodes though I'm not going to publish them here :-)

As an ironic footnote, I should mention that I'm based in .uk. Only one, yes, one exit node was GB. Of course, none of this takes into account of which territories I am passing through during a particular onion session.

Adventures with Ubuntu: tunneling into my IMAP server

2008-04-08T13:42:00.053+01:00

Having setup dovecot on my home server, the next step was to enable remote access to it so that I could connect my laptop when I was out and about. As my laptop uses all manner of public networks of unproven security, I figured that using a secure tunnel was the way to do it.

Install openssh-server on the server
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
Install openssh-client on the laptop

sudo apt-get install openssh-client
On the laptop, generate ssh keys
ssh-keygen
Enter the defaults.

This will create, among other things, a file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. This data needs to be put in a file .ssh/authorized_keys on the server. For a more detailed explanation of SSH key generation, I found this to be a clear and concise reminder.

Install the laptop's public key on the server
cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
where id_rsa.pub is the copy of the file from the laptop.

That's got the ssh gubbins sorted out and you should now be able to ssh to your server from your laptop without being prompted for a password. The next thing I needed to arrange was a dynamic DNS entry for my home server. Having created a free account with DynDNS, I needed to install ddclient on the server.

Installing ddclient on the server

If you have a fixed IP address, or your router can talk to dyndns, ignore this section.
sudo apt-get install ddclient
Configuring ddclient

Edit the contents of /etc/ddclient.conf using sudo

The contents of my file looks something like this:

daemon=600
cache=/tmp/ddclient.cache
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address'
login=my_dyndns_account_name
password=my_dyndns_password
protocol=dyndns2
server=members.dyndns.org
wildcard=YES
my.dyndns.domain

It is worth checking file /etc/default/ddclient to see if ddclient is run as a daemon.

# Configuration for ddclient scripts
# generated from debconf on Tue Oct 14 15:19:15 BST 2008
#
# /etc/default/ddclient

# Set to "true" if ddclient should be run every time a 
# new ppp connection is
# established. This might be useful, if you are using 
# dial-on-demand
run_ipup="false"

# Set to "true" if ddclient should run in daemon mode
run_daemon="true"

# Set the time interval between the updates of the
# dynamic DNS name in seconds.
# This option only takes effect if the ddclient runs in 
# daemon mode.
daemon_interval="300"

Creating the tunnel
On the laptop, create a tunnel to your home server.

ssh -f -N -q -L 1143:localhost:143 \
my_server_user_id@my.dyndns.domain

What this command does is create a tunnel for port 1143 on localhost (the laptop) and forwards it to the IMAP port (143) on the server (my.dyndns.domain). The reason why I selected the local port number 1143 is that it is greater than 1023 and 1000 more than the standard IMAP port (making it easy for me to remember) and only root can forward port numbers less than 1024. I have this command in a script file and fire it up ad-hoc whenever I am out and need to use it.

To test the connection on the laptop, type:
telnet localhost 1143
You should get a response along these lines:

Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Dovecot ready.

So, although you are using the laptop's local port 1143, you are, in fact, accessing the server's port 143 through the SSH tunnel.

Configuring your e-mail client

Having gone through all that, just configure your laptop mail client's IMAP server to be localhost port 1143, set the user id to be your local/server user id and off you go.

Tunneling at work

You may find that using tunnels contravenes your employer's AUP. If that is the case, don't do it, OK?

Bigging up BigDump

2008-04-08T11:05:00.021+01:00

Yesterday, I found myself in the position of having to transfer a medium sized (200 ish MB) MySQL database from one server to another. Ordinarily, I would use SSH on the new server and import the database that way. In this instance, I only had web and FTP access to the new site.

The main problem is that phpMyAdmin limits the size of SQL file that you can upload in one go and I was damned if I was going to split the data up in to ~ 100 files to update the new database. Apart form being time consuming, there was plenty of opportunity for error.

So, before I set about writing my own solution, I thought I'd use my google mojo to see if there was a ready made answer. Half an hour later, I found BigDump which fit the bill perfectly.

My implementation was a follows:

Dump source database using phpMyAdmin to local file localhost.sql. Make sure that you don't use extended inserts and, if necessary, don't use database creation.

Having downloaded it, edit bigdump.php. I amended it thus:


$db_server   = 'localhost';
$db_name     = 'database_name';
$db_username = 'database_user';
$db_password = 'password';

// Other settings (optional)

$filename         = '/full/path/to/dump/localhost.sql';     // Specify the dump filename to suppress the file selection dialog

From the web root on the target server, create a directory dump and upload via ftp the files localhost.sql and bigdump.php

Point your browser at the my.domain/dump/bigdump.php and click on the Start Import link. You should see something like this:

When finished, delete your sql file and bigdump.php from the web server.

That's it. It did the job simply and saved me a load of effort. Yay!

Adventures with Ubuntu: Mail

2008-03-30T15:42:00.011+01:00

Setting up dovecot to work with Google Mail.

Given the choice, I prefer using an e-mail client in preference to a web browser on whatever machine I am using. Although Google Mail provides an IMAP service, I wanted to be able to keep a copy of my mail on my home server so that I could access Google Mail missives and my various other mail accounts from one source. I would also enjoy the benefit of having a copy of my mail in one easily backup-able and transferable source.

Installing dovecot and getmail:

sudo apt-get install dovecot-common dovecot-imapdc \
 getmail4

Configuring dovecot.

Edit the file /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Insert the line:
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
Restart dovecot:
sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart
You should get a reply:
* Restarting IMAP/POP3 mail server dovecot [ OK ]
Creating your mail directory.

cd ~
maildirmake.dovecot Maildir

Configuring getmail.

I have set up getmail to keep copies on the Google Mail server for 30 days. I figure that will give me enough resilience :-)

First, make sure that you have POP3 enabled on your Gmail account.
Click on your settings and select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

Create .getmail directory and rc file.

 cd ~
mkdir .getmail
cd .getmail
chmod 700 .

Create a file getmailrc in ~/.getmail.

My getmailrc looks something like this:

[retriever]
type = SimplePOP3SSLRetriever
server = pop.gmail.com
port = 995
username = your.email.address@gmail.com
password = your_password

[destination]
type = Maildir
path = ~/Maildir/

[options]
delete_after = 30
get_all = false

Next all you need to do is schedule getmail to run when you are not looking.

I have set mine to run every 5 minutes.

crontab -e
:
:
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/getmail >/dev/null 2>&1

Connecting to your server.

This is the easy bit.

Using your favorite email client, create an account which uses IMAP. Your server will be localhost (or the IP address of your home server). The user id and passwords are the same as your Ubuntu user account.

Notes:

Because this is set up on my home network which sits behind a firewall, I have made no provision to employ secure IMAP connections which are, frankly, not needed in this instance as all connections to the IMAP server are made behind the firewall.