Victor's Blog

Keyboard Number Pad Not Working

2011-06-28T20:09:00.001-07:00

This is a very common thing to happen for Linux users using full blown keyboards (not a laptop). And it's caused mainly by a Linux accessibility feature, which allows you to use the arrows on your number pad as a mouse.

To revert back you have two simple options:

1- Hit "Ctrl+Shift+NumLock" on your keyboard

2- Disable the Mouse Keys feature on you keyboad configuration utility

Converting first characters to capital in a string variable - BASH

2011-06-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Let's say you have a variable that contains a string of text, and you need the first characters to be capitalized. This quick how to will show you just that.

My variable is set as follow:

$ var="this is a text title"

$ echo $var
this is a text title

Bash has built-in variable substitution that will convert a matching pattern (see the man page for either bash or bash-bultins for more info).

${parameter^pattern}
${parameter^^pattern}

Here's a simplified usage:

$ var=test

$ echo ${var^t} # Could also be ${var^}
Test

So for my first example, we can add the same parameter substitution to a for loop, and here's what we get:

$ var="this is a text title"

$ echo $var
this is a text title

$ for i in `echo $var` ; do echo ${i^} ; done | tr '\n' ' ' ; echo -e "\r"
This Is A Text Title

Problem With Opening mp3 files in Audacity – OpenSuse

2011-04-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The other day I installed Audacity for the first time on my OpenSuse desktop so I could edit an mp3 file. After having installed Audacity I was greeted with the following message:

“This version of audacity was not compiled with mp3 files support”

This is not your common message about lame missing or not installed (that was my first try), as lame is only needed for exports; but it seems that the Audacity package from OpenSuse repos does not support mp3 files.

The fix is rather simple
1- Remove Audacity

zypper rm audacity

2- Make sure you have packman repo installed and refreshed
- Install instructions here - http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories#Packman

sudo zypper refresh -r "Packman Repository"

3- Re-install Audacity

sudo zypper in -r "Packman Repository" audacity

Using Variables on a sed Expression

2010-06-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

Using variables as a matching pattern on a sed expression can be tricky. Take a look at the examples below.

Here's the value for PATH and HOME on this example system:
$ echo $PATH
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
$ echo $HOME
/home/victor

Let's say we would like to use the value of HOME to change the string “/home/victor/bin” to “/bin”. A few attempts would look like this:
$ echo $PATH | sed 's/"$HOME"//'
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

$ echo $PATH | sed 's/$HOME//'
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

$ echo $PATH | sed s/$HOME//
sed: -e expression #1, char 9: unknown option to `s'

However if we use a colon “:” as the field delimiter instead of a forward slash “/”, the desired result can be achieved very easily:

$ echo $PATH | sed s:$HOME::
/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

Removing Windows Newline (Control) Characters on VI

2010-06-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

If you have to work on a Unix box trough Windows (putty or any other ssh utility), you most likely have encountered the problem where pasting a text trough putty will result on Windows control characters (^M) at the end of the lines. This is actually very easy to fix.

1- Open the text with VI (or VIM)
$ vi {file_name}

2- Now we need to get in command mode by pressing colon “:” on your keyboard
3- Type in the following code (note that you to get ^M you need to press “Ctrl+v” and then “Ctrl+m” on your keyboard):
%s/^M//g

4- Hit enter and you should be good to go!!

Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html

How to Yahoo IMAP with postfix, fetchmail and dovecot

2009-06-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

After doing en extensive research on the net for a similar setup (without finding anything) and spending a full weekend trying to get this working, I've decided to create a tutorial that will provide a base to users that don't have a lot of mail server experience and the same setup.

I'm an email guy so I'm not sure if I'll be able to support in case you run into problems, but I'll try if I can. Also let me know if you think there's some wrong with the tutorial or anything that can be improved and I'll be happy to change.

Here's what I have at home:
- Ubuntu Server 8.10 32-bit (LAMP)
- dyndns
- Yahoo mail (not plus)

1- Getting your emails delivered to your account
1.a - Install fetchmail

$ sudo aptitude install fetchmail

1.b - Create a .fetchmailrc in your home directory with the following info:

$ cd $HOME

$ vim .fetchmailrc
set syslog;
set daemon 90;
set postmaster "[user]@yahoo.ca";

poll "pop.mail.yahoo.ca" port 995 with protocol POP3 user "user@yahoo.ca" password "[yahoo_password]" is "[loginname_to_the_server]" here keep ssl
smtphost "localhost" smtpname "[loginname_to_the_server]@localhost"

Note: Do no use the square brackets. They are there only to indicate that you need to enter something.
- The above file will download only new emails and keep a copy on the server

1.c - Change permission of the file

$ chmod 600 .fetchmailrc

1.d - Run fetchmail and check if new mail has arrived (make sure that there's one unread email on your yahoo account)

$ fetchmail
$ mail

- Press “q” to leave the mail reader

2- Setup postfix to delivery the messages for you
By default postfix should already be installed on your machine. But you still need to configure it do delivery your local emails to your local or Internet accounts.

2.a - Initial postfix configuration

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix

Answer the questions at the prompt:
General type of mail configuration: Internet Site
NONE doesn't appear to be requested in current config
System mail name: server1.example.com
Root and postmaster mail recipient:
Other destinations for mail: server1.example.com, example.com, localhost.example.com, localhost
Force synchronous updates on mail queue?: No
Local networks: 127.0.0.0/8
Yes doesn't appear to be requested in current config
Mialbox size limit (bytes): 0
Local address extension character: +
Internet protocols to use: all

Once this is set you should be able to send emails locally. Restart postfix and try sending an email to yourself with the following command:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

$ mail [your_user_name]@localhost
Subject: Testing
This is a test # press Ctrl+d to end the message body
Cc: # press enter

$ mail
Mail version 8.1.2 01/15/2001. Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/user": 1 messages 1 new
> N 1 user@hostname Sun Jun 7 20:08 14/464 Testing

2.b - Fine tunning postfix

Check the following file and make sure that it has you server's FQDN

$ cat /etc/mailname
myserver.dyndns.org

Now we need to create an authorization file that will be used for your login and them run postmap on it to create a db file. The file should look like this:

$ sudo cat /etc/poistfix/sasl/smtp_auth
127.0.0.1 [username]@yahoo.ca:[password ]

$ sudo postmap /etc/poistfix/sasl/smtp_auth

Let's edit your postfix mail file to look similar to this:

$ grep -v '#' /etc/postfix/main.cf
smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu)
biff = yes
append_dot_mydomain = no
readme_directory = no
smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
smtpd_use_tls=no
smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache

alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
myorigin = /etc/mailname
mydestination = [fqdn], [hostname].[domain_name,] localhost.[domain_name], localhost
relayhost = 127.0.0.1:11125 # this will be used with stunnel
mailbox_command = procmail -a "$EXTENSION" DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir
mailbox_size_limit = 0
recipient_delimiter = +
inet_interfaces = all
inet_protocols = ipv4
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/smtp_auth

If everything went ok we can go to next step and install stunnel and configure for sending the email via port 465 (which is no longer supported by postfix).

3 - Stunnel
3.a - Installing and configuring stunnel

$ sudo aptitude install stunnel

And configure you stunnel.conf to look like this:

$ grep -v ';' /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf

sslVersion = SSLv3

chroot = /var/lib/stunnel4/
setuid = stunnel4
setgid = stunnel4
pid = /stunnel4.pid

socket = l:TCP_NODELAY=1
socket = r:TCP_NODELAY=1

client = yes

[smtps]
accept = 11125
client = yes
connect = smtp.mail.yahoo.ca:465

# Make sure that the following lines are commented out:

;cert = /etc/stunnel/mail.pem
;cert = /etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
;key = /etc/stunnel/mail.pem

3.b - Starting and testing stunnel

$ sudo /etc/init.d/stunnel4 start

$ telnet 127.0.0.1 11125
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp107.mail.mud.yahoo.com ESMTP
>ehlo
250-smtp107.mail.mud.yahoo.com
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN XYMCOOKIE
250-PIPELINING
250 8BITMIME
>quit
221 smtp107.mail.mud.yahoo.com
Connection closed by foreign host.

At this point you should be able to send and receive email from your yahoo account using the mail command. If for some reason you are having problems, check the troubleshooting section at the end of the tutorial for more help and links.

4 - Dovecot
4.a - Installing dovecot

$ sudo aptitude install dovecot-common dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d

4.b - Configuring and testing dovecot

Dovecot is very straight forward for configuring. Check that /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf has the following lines:

protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s
mail_privileged_group = mail

Restart it and then we can test it with mutt:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart

$ mutt -f imap://user@127.0.0.1/

5 - Configuring an email client
Most email clients are the same. I'll include here the basic settings that you will need to connect using the settings we have just created

=> Receiving email
Server: FQDN
Username: local username for the server
Security: TLS

=> Sending email
Server: FQDN
Security: No encryption

6 - Troubleshooting
6.a Useful commands

Commands to display and purge emails on the server:

# prints messages in queue
$ postqueue -p

# attempts to send messages - flush
$ postqueue -f

Check your logs for important messages as you attempt to send emails and start services

$ sudo tail -f /var/log/mail.log

6.b - Useful links

- Ubuntu Documentation for postfix
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Postfix
- Postfix as client only (what we used here)
http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#client_sasl
- Postfix port 465
http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html
- Postifx authentication file
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtp_sasl_password_maps
- Relaying to an smtps host with postfix and stunnel
http://www.eglug.org/book/export/html/1923
- Generates pem key for stunnel (we are not using it here)
http://www.stunnel.org/pem/
- Troubleshooting stunnel
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=983926
- Postfix and Dovecot on Ubuntu Dapper Drake
http://adomas.org/2006/08/postfix-dovecot/

How to move pictures by resolution

2009-05-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

This post will help you organize your pictures by resolution into subfolders, making it easier to use with machines that have different monitor size.

I myself like to have my files very organized, and one of the problems I have once in a while is that at home my laptop is always plugged into my widesreen monitor, however when I'm on the road my laptop only supports 1024x800 resolutions. This results in having some of the wallpapers not look good when moving from home setup to road, and vice versa.

So I came up with a simple line of codes using the package “imagemagick”.

1- Make sure that the images have no space in their names. One way of solving this for bulk files is by using 'convert', which also comes with imagemagick:

convert 's/ //g' *

2- Sort items by resolution

# folder with images only
identify * | awk '{ print $3 }' | sort -n

# folder with files and images
for i in $(ls *jpg *png *gif *JPG *JPEG 2> /dev/null) ; do identify "$i" | awk '{ print $3 }' | sort -n ; done

3- You should now get a list of the different resolutions for the pictures in the folder, similar to the one below:

$ identify * | awk '{ print $3 }' | sort -n

1024x768
1024x768
1024x768
1024x768
1024x768
1280x1024
1280x1024
1280x1024
1280x1024
1400x1050
1600x1000
1600x1129

4- Create a folder for each of the resolutions and then set the local variable “_res” with the resolutions of the “turn”:

_res="1024x768"

5- Run the code that will organize the pictures into folders:

for i in "$(identify *jpg *png *gif 2> /dev/null | grep "$_res")" ; do mv $(echo "$i" | awk '{ print $1 }' | sed 's/\[.*\]//g') $_res/ ; done

6- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the remaining files

How to use script highlight on 'less' (vim)

2009-04-04T20:03:00.001-07:00

The title might be a bit misleading. As far as I know 'less' does not support script highlight (please correct me if I'm wrong). However I did find out that vim has a built-in script that allows you to use it as less.

So here's a very simple solution, add an alias to your ~/.bashrc pointing the vim script:

alias lessv='/usr/share/vim/vim71/macros/less.sh'

You can see from the screenshot bellow that the file is open as read-only and not modifications are allowed. Some of 'less' commands (like “q” to quit) are also replicated.

How to display variables without case sensitivity

2009-04-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

This is the second of many shell (bash) tips that I'll be posting here. This little script will allow you to display the value of variables without having case sensitiveness or having to enter the “$” before the variable name.

Here's what displaying a variable without the script looks like:

$ echo $PATH
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

And here after the script:

$ var path
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

$ var PATH
/home/victor/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

You can see that both ways will work (as long as the variable does not have the same name in lower and capital case).

And here's the script, which can also be added to ~/.bashrc

var ()
{
_var="$1";
if [ -n "${!_var}" ]; then
echo ${!_var};
else
_var=$(echo "$_var" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z');
echo ${!_var};
fi
}

Getting daily tips for bash

2009-03-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

I still consider my self a new Linux user and a noobie. One of the things that I strive to learn is scripting in bash, but I do have difficulties as I have no programing background, so I try to read and get as much help as I can.

During my searches on the web I found a very interesting twitter profile for the author of “O'Reilly's Bash Cookbook”. He has daily updates with interesting bash tips, which I have found very useful.

So today I'll be providing a function script that can be added to your ~/.bashrc and used as either a command or a welcome message for you terminal emulator. This script will go to the twitter profile of “Bash cookbook” and download their daily content.

The script is compatible with links and elinks (Red Hat) for downloading the content. It creates 3 environment variables on your system to hold links version, last update and downloaded content.

Open you ~./bashrc with your favourite text editor and paste the lines bellow:

bash_tips ()
{
# checks for version of links
if [ -z "$LINKS_VERSION" ] ; then
export LINKS_VERSION=$(links -version | grep Links | cut -f1 -d" ")
fi

# checks variable that holds last update time
if [ "$BASH_TIPS_DATE" != $(date "+%d") ] ; then
export BASH_TIPS_DATE=$(date "+%d")
if [ "$LINKS_VERSION" = "ELinks" ] ; then
# script for ELinks
export BASH_TIPS=$(links -dump -dump-width 300 http://twitter.com/bashcookbook | egrep '^ *1\. [^http]' | sed 's/^ *//g')
else # script for Links
export BASH_TIPS=$(links -dump -width 300 http://twitter.com/bashcookbook | egrep '^ *1\. [^http]' | sed 's/^ *//g')
fi
fi

echo -e "\n## Today's bash tips ##\n$BASH_TIPS"
}

If you want to have the daily tips displayed when you open a terminal emulator, just add “bash_tips” to your ~/.bashrc.

This is what they will look like:

victux ~ $ bash_tips

## Today's bash tips ##
1. Using += on an array assignment adds new elements to the array. If RA has element 0-6 then RA+=(new elems) creates RA[7] and RA[8].10:24 PM Mar 27th from Identica

Book:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526788/
Twitter site:
http://twitter.com/bashcookbook
Official site:
http://www.bashcookbook.com/

How to highlight pdf files on Linux and Windows machines

2009-03-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Two annoyances that I have always had with ebooks and pdf material is that when I'm reading I like to highlight important info for future reference. Most readers (like Adobe) only allows you to highlight files that you have document rights to it, which I don't think makes any sense.

The other problem is that I read the same book between multiple computers and multiple platforms. I always have to write down the page I read last, and this is a bit annoying.

After doing a lot of searches I was finally able to find a pdf reader (PDF-XChange Viewer) that allows me to highlight text and save that information. Even better, they have a portable version so you can have the book, program and saved data (highlight and page) on a USB device and access it between machines.

For my utmost surprise the program works under wine and also reads the saved data.

Hot to get it working

1- Download the portable version of the program and unzip it to your flash device (either on Linux or Windows)

http://www.docu-track.com/download/PDFX_Vwr_Port.zip

2- Install wine on your Linux machine if you have not already done so

# Ubuntu (8.10)
$ sudo aptitude install wine
$ winecfg

3- Create a script in the flash drive within the program folder to open the program on Linux

$ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\n\nwine PDXCview.exe &' > PDFXCview_for_Linux

You should now be able to open the program on either Windows or Linux and see your highlighted text.

Giving Life to Old Computer Hardware

2009-02-27T19:05:00.000-08:00

The other day I was trying to come up with ideas on how to use some of the old computer hardware I have laying around at home. I searched the web over and over for computer hardware decor and similar keywords, and finally after a lot of searching I started to find some cool ideas (which I'll be showing here).

1- Floppy notes
This is actually pretty cool. Some companies actually sell this (between 2-10 US) on the net. But I think everyone has a few old floppies at home that have no use.

2- Floppy pencil holder
Another good idea for floppies. This is also being sold on the net (or you can easily make your own).

3- Hard Drive clock
No need to say much. This is a fully functional clock installed on an old HD. You can get instructions from here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Hard-drive-platter-clock./

There are many more ideas that I have not had a chance of trying, but I'm including a link with all my findings here if you want to dig a bit further.
http://delicious.com/victorbrca/Computer%2FHardware%2FDecor

And here are more links for my preferred ones:
- Really amazing LED clock
http://www.ian.org/HD-Clock/
- Bag made with floppy disks
http://www.instructables.com/id/Floppy-Disk-Bag/

New Site!!

2009-01-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

New site!!!!

Starting today I will no longer post any blogs on this site. My blog will now be hosted at http://blog.wazem.org, which will also include my site.

Here's a screenshot of what the site looks:

All posts have been transferred to my new blog, but I will also keep it here for as long as I can.

I hope you enjoy the new interface and find whatever information is that you came here looking for!!

Vic.

How to install flash on Linux (the manual and safe way)

2008-11-28T18:41:00.000-08:00

Ever had problem installing flash plugin on your Linux machine? Ubuntu has all these different packages that can be used, but I always opted for using the simple manual install.

Here's what you do:

1- Download flash player for Linux (.tar):
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

2- Uncompress the folder and cd into it:

tar -xzvf install_flash_player*linux.tar.gz
cd install_flash_player*linux

3- Add flash the proper folder:

# Firefox 3
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-3*/plugins/

Open (or restart) Firefox and test your flash player (youtube.com is a good idea).

Acer Aspire One Review

2008-11-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

So, a couple of weeks ago I was checking the price of a Aspire One and I could not believe how low it was. At one of the top computer stores here in Canada (canadacomputers.com), a 120GB model was going for about $325.00.

I already have an EeePc 701 (4GB) which is very handy. But the limitation of HD space and size of the monitor was something that kept bothering me (even giving me red eyes).

The AA1 is incredible. My model came with 120BG of disk space, a 8.9 screen with up to 1024x600 resolution (which beats the EeePc's 800x600 resolutions by far), dual core Atom processor and 512MB of RAM. The battery life is actually pretty good for my opinion, but I've read a lot of complaints. I can get close to 2 hours.

I don't have much to say about the original OS. As soon as I got home I attached a USB CD and booted into the Ubuntu install. Followed guides from here, which were pretty easy. I also decided on using Hardy instead of Intrepid. I don't usually keep my OS installs with the latest releases anyways.

Overall it's a great buy for the price. I've heard that some of the new models will allow you the option between 3G and WiMax built-in.

Here are some pics of the unit.

Unit by itself

Compared to EeePC

Box and Packages

Booting on Live CD

Live CD Booted

After installed and customized

More customization

How to Install Script Highlight on vim

2008-11-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Using script highlight is one of the things that will help a “programmer” avoid making mistakes on his script, at the same allowing a quicker and better understanding of the same.

Vim is a great program when it comes to that. A lot of new users are reluctant to use VI (or vim), I was one of them. However after being forced to learn it for my Unix course, I've found that it's a lot better than most other shell text editors. It gives you a wide range of options and commands, at the same time allowing a user who only knows a few commands to use the program.

Like most Linux programs, vim keeps a hidden config file on the users home directory (~/.vimrc). This file can be edited with options to the program. For example, adding the string “set number” will make vim show line numbers.

=> Getting syntax highlight to work.

First thing we need is a .vim file. This file includes a lot of the options on how to highlight the documents. This is fully customizable (you could create one on your own), and you can have one for each type of script. In my case I only use it for bash scripts, so I downloaded bash.vim from here, them saved the file under ~/.vim/syntax/

Now we need to point vim to the syntax file when opening bash scripts. The following lines will do that, as well as enable line numbering:

$ vim .vimrc
set number
syntax on

let X = getline(1)
let y = match(X, "#/bin/bash" )
if (y != -1)
so ~/.vim/syntax/bash.vim
endif
unlet X
unlet y

Last we need to install vim-full as the version of vim included in Ubuntu is a stripped down version.

sudo apt-get install vim-full

Now open one of your scripts and see if it worked.

Installing Picasa 3 on Ubuntu

2008-11-27T08:27:00.000-08:00

If you have been using Picasa on Ubuntu via Wine, I have good news for you. Google has finally released a Linux version (which is at number 3 right now).

Picasa itself has a nice interface (see screenshot bellow), and even allows you to edit some of the pictures.

I use it for very basic tasks; they include viewing a bulk of pictures (or showing them to someone), uploading multiple pictures at the same time to my web Picasa albums, and now a new feature I like that allows you to upload pictures to your FaceBook account.

Enough talking, let's do some installing:

1- Download and install Picasa:

cd downloads ## or any other source or downloads folder
wget http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/pool/non-free/p/picasa/picasa_3.0-current_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0-current_i386.deb

2- Now let's setup a button for uploading your pics to FaceBook

picasa picasa://importbutton/?url=http://www.webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/facebook.pbf

You should see the FaceBook button from inside Picasa:

Enjoy!!

Vic.

My List of Aliases

2008-11-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

I had a post a while ago that showed how to create aliases on bash to save time on repetitive commands. After a few months I find myself collecting more and more of these shortcuts, so I though I'd share it with you.

## Welcome note
cat $HOME/documents/ascii/welcome_victor

########################
### personal aliases ###
########################

# Basics
alias utar='tar -xvf'
alias utarz='tar -xzvf'
alias tarz='tar -czvf'
alias lss='ls -lh'
alias lssl='ls -lAh'
alias fproces='ps x | grep '
alias datef='date +%Y-%m-%d'
alias datev='date +%V'
alias sano='sudo nano'
alias renpic='e="1"; for i in `ls` ; do mv "$i" "$e.jpg" ; e=$(( e + 1 )) ; done'
alias rezpic50='for i in `ls` ; do convert "$i" -resize 50% "$i" ; done'
alias rezpic75='for i in `ls` ; do convert "$i" -resize 75% "$i" ; done'
alias rezpic20='for i in `ls` ; do convert "$i" -resize 20% "$i" ; done'
alias updatetime='sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com'
alias playm='mplayer -vo xv '
alias playmrt='mplayer -vo xv -vf rotate '
alias chcalendar='vim ~/.calendar/calendar'
alias lscreen='screen -ls'
alias duchm='du -ch | egrep '[0-9]*M' | sort -n'
alias duchg='du -ch | egrep '[0-9]*G' | sort -n'
alias dfh='df -hT'

# Software Management
alias aptl='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install'
alias update='sudo apt-get update'
alias upgrade='sudo apt-get upgrade'
alias inst='sudo apt-get install'
alias apts='sudo apt-cache search'
alias updupg='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade'

## Networking ##
# WAN IP
alias my-ip='wget http://checkip.dyndns.org/ -O - -o /dev/null | cut -f7 -d"<" | cut -f2 -d">" '
# APs info
alias aps='sudo iwlist wlan0 scanning | egrep "ESSID|Channel|Frequency|Encryption|Quality"'

How to add True Type Fonts to Ubuntu

2008-11-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

Ever wanted to add true type fonts to your Ubuntu machine? It's actually fairly simple.

1- Download the .ttf file to your machine
2- Create a new folder for your fonts under /usr/share/fonts/truetype/:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts

3- Move the .ttf file to the new created folder:

$ mv [ttf_file] /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts

4- Use fc-cache to add the new fonts to the system

$ sudo fc-cache -f -v

More info on fc-cache:

NAME
fc-cache - build font information cache files

DESCRIPTION
fc-cache scans the font directories on the system and builds font information cache files for applications using fontconfig for their font handling.

Site is Back Up

2008-10-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally had some time to work on the servers and get them back up. All images should be displayed as normal.

Right now the setup I have at home includes 3x servers (Firewall, Web and App). My plans are to migrate all these servers into one box and set them up as virtual machines with VMware. I have already got the hardware and the box built, I’m just working on the final hardware adjustments.

Here are the box specs:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Memory: 4GB DDR2
Storage: RAID 1 with 2x Sata2 500GB (for VM images only)

I’m hoping that this will allow me to run 4 VMs at an average level. The boxes I have right now are all P2 and P3 anyways.

You can have an idea of what my “server tower” looks like from the pics bellow. I’ll keep you posted on my advances.

Main Image:

Modem, Router and Switch:

Monitor, stdin and 10 port KVM :

Towers:

Vic.

The Ontario Linux Fest - Saturday, 25th October 2008 - Toronto, ON

2008-10-10T06:05:00.000-07:00

About The Ontario Linux Fest

"The Ontario Linux Fest is a non-profit event that brings together professionals, students and enthusiasts who share a common interest: Linux and Open Source software.

First and foremost the Ontario Linux Fest is a conference designed to present compelling topics of interest to users of Linux and Open Source software. These topics will span a full range of interests that may be technical, motivational, social, legal or essentially topics that hold current interest. Attendees will find out what is happening in the Open Source world from the people directly involved.

It's also a social event. With a Welcome Party and Wrap-up Reception there will be lots of time to network and socialize with like-minded professionals. It's a great event to find new friends, or business partnerships and perhaps employers.

The event was years in the making and was born from the organizer's inspiring experiences at the Ohio Linux Fest. Those two future organizers, Richard Weait and John Van Ostrand, contemplated staging a complementary event in Ontario. It took years for the ideas to coalesce as the Ontario Linux Fest."

Link: http://onlinux.ca/

Images not being displayed - Site is down

2008-10-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

You might notice that some of the images on my blog are not being displayed. We are having some work done at my house, so I had to shutdown the servers for the past week.

Servers should be back up by next Wednesday. My apologies for any inconvenience.

Vic.

Linux Journal - Photo of the month?

2008-08-28T15:16:00.001-07:00

I received an email today that made me very happy! After forwarding some tux images I had on my pc (and I have many), Linux Journal offered to put one o them on their magazine. The featured photo is below:

I'm yet to receive a confirmation that this will happen... but never the less I'm very excited to even have received an offer. Now I just need to keep checking whenever I receive a new issue if the photo has been published.

Mississauga Linux Group

2008-08-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to organize a monthly LUG meeting for the area that I live (Mississauga, ON). I started with emails to the Ubuntu CA mailing list, which I got good results.

We also have a Wiki page up, and I will posting a thread on the Ubuntu forum. I hope we can get a few users that are willing to sit down, drink some coffee and talk about Linux.

Wiki: MLUG

1st Meeting
24 September 2008, 6:00pm
Mulligan's Pub and Grill, 2458 Dundas Street West, Mississauga

O'Reilly School of Technology

2008-08-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stumbled on the site for O'Reilly School of Technology. There's not much that needs to be said about O'Reilly. They have great technical books that are very well laid and easy to understand.

The on-line training provided by the site has different courses, as well as certificate programs that upon completion will provide the student with a certificate from the University of Illinois.

Courses go for around U$398.00, and there is a 7 day trial period (refund).

The creators of the first commercial Web Site once again are doing a great job! It's worth your time to take a look.

Vic

Problem with vlc play back sound on Ubuntu

2008-08-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

After upgrading my laptop to Ubuntu 8.04 (via a re-install), I noticed the sound on my vlc play back did not work. Usually I would have to logout and log back in to get it to work. At one point I got tired of doing this (it didn't take much) and decided to investigate the issue.

Looks like the problem is related to the playback system. You might notice that this problem only occurs when another program (like Firefox or a player) is open.

The fix is simple. Install the “vlc-plugin-pulse” package to fix it.

$ sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-pulse

Launchpad bug: 188358

How to change Rogers search hijack

2008-08-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Couple of weeks ago I noticed that when I typed a bad address on my browser, instead of getting the all known and familiar Google Results page I was getting a Rogers page. Apparently Rogers added this feature after customer feedback requests.

In my opinion this feature might be helpful for the not so tech savy people, but a draw back for others.

There is an easy way to fix this and it's by changing your DNS settings, the problem is that you need to provide the DNS server of your choice. This were a service like OpenDNS comes in. They are a free as in beer DNS service (or free as in Google) that provides faster, safer and more reliable DNS access.

More info:
Site: http://www.opendns.com/
DNS1: 208.67.222.222
DNS2: 208.67.220.220

Here are instructions on how to change the DNS option on your machine:

XP
1- Follow the instructions given on Rogers help site
2- Use the OpenDNS addresses given above

Ubuntu
Note: These settings will not stay if you are using DHCP. If that's the case, try changing the settings on your DHCP server instead.

Type in the following command in a terminal window:

gksudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

Edit the line with “search” to look like the one bellow:

search 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220

Save the file and close it.

Now run the following code in a terminal window to restart your network:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

That's it!! Now you can enjoy your bad URL results on Google.

Vic

Cannot see shared folder on VBox

2008-08-05T14:23:00.001-07:00

After I re-installed Vbox on one of my servers I had a problem where I could not see a shared folder on my guest machine (XP).

The command to set the share is quite simple:

VBoxManage sharedfolder add “[machine]” -name "[share_name]" -hostpath \n "[/home/username/foldertoshare]"

If you issued this command but you still cannot see the share, the solution is actually simple. All you have to do is re-install Guest Additions (if you haven't done so), reboot the machine and you are set.

You can find more information and thank the guy who found this here.

Vic.

Useful VBox commands

2008-08-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

For those of you that are running VBox on a server (headless), here are some common used commands that you will most likely need.

Change memory to 256MB

VBoxManage modifyvm "[machine]" -memory "256MB"

VBoxManage registerimage dvd [/full/path/to/iso.iso]

Add ISO image to machine after registering

VBoxManage modifyvm "[machine]" -dvd [/full/path/to/iso.iso]

Start Machine

VBoxHeadless -startvm "[machine]" -p [port] &

Change state of machine

VBoxManage controlvm [machine] poweroff
VBoxManage controlvm [machine] reset
VBoxManage controlvm [machine] savestate

** Other “controlvm” options
pause|resume

Set a shared folder

VBoxManage sharedfolder add “[machine]” -name "[share_name]" -hostpath \n "[/home/username/foldertoshare]"

Vic.

VirtualBox - XP NIC Driver problem

2008-07-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

After installing VirtualBox on my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 I ran into the problem were the virtual NIC on my XP machine did not have the proper drivers installed, and I was not able to update the driver using the standard Windows drivers.

The description for the device was “AMD PCNET Family PCI Ethernet Adapter”.

After doing a search on the net I found a couple of people having the same problem. Their solutions was to install either an Intel driver or an AMD:

Intel
AMD

The problems I had was that the AMD driver did no get recognized by the device, and the Intel driver did no recognize the device. That's when I stumbled on the “proper” device. You can download it here.

Install the executable on your virtual machine and then do a driver update on the network card under Device Manager. This should automatically recognize the device and give you network access.

More info:
VirtualBox Forum

How to kill running processes with multiple instances

2008-03-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

I have my .bashrc file setup with many aliases, you can see more here. One of them is to kill processes, but sometimes it's not useful for running processes with multiple instances.

My alias looks like:

alias fproces='ps x | grep '

So when I get a process or an app that I want to kill I can do the following:

$ fproces gedit
7892 ? S 0:00 gedit
7894 pts/1 R+ 0:00 grep gedit
$ kill -9 7892

This is not that useful for applications/processes like Firefox:

$ fproces firefox
5994 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/firefox
6006 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/firefox/run-mozilla.sh /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
6011 ? Sl 54:24 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
7898 pts/1 R+ 0:00 grep firefox
$ kill -9 5994 6006 6011

So I came up with a little script that does the following:

$ finish.sh
Enter app name
firefox
5994 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/firefox
6006 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/firefox/run-mozilla.sh /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
6011 ? Sl 54:38 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin

Do you want to kill all items? [y|n]

The script lists all processes related to the app and kill it if you say “y”. In this example I typed in “firefox” when prompted for an app name.

Here is what the script looks like:

#!/bin/bash

## reads process name and assign it to var app
echo "Enter app name"
read app

## sets a minimum size for the var app. Without this, you could easily kill all running processes
minim=`echo "$app" | wc -m`

if [ "$minim" -lt "4" ] ; then
echo "Please try again with an app name"
exit 1
fi

## looks for the running process instances, lists it and asks if you want to kill all of them
ps x | grep "$app" | grep -v 'grep'
echo
echo "Do you want to kill all items? [y|n] "

## reads the answer and acts if it's an “y”
read resposta
if [ "$resposta" = "y" ] ; then
termina=`ps x | grep "$app" | grep -v 'grep' | awk '{print $1 ; }'`
for i in `echo $termina` ; do
kill -9 "$i"
done
fi

Vic.

How to get email and sms notifications from your server

2008-03-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered if you could make you server send you an email or a sms to your cell phone if it ever went down, or if you logs folder were too big, or any other event that you can think? Well, here's a really simple way of doing so.

In my case, I'll be using two events, one if the server goes down, and another if my logs folder gets too big (I have a very simple Linux box that does not have file rotation).

1- Mayday, server is down

There are two ways we can do this, and it will depend on how often do you need to check if the server is down. If you need it to be done every minute or so, I'd advise using a service instead of crontab. I could not personally say what's the system hog difference, but I'm open for feedbacks. In my case I'll be checking every hour, so I'll use crontab.

Other thing required is a cli email client, and there are many you can use. I choose msmtp, which is extremely easy to configure. Here's what I have set to use my gmail account:

defaults
tls on
tls_certcheck off
logfile ~/.msmtp.log
account gmail
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
from me@gmail.com
auth on
user me@gmail.com
password ######
account default : gmail

To send an email is as easy as:

$ echo -e "Subject: Test \n\n This is the message body" | msmtp -v email@address1 email@address2

So now that we have means to send the message, let's create the script. Remember that the script will need to be run from another PC and not from the server. A server that is down cannot send emails!!

#!/bin/bash

## pings the server IP. Here I'm using only one ping as some distros ping 4x times (Fedora), and others will ping consecutively by default (Ubuntu)
ping -c 1 server

## checks if the ping was successful or not, if not it sends an email and a sms with the last time it tried to ping
if [ “$?” != “0” ] ; then
echo -e "Subject: Server is down \n\n Victor, \n Server is down. Last time tested was $(date)." | msmtp -v me@adreess.ca 12312345678@cellprovider.com
fi

Now we add the script to your crontab and send any error msg to a txt. Make sure that your account has pinging privileges

$ crontab -e
# Check if server is up every hour
0 * * * * /home/user/bin/script.sh 2>> /home/user/var/log/server-up-log.txt

2- Checking /var/logs size

The process here will be almost the same, however both script and crontab need to be run on the server. Our script should look something like:

#!/bin/bash

## Some txt editing. We will check /var/log size by using “df” and then striping it down to numbers only
e=`df -h | grep 'var\/log' | awk '{ print $5 ;}' | sed 's/%//'`

## If the size of /var/log gets higher than 75% we will get an email and a sms
if [ "$e" -gt "75" ] ; then
echo -e "Subject: Log folder \n\n Victor, \n Log folder has reached 75%" | msmtp -v me@adreess.ca 12312345678@cellprovider.com
fi

Add the script to your crontab on the server and you are done.

Have fun!!!

Vic.

Quick and simple Quake Terminal

2008-03-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

For the gamers out there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I've never been big with gaming, but the idea of having a shortcut to shade a terminal window and bring it back whenever I want is pretty neat.

I already run a small terminal window as part of my desktop, but sometimes its not as flexible as a normal window. I'll write a post on how to use a terminal as a desktop background in the future. For now you can see a pic here.

To achieve what we want we will use a utility called wmctrl, which is on the Ubuntu repos (if I'm not mistaken the Universe repo). There are other ways you can achieve the same (like Tilda).

$ sudo apt-get install wmctrl

wmctrl bases it's commands on window name, so to make sure you have the proper name for the terminal window, open it with the desired profile and type:

$ wmctrl -l
0x03800021 -1 hostname Left
0x03c000cc 0 hostname Jinzora Media Jukebox - Genres - Mozilla Firefox
0x01407084 1 hostname blog - File Browser
0x04400057 1 hostname quake-terminal - OpenOffice.org Writer
0x0380859b 1 hostname victor@hostname: ~

These are the list of windows I have open. My terminal window is called “victor@hostname”, so this is the name I'm going to use. Next, I'll open my favorite text editor and add the following lines to a script:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -f ~/bin/temp/quake ] ; then
wmctrl -r 'victor@hostname: ~' -b remove,below
wmctrl -r 'victor@hostname: ~' -b remove,shaded
rm -r ~/bin/temp/quake
else
wmctrl -r 'victor@hostname: ~' -b add,below
wmctrl -r 'victor@hostname: ~' -b add,shaded
touch ~/bin/temp/quake
fi

Here's a breakdown to make it easy. I have a folder on /home/victor/bin with many scripts I created, so I'll add this one as well, and I called it ter-quake.sh. Next, I created a temp folder inside my bin folder to generate a file that will check if my script was run previously or not. And here's the explanation for the script

#!/bin/bash

## This first line checks if the file /bin/temp/quake was created, which meas the script was run before
if [ -f ~/bin/temp/quake ] ; then
## if the script was run before, it will unshade the terminal window and place it on top
wmctrl -r 'victor@victor-laptop: ~' -b remove,below
wmctrl -r 'victor@victor-laptop: ~' -b remove,shaded
## here we remove the file
rm -r ~/bin/temp/quake

## otherwise, if the file does not exist
else
## the sript will shade the window, place it bellow all others and...
wmctrl -r 'victor@victor-laptop: ~' -b add,below
wmctrl -r 'victor@victor-laptop: ~' -b add,shaded
## create the file
touch ~/bin/temp/quake
fi

Save the script and make it executable:

$ sudo chmod a+x ~/bin/ter-quake.sh

Last step, we will add a keyboard shortcut for the script. I've achieved that by using gnome's gconf-editor:

- Type “Alt+F2” and enter “gconf-editor”
- Browse to “/apps/metacity/keybinding_commands”
- Choose any of the empty commands and add the path to your script
- Go to “/apps/metacity/global_keybindings” and under “run_command_#” add the shortcut you would like to use. I've used q.

Vic.

Note: This is another useful topic from Linux Journal that I wanted to share. Issue 167. Link

How to check for a running screen when logging via ssh

2008-03-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

For some of you that might have never used screen, it's a program that allows you to create multiple virtual terminals inside one terminal window. You can even break the terminal window into two screens.

I'm not getting into details for the program's usage. You can get more information on these two links:

GNU Screen
How to split screen your command line

In my case, because screen preserves a running program even if your ssh session has lost connection, I use it to download torrents via ctorrent on one of my servers. So when I connect back to my server to check the torrent download status, I have to issue a command like the one bellow to check for running screens, and then connect to it:

$ screen -ls
There is a screen on:
7583.pts-0.pluto (Detached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-webm.

$ screen -r 7583

A simpler way of doing this would be:

$ screen -DD -R

This command will check for a running screen, and if none is available it will create one. So to make my live a bit easier (and my login a bit fancier), I've added a little script to my ~/.bash_profile (Ubuntu) to prompt me if I want to connect. This is what I get when I login:

Last login: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There is a screen on:
7583.pts-0.pluto (Detached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-webm.

A screen was detected, would you like to connect? [y|n]

To achieve that, I appended the following script to my .bash_profile:

## Check for a running Screen
scrtst=`screen -ls | grep 'No Sockets' > /dev/null`
if [ "$?" != "0" ] ; then
screen -ls
echo "A screen was detected, would you like to connect? [y|n] "
read opcao
if [ "$opcao" = "y" ] ; then
screen -DD -R
fi
fi

There are many different ways you can do this. You could even check how many screens are running and list an option to connect to, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Vic.

Notes:
- Opcao means option in Portuguese. I like using Portuguese words for variables.
- This idea was adapted from a Linux Journal column - Tech Tip, Use Screen to Avoid Loosing Remote Work - Issue 167

How to Yahoo!Mail and Evolution

2008-02-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

Simple and small how to that will help you to configure your Evolution email client to connect to youy Yahoo!Mail account via pop. Please note that this may not work on some free versions of Yahoo!Mail, as some locations only offer this service on Yahoo!Mail Plus.

The setting specified by Yahoo are:

Incoming Mail Server (POP3): pop.mail.yahoo.ca
Use SSL, port: 995
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.mail.yahoo.ca
Use SSL, port: 465, use authentication
Account Name/Username: YOUR USERNAME WITHOUT @YAHOO.COM
Email address: USERNAME@YAHOO.COM (OR CA, UK, BR, ETC)
Password: YOUR PASSWORD

Here are some screenshots to help you with the setup:

Identity:

Receiving Email:

Sending Email:

Vic.

Is OSS and GNU killings its own chance due to “extreme” users?

2008-01-23T20:43:00.001-08:00

I'm not one to really discuss political views and ideals, also am not good at it. But I would like to share something I experienced at work that made me think about my ideals in regards to Linux against Microsoft.

I have used Microsoft my whole life. I've also started in the IT industry about 2-3 years ago, so I don't consider my self a very experienced person. Around November 2006 I came across a live CD of Ubuntu and decided to give it a try. That's was when I felt in love with the operating system, and I have been using it since them. I've also fallen into the category of Linux users that like to brag that M$ sucks and Linux is the best.

I'm at the moment working for a company that makes proprietary software, but for Windows environment only. I have to tell that I was amazed at how professional they are at this place and how much importance they put into making things right. It really makes it a better of a place to work for. There's no where to grow in the company if I want to invest in Linux, but at least I can continue with my self paced studies for when I consider myself ready.

The main problems happened a while ago. A customer that runs his backbone servers in Linux was having some problems with our software. Our software needs full access to the folders to be able to work, and he was not aware of that. My boss (extremely smart person and a MAC user) knowing that I was a Linux fanboy asked me for help with some testing, and we discovered that all they had to do was change “directory mask” and “create mask” to 777 on his smb.conf, and that should resolve the problem. Again, we do not support Linux for our software, this was just an unofficial help (I'm sure that there could be better ways like using 770, but again I'm not a Linux sys admin).

The person in charge of the IT department (outsourced) made a huge deal about this. Stated that our software was the problem and that we should fix the basic I/O settings of our software. Stated that if not, they would have to look for solutions that would better fit their requirements.

This “IT” person also made fun of my testing stating that they were not using a simple home toy distro like Ubuntu, but a high portable Linux distro.

Our software is the best in the market. The people who use that software on their company also agree, but they'll end up suffering because of an Open Source fanatic that does not want to see the good part of both worlds. He will change the company needs because they don't meet his open source requirements. Shouldn't this be the other way around?

After that I had to hear funny comments, that were somewhat true. Is open source really free after all? On this case, I think it's actually increasing costs than actually help decreasing it. All due to fanaticism.

More info: Post on Ubuntu Forum

Vic.

Google Search Regex

2008-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Well, they are not really the same regex as we can use on Linux or programming. But some of the “tags” are pretty good and can help you on a lot of searches.

I've organized them in a manner that I thought made the best sense. But the sites where I got the information from do have them in different others, as well as some other tags that I did not find as important. The links are at the end of the post.

Basic
- "+" - Result must contain word
- "-" - Result must not contain word
- "OR" and "|" - Applied between two words, it will find "this or that", or both. The "OR" operator must be uppercase and have a space between the 2 words on each side. The "|" operator does not need a space between the words
- " "" " - Finds an exact match of the word or phrase
- "~" - Looks for synonyms or similar items. Eg: "~run" will match runner's and marathon
- ".." - Indicates that there's a range between number. Eg: 100..200 or $100..$200
- "*" - Matches a word or more. Eg: "Advanced * Form" finds "Advanced Search Form"
- "word-word" - All forms (spelled, singe word, phrase and hyphenated

Important
- "site:" - Search only one website or domain. Eg: "PC site:wazem.org" will find PC within wazem.org
- "filetype:" or "ext:" - Search for docs in the file type. Eg: "Linux tutorial filetype:pdf" will find Linux tutorial in the pdf format
- "link:" - Find linked pages (pages that point to the URL)
- "define:" - Provides definition for a word or a phrase
- "cache:" - Display Google's cached version of a web page.
- "info:" - Info about a page
- "related:" - Websites related to the URL
- "allinurl:" - All words must be in the URL
- "allintitle:" - All words must be in the title of the page
- "intittle:" - Match words in the title of the page
- "source:" - News articles from a specific source

Calculations
- "+ - * /" - Normal math signs. Eg: 12 * 4 + 2 - 1 /2
- "% of" - Percentage. Eg:10% of 100
- "^" or "**" - Raise to a power
- units "in" units - Convert Units (currency, measurements, weight). Eg: 300 lbs in Kg, 40 in hex

Others
- "book" or "books" - Search books. Eg: book "LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell"

Links used:
GoogleGuide.com
GoogleGuide.com Advanced Operators
Wikipedia Regex

How to Masquerade Your PC When Connecting to an Unknown Network

2008-01-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

Let's say you want to connect to an untrusted network, like school, library or other. All your packets could be traced by a proxy and your computer information as well.

There are many ways to avoid this from happening. The one I'll be describing here will involves connecting to a server on your home running a proxy daemon (like squid) via a secure tunnel (like SSH).

First we need to get squid and SSH server installed on your home server and make sure that your router is open for SSH (or another WAN port that can be forwarded to the SSH server port on your LAN).

You can get more info on this process here, and more info on SSH auto login here. These posts should get you connected to your home server and browsing the web without the proxy on the untrusted network knowing you packets (or what you are browsing).

Next step will be to mask your computer info. I'm not sure how well this would work as far as digital signatures, but it may help with some privacy.

I've created 3 files on my PC to use for a quick connection:
. MAC1 - Changes my MAC address, my hostname and my proxy configuration to 127.0.0.1:80
. MAC2 - Changes my MAC and my hostname to original and disables the usage of proxy
. File3 - A ssh script that binds local port 80 to the ssh tunnel

MAC1
#!/bin/bash

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether bogus-MAC
sudo ifconfig eth0 up
sudo bogus-hostname
xauth add bogus-hostname/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 `xauth list | grep original-hostname | cut -f5 -d" "`
gconftool -s /system/proxy/mode -t string manual

MAC2
#!/bin/bash

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether original-MAC
sudo ifconfig eth0 up
sudo original-hostname
xauth remove bogus-hostname/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1
gconftool -s /system/proxy/mode -t string none

File3
#!/bin/bash

sudo ssh -v -L 80:squid-server-IP:3128 user@homeIP

Other Links:
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/anonym-os/

Vic

How to change multiple files into a progressive number order

2008-01-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a big collector of pictures. I usually download pictures that my friends may post on Facebook or other sites for events that I was part of. For Facebook I use a Firefox add-on called Facebook Album Downloader. It will download all pictures for a specific album into your PC. But the problem is, that most of the times these pictures get renamed when uploaded. So you'll end up getting a really weird name for the pictures, which for me, being a freak at organizing my files just doesn't cut.

It's in times like this that I'm glad I use Linux. Here's a little script that will help me to change this.

Let's say I have the following files in my folder:

$ ls -1
fgthnt.txt
sadfasd.txt
sdfsdf.txt
tyhy.txt
ujtyuj.txt
ujyunyum.txt
wdfaw.txt
wertet.txt
werwert.txt
yjmyu.txt
yujjuj.txt

I would like to rename all these files to an organized manner. My pictures are usually named with numbers. I started doing this when I was learning web-design with my brother in law many years ago (never went trough with it thou).

To achieve such task we would run the following code:

E=1; for i in `ls *txt` ; do mv $i $E.txt ; E=$((E+1)); done
$ ls -1
10.txt
11.txt
1.txt
2.txt
3.txt
4.txt
5.txt
6.txt
7.txt
8.txt
9.txt

Breakdown of code:
E=1 - Set a variable of value 1
for i in `ls *.jpg` - Creates variable “i” with individual lines from the output of the command 'ls *.jpg'
do mv $i $E.jpg - Moves value from variable “i” to “E”
E=$((E+1)) - Adds a count of 1 to E, so next file with be E
done - Finalizes it

Another way of renaming files is using the “rename” program. Some Linux distros have it installed by default. The program can be used in similar way to sed. For example, the command below would remove all dashes from all mp3 files in the working folder:

rename 's/-//g' *mp3

Vic.

How to change Gnome Proxy Settings on a Terminal window

2008-01-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

This document will show how to change proxy settings for Gnome from a terminal window (not from gnome-network-preferences).

The configuration information is saved under .gconf (front end GconfEdior), which is a system for storing application preference in Gnome (think Registry for Windows PC).

Keys can be accessed in terminal under “/home/user/.gconf/*”. The command below will display current proxy configuration loaded by gconf:

$ cat .gconf/system/http_proxy/%gconf.xml

This will be the same as:

The proxy configuration can be divided into two parts:
. /system/proxy/ - Configures SOCKS Proxy
. /system/http_proxy/ - Configures HTTP proxy

We can use gconftool -R to view the options within the subkeys. For the screenshot above we would get something similar to this:

$ gconftool -R /system/proxy
old_ftp_port = 0
socks_host = 127.0.0.1
mode = manual
old_socks_port = 0
secure_host = 127.0.0.1
ftp_host = 127.0.0.1
socks_port = 80
old_secure_host =
secure_port = 80
ftp_port = 80
old_ftp_host =
autoconfig_url =
old_secure_port = 0
old_socks_host =

$ gconftool -R /system/http_proxy
use_http_proxy = true
use_authentication = false
host = 127.0.0.1
authentication_user =
ignore_hosts = [localhost,127.0.0.0/8,*.local]
use_same_proxy = true
authentication_password =
port = 80

So, to edit the proxy to the same settings as the one shown on the screenshot, we would do the following:

$ gconftool -s /system/http_proxy/use_http_proxy -t bool true
$ gconftool -s /system/http_proxy/host -t int 127.0.0.1
$ gconftool -s /system/http_proxy/port -t int 80
$ gconftool -s /system/http_proxy/use_same_proxy -t bool true

$ gconf -s /system/proxy/mode -t string manual

Vic.

Step by Step Installation of Slackware with Screenshots

2008-01-02T14:23:00.000-08:00

I've heard that the installation of Slackware is hard, mostly due to the fact that its via CLI. I myself am not an expert on CLI, even thou I like using it, and I try to as much as I can. But I decided to give it a try on my VirtualBox as my Gutsy install on my laptop has been a little “flaky”, and Slackware is famous due to it's speed and stability.

I've divided into steps, according to the screenshots I took.

Download the first two CDs from Slackware website here.

1- Pop it in your machine and reboot it, or start it. You will get a prompt like the one bellow (click on the picture for a bigger size), asking you for boot options. You can usually leave this blank and just hit enter.

2- If you want to enable special characters for your language, you can do it here (this can also be done after the installation)

3- Logon to the CD as root

4- Now the partitioning part. This what most people are afraid off, and it's really quite simple. Type “fdisk ” to start the utility. Device name will most likely be /dev/hda if you are using your first hard drive. I always create a minimum of 3 partitions (one for /, one for swap and one for /home). The commands we can use are:
- n - New partition
- t - Filesystem type (we will use type 82 for the swap partition)
- p - Lists changes
- q - In case you want to quit without saving it
- w - Saves changes and exits

The commands I used were
- First Partition - n, p, 1, Enter, +5000M.
- Second Partition (swap) - n, p, 2, Enter, +256M
- Third Partition - n, p, 3, Enter, Enter
- Second Partition - t, 2, 82
- Enter “w” to save the changes

5- Type “setup” to enter the setup utility

6- This is the main setup menu

7- There are a couple of things we need to take care first. If you try clicking on install, you'll get a msg reminding you so

8- Click on target and we will be able to setup the partitions and mount points. On this picture I've already done “/”, but we can still do the next partition

9- Select if you want to format it

10- Select the filesystem format for the partition

11- This confirms that it's formating the partition

12- Name the mount point

13- This screen confirms the selections

14- Go back to the main menu and select Addswap to configure the swap partition

15- Say yes if you want to check the swap partition for bad bocks. Not really required

16- Summary of changes to the swap partition

17- Select the partition to install the system (/)

18- Select the source to install from (in our case CD)

19- Select packages categories that you want to install. I left all packages, except games

20- Select packages that you want to install. I used the “full” selection

21- The install will displays the packages being installed

22- Insert the second CD when you see this prompt

23- Option to create a boot USB or not. It's useful but not necessary. You can also use the CD to boot into the system (I had to do this due to a LILO problem)

24- Setup a modem. I'm not using one, so I did not set it up

25- LILO Installation. I used the simple, which is the recommended, but I still had some (minor) problems

26- Select boot splash screen resolution. Again, better be safe than sorry, so I used the standard

27- Enter boot parameter if required for your machine to boot

28- Choose the location to install LILO. I chose the first, or root, partition and had a problem due to the 1024 cylinder rule. I would advise using MBR if you are not dual booting.

29- This is what I got due to LILO installation error. Not to worry, I will show how to resolve it

30- Setting up a mouse. Choose the type of mouse you will be using in the machine

31- Say yes to load an application that will allow you to copy and paste between virtual consoles using the mouse (usually the middle click)

32- Configure Network. I'd choose yes and get it over with. It's fairly simple

33- Give the computer a hostname on the network

34- Enter a domain name. Not really necessary

35- IP configuration (pretty basic)

36- This is only used if you chose DHCP and your DHCP server requires you to use a pre-set hostname

37- Summary of your choices

38- Select services that will start on boot. I've set my machine to basics (like no HTTP or MySQL)

39- Option to configure console fonts. Again, I went for the defaults to make it simple

40- This will sync the time on your OS with the time on your BIOS. I'm using local time

41- And here is my location

42- Choose your Window Manager. KDE which is usually the default, has it's own Window Manager, also called KDE. You can get more info on the difference between Window Managers, Desktop Environments and X Server on these links:
Window Manager vs Desktop Environment vs X Window
Desktop Environments

43- Set root password

44- Setup is complete

Now, we'll go into setting up LILO, in case you also got an error

1- Place CD 1 in the machine and enter the parameters shown on top “hugesmp.s root=/dev/hda1 rdinitd= ro”. This will use the CD to boot into your new installed system

2- Once it finishes the boot process, logon as root with the password you set during the install and run “liloconfig”

3- Installing LILO

4- Once done, type “lilo” to write to the lilo.conf file

5- Restart the computer by typing “shutdown -r now” and remove the CD

6- You are done. Here's your LILO boot prompt

Remember that Slackware will not start the X server by default. To do so, logon at the CLI prompt and type “startx”.

Vic.

How to remove repeated lines in a file without changing the order

2007-12-24T14:50:00.000-08:00

Using just uniq is no viable as repeated lines need to be next to each other for uniq to identify it. Using sort will just mix them up, loosing their original placement within the file. So here's a work around (originally from Linux Journal).

Let's say we have a document called file:

$ cat file
a
b
c
d
a
b
c
d

Here are the steps we will take:
1- Use nl (or cat -) to add a numbering to the each line;
2- Use “sort -k 2” to place equal line after each other (we have to sort by the second column);
3- “Uniq -f 1” will remove equal lines (we also have to use the second column);
4- “sort -n” will re-add them in the proper order as per the first field, or the numbers
4- “sed 's/[0-9]//g'” will remove the numbers

This is what you command should look like:

$ nl file | sort -k 2 | uniq -f 1 | sort -n | sed 's/[0-9]//g'
a
b
c
d

On my machine I had a problem where nl kept adding empty fields (still trying to find why), so I had to modify my expression a little bit:

Now, let's say your sources.list got mixed up somehow, and all lines are now duplicate. We can apply the same concept like this:

$ grep -v '^#' sources.list | nl | expand | tr -s '[:blank:]' | sed 's/^ *//g' | sort -k 2 | uniq -f 1 | sort -n | sed 's/[0-9] *//g'

deb cdrom:[Ubuntu ._Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i()]/ gutsy main restricted
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy multiverse
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates multiverse
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu gutsy partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu gutsy partner
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy universe multiverse
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy universe
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy universe
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates universe
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates universe

Vic.

How to “Ctrl+Alt+Del” on Linux

2007-12-24T13:31:00.000-08:00

Here are some steps you can take to regain access to a frozen Linux box. Re-starting the OS is not always the best choice as any un-synched drive cache will not be written and will result in data loss.

1- Try to find out what application is frozen. If it started happening after you opened a specific app, you can bet that application is the cause of the problem. Go to another tty (Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F6), logon and use tools like “ps” and “top” to detect the bad application, and use kill to end it.

2- If that doesn't help or you can not change ttys, try restarting X (some unsaved data will be lost) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

3- Next option would be to do a reboot by pressing Ctrl+alt+del. You can force a reboot by pressing the same combination twice

4- Last resource, press “Ctrl+Alt+Prnt Scrn” and type “reisub”. This will unmount the filesystem and shut it down

Note: This steps where taken from another blog. I don't remember the name, but will post her if I come across again

Portable apps

2007-12-05T20:04:00.001-08:00

I just found this site for portable apps. They can be used to run applications directly from your portable device (USB, Ipod, external HD, etc...) without installing on the host computer. They can come very handy if you are on an environment where you cannot install a software, or even if you want to keep your "profile" info.

Portable Apps.com

They have firefox, gimp, pidgin, open office, winSCP, VLC, etc... Check it out when you have a chance.

Vic.

How to set up a secure and prompt-less login using SSH and RSA

2007-11-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

If you use SSH to remote connect to a Linux box, either from another Linux or Windows with Putty, it’s somewhat nice to have a login that does not ask for a password and it’s still secure. Here are the steps.

1- Creating the RSA key
Go to your remote server and run the following code:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C [username]

- “-t rsa” is the type of key we will be creating. You can also use DSA
- The part “-C [username]” can be left out. That only adds a username text to the end of the key for human reference.
- Make sure that you save the files to “/home/[user]/.ssh/” when it prompts you for a location.
- Do not add a passphrase when prompted. This will make the system accept the ssh connection without prompting for a password or passphrase.

The code above will have generated two files:
- id_rsa - Used by the client
- id_rsa.pub - Used by the server

2- Placing the keys on the right location
First confirm that your “/etc/ssh/sshd_config” file is pointing to the right location by finding these lines:

$ cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config | grep AuthorizedKeysFile
AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys

The client key (id_rsa) should (not required as you can set an argument when opening the connection), be placed under “/home/[user]/.ssh/id_rsa” on the client computer.

The server key (id_rsa.pub) should be renamed and placed on “/home/[user]/.ssh/authorized_keys” on the SSH server (this location can be changed on the “/etc/ssh/sshd_config” file by editing the line show 2 paragraphs above). You can either rename the original file (id_rsa.pub) to “authorized_keys”, or run the code bellow to add the key to an existing file in case you already have keys for another user(s):

$ cat /home/[user]/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> /home/[user]/.ssh/authorized_keys

3a- Opening the connection from Linux
Run the following code to connect to the server:

$ ssh[user]@[server]
Or
$ ssh[user]@[server] -i [path to id_rsa file]

I use the second code as I have different RSA keys for the different computers I connect. I have also setup these connections on my .bashrc as an alias for quicker connection (see here for a how to)

3b- Setup Putty
To setup putty to use the key is simple. See this previous post for a how to in converting the id_rsa key to .ppk.

4- Making the connection more secure
- Disable root login:

$ sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for the line that says “PermitRootLogin” and make sure it says no.

PermitRootLogin no

- Change listening port

$ sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for the line that say “Port 22” and change to an unused number (you can find them here)

# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for
Port 22

- Limit login to one IP or subnet
Configure your hosts.deny to block all access via SSHD, and them configure hosts.allow to provide access only to certain rules (users, Ips, subnets, domains)

$ sudo nano /etc/hosts.deny

Add the line to the end of the file “sshd : ALL”

$ sudo nano /etc/hosts.allow

And add the line to the end of the file “sshd : [IP]”. Then run:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

- Use CHROOT
You can find more info here.

Vic.

How to convert id_rsa keys to Putty .ppk without a passphrase

2007-11-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

This how to will show how to convert id_rsa keys that were already created on Linux, without a passphrase, to .ppk extension so it can be used with Putty on a Windows box.

Download PuttyGen from here and open it. Once it opens click on Conversions => Import Key

Search for the id_rsa key on you computer

Click on “Save Private Key” and “Yes” to save without a passphrase.

Choose a location and a name for the new .ppk key

Now go to putty and add a path to key for the connection

Done!!!

Vic

How to configure IMAP on Evolution and Gmail

2007-10-26T10:00:00.001-07:00

Gmail introduced IMAP on their email systems this week. It may not be available to you yet, but they are working pretty fast to do so.

You can check if you have it or not by going to your Gmail account, them Settings. Check that on the top menu says “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” instead of just “Forwarding and POP”.

If not, make sure your language is set to “English (US)”.

If/when you do have the option, go to the menu and check the “Enable IMAP” radio button.

Now open your Evolution client and add the following settings:

=> Identity Tab
- Full Name: Name you’d like to be displayed on your messages
- Email Address: You full Gmail address

=> Receiving E-mail
Server Type: IMAP
Server: imap.gmail.com:993
Username: Your complete Gmail address
Security: SSL
Authentication Type: Password
Remember Password: Check (optional)

=> Sending E-mail
Server Type: SMTP
Server: smtp.gmail.com:587
Server Requires Authentication: Check
Security: TLS
Authentication Type: Login
Username: Your complete Gmail address
Remember Password: Check (optional)

After that click on send and receive. You should start getting your messages. I’ve heard some people saying that they had to restart Evolution for it to start working (also complaints that IMAP on Evolution is really slow).

You will see the folders added to the left pane of your Evolution inbox.

Here are some links that may help you as well!!!

Supported IMAP Client List
How do actions sync in IMAP?
IMAP Help Center

How to simply transfer files to another PC via SSH

2007-10-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

Today I was trying to find a way of logging on my web server as root so I could transfer files to my ftp and web folders without having any permission problems.

I usually do it through ftp as an ftp user. I transfer the files to the server, than I logon to a terminal via ssh and manually move all the files to the desired place. After that I still have to chown and chmod. It's not a lot of work, but I like making things simpler!! :)

My server is on a DMZ, so I don't want to open access to any unnecessary port. I also limit a lot of the logins to my subnet so no one can access from the Internet.

I really don't like scp for large files, so that was a no no.

What I was trying to do was to enable root login to vsftpd and limit subnet login on hosts.deny hosts.allow. I went trough all the steps but them I could not get it to work.

After asking for some help on Ubntu forum, someone told me to try sshfs l, which depends on fuse. Both packages are easy to install. You can download a tar file and quickly compile it.

Once I had it installed all I had to do was run the following codes to mount a server folder to a empty local folder and unmount respectively:

# mount
$ sshfs user@server:[remote folder] [local folder]
# eg:
$ sshfs root@myserver:/ /home/juanito

# unmount
$ fusermount -u

It's pretty neat if you want to mount a remote folder trough SSH, but for me it was not yet what I needed. For some reason I did not have complete access. I could create folders, files and transfer the same anywhere but could not delete them. No deal!!

After some more searching I found something that made feel stupid (in most cases the simpler is the best). All I had to do was enter the following on Nautilus address bar (Ctrl+L if you can't see it):

ssh://user@server

Shazam!!! I had now complete access to my folders. You can use the same method for ftp, smb and sftp protocols as well.

If this is a server you use a lot you can even mount the login to your PC so you don't have to type the address all the time (yeah, I'm also lazy).

Go to main gnome menu => Places => Connect to Server

Choose SSH

Fill the fields:
Server - Your SSH server IP
Port - 22 (or other if you have changed)
Username - Local username on the remote machine
Name to use for connection - Human readable

Now every time you login you'll see and icon on you desktop and your Nautilus side pane like this:

The icon on your desktop can be removed using gconf, but that means that any mounted volume (eg: flash USB, CD) will not show on you desktop, but will on your "Computer" folder (and of course on your "/media" folder).

So to remove the icon, open gconf editor (Alt+F2, enter gconf-editor), go to /apps/nautilus/desktop and uncheck "volumes_visible". You can also enable "computer_icon_visible" to have something similar to "My Computer" on Windows.

Vic.

PS: the steps above for ssh access assume you have installed shh on the client and sshd on the remote PC

How to create command alias to save time on Ubuntu

2007-10-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Do you have a long task (or line of command) that you run on your terminal window very frequently? If you do and want to save some time, this how to will for sure help you.

Let's say you are always connecting to a remote computer via ssh, with some different parameters than the defaults. Lets say you usually run the code:

$ ssh -v [user]@[ip or hostname] -p 2222

To save some time, you can also configure a "shortcut", or a alias, that when you type on the terminal window will call for the command above. Something like:

$ connecthome

The process is very simple. All you have to do is edit a file on your /home/user folder called ".bashrc". You can even add more options and edit some commands. For example, let's say you want Ubuntu to confirm that you want to delete a file every time you use "rm" on a terminal window (I did because I'm a noob, we make a lot of mistakes!). All you have to do is add the line:

alias rm='rm -i'

The "-i" sign means "interactive". Ubuntu will ask you to confirm that you really want the delete the file. Type "man rm" on a terminal window for more info.

So here's what you should add to your .bashrc to achieve the modifications above:

alias rm='rm -i'
alias connecthome='$ ssh -v [user]@[ip or hostname] -p 2222'

First make sure you backup your .bashrc and them edit the main one:

$ sudo cp .bashrc .bashrc.bak
$ sudo nano .bashrc

Press Ctrl+x to save, and "y" to confirm overwrite. The change will only take effect after you login again. But you can always check on the another tty. Type Ctrl+Alt+F1, login with you username and password and try it out. To go back to X just type Ctrl+Alt+F7.

Here's what a copy of my .bashrc looks like:

# Basics
alias cp='cp -v -i'
alias rm='rm -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias utar='tar -xvf'
alias utarz='tar -xzvf'
alias tarz='tar -czvf'

# Software Management
alias aptl='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install'
alias update='sudo apt-get update'
alias upgrade='sudo apt-get upgrade'
alias inst='sudo apt-get install'
alias apts='sudo apt-cache search'

Vic.

How to install Pidgin "guifications" on Edgy for NOOBS (like myself)

2007-10-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

After some looking on the Internet, I was a bit stressed as I was not able to find a how to install guifications for Pidgin on Edgy. There are many how to's install on Feisty, but none on Edgy. I was even able to get a .deb package from Ubuntu forum, but it was for Feisty and I did not have many of the lib files installed on my system.

Apparently Edgy repos have not been updated with Pidgin (not sure if they will). There's an option to install Gaim guifications, but in my case I was already using Pidgin 2.2.0.

The first thing you gotta do is download the tar file from guifications.org here. Then run the commands:

cd [folder where tar file was downloaded to]
tar -xzvf [guifications-version.tar.gz]

Once you untar it take a look at the INSTALL file. It has some important information. Now let's install the guifications:

cd [folder tar created]
./configure
make
sudo make install

If everything went ok you should now be able to right click on the Pidgin icon on your notification area, choose plugins and you'll see the following window:

This is where we can configure some (a lot) options for your guifications. Below are some screenshots of the menus you will find.

The default theme that comes with guifications is pretty "dumb". It looks like this:

But you can download some different and more interesting themes to spice things up a bit. Here are some sites where you can find more themes:

- Sourceforge
- Gnome-Look.org

And here are some screenshots from the themes I've downloaded:

Vic.

How to Multiple Desktops on Windows (with VirtuaWin)

2007-06-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

If you use Linux, one of the things you probably miss when using Windows is multiple desktops. At least that’s what I missed the most.

I was looking for some applications that would let me do the same on Windows, and I stumbled on a couple cool softwares.

The first one was from M$ itself, and is part of the Power Toys package. The group of software has some tools that are pretty neat. I will describe the ones I like on another post.

The Virtual Desktop however sucks, as usual. It let’s you choose different wall paper for the 4 different desktops (like KDE), and has a nice option of viewing all 4 desktops in a view window like this:

You can choose the virtual desktop you want by pressing on of the 4 buttons on your taskbar:

The application itself is very unstable and extremely slow. You can not move windows from one desktop to the other. And if you like to separate specific application per desktop and the desktop manager crashes (which happens A LOT), you are pretty much f#@!. You’ll have to re-start the desktop manager and re-open all your applications in the proper order.

After a quick research I stumbled on another program called VirtuaWin. It’s a bit complicated to use, but it’s stable, really fast and flexible.

It doesn’t provide you with button to choose a desktop, but it does: (correction, it does with the install of a module)
. allow you to set key combination to invoke specific desktop;
. move windows between desktops;
. list open windows on all desktops;
. move to next desktop by moving the mouse to any corner of the current desktop;
. move to next desktop by right clicking icon on taskbar;
. etc…

The program presents you with an icon on the taskbar that looks like this:

You can right click to get a menu or left click to get a list of open windows:

The setup window has a help menu that explains what each option is for. I found it very useful.

Anyway, I haven’t really “shopped” around for virtual desktop applications for Windows, but I was disgusted by M$ attempt and sold out to VirtuaWin.

Vic.

How to bypass a proxy server with SSH

2007-06-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

These steps will guide you on how to bypass a proxy server that may be blocking you from accessing that interesting web-site at work, school or wherever.

Please note that I do not make myself responsible for the usage of this. Use it at your own risk of getting fired or expelled from school. Main thing, use it with responsibility.

The steps of bypassing a web proxy are actually simple. This how to will enable you to even bypass socks proxies that need username and password, as long as they allow encrypted traffic over port 443 and/or 80.

You are going to need:
- A SSH server at the remote side (Windows or *nix)
- A proxy server at the remote side (I’m using squid, which can be installed either on a *nix or Windows box) which can be the same as the SSH server
- Port forwarding on you remote router (if applicable)
- Address for the local (blocking) proxy server (can be easily discovered by opening a web browser, running “netstat -a” and looking for a established connection on port 8080)
- Putty

I’ll lay it out in steps to make it easier:

1- Install Squid on the remote PC
Download and install squid (either the Windows version or *nix). Make sure you know what port is open and change if necessary (default is 3128).

Test it from another computer in the LAN or using 127.0.0.1:3128.

2- Install SSH server on the remote PC. Configure the listening port and configure a user if required. Test it to confirm that it’s working.

3- Configure port forwarding on your remote router to forward port we will use at your work (443 or 80) to the port the SSH server is listening to.

4- Download Putty.exe.
Now we need to configure it with all the required information for the connection.

4.1 Open putty and fill out the “Host name” with your remote IP (home) and the port you will be connecting to your router or directly to the PC with SSH installed (port 80, 443…)

4.2 On “Connection => Proxy” we need to enter the Proxy type, Proxy, Port, Username and Password. Remember that this information is for the proxy that we are trying to bypass
- Proxy type - Could be HTTP, SOCKS 4, SOCKS 5
- Proxy hostname - IP or hostname of the proxy
- Port - Port used to connect to the proxy (remember the netstat command)
- Username - Username that you usually input into IE when accessing the web
- Password - Password you usually input into IE when accessing the web

4.3 Open “Connection => SSH => Tunnels” and enter the following rules.

- Source port - Port you are going to use on your browser (I use 80)
- Destination:port - LAN IP address of the Squid server and port that is listening to. If you are using one server as SSH and another as Squid, this must be the IP of the Squid server. Now if you are using the Squid server and the SSH in one PC, you need to do a loopback into the port that squid is listening to. Eg: 127.0.0.1:80

5 Configure your web-browser to send requests to the source port we configured on the previous step. I have downloaded a different browser (Opera) that I use to bypass the proxy.

That’s it. You should now be able to access the blocked pages when putty is open and connected.

Process Explanation:
1- Browser sends a request to 127.0.0.1:80 (your PC)
2- Putty listens to the request and binds local port 80 to remote address 127.0.0.1 on port 80
3- Putty connects to the proxy and authenticates using username and password
4- Proxy connects to address and port we configured on step 4.1 (your remote address)
5- Your router accepts the request and forwards it to the port the SSH server is listening to
6- A putty terminal window opens and asks for username and password for SSH server
7- SSH server authenticates username and password and binds configuration from step 2
8- Squid sends requests to the Internet and replies back to tunnel

All this process is encrypted starting from step 2, so local proxy is not aware of any of the information sent over the tunnel.

There are also another 2 things that you might want to add for security and flexibility.

=> Security
- Use a USB pen to store an RSA key, which can be used for authentication with your SSH server. You can them configure your SSH server to only accept connections if the key is provided.

There are many how to’s on the Internet that show you how to do this. This one is a good tutorial for RSA and putty.

- You can also CHROOT you SSH user. This is a good tutorial for Ubuntu.

- If you decide to use CHROOT you can also limit WAN connections only for that limited CHROOT user. Take a look here.

=> Flexibility
- As you are using a USB pen, your configurations will be saved to the registry, and not your pen. You will have to reconfigure putty every time you connect to a different computer.

A good idea would be to use a batch file that loads your configuration when you open putty, and deletes it when you close the connection, so no one has access to it. Check this link.

Have fun setting this up…

Vic.

Funny Phrases

2007-06-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm going to post here some of weird and funny stuff I've heard on the past few years working on a call center. If you think you are crazy, wait till you read this. These are sentences that came out of peoples mouth during group conversations...

- Amenizador de trauma da mucosa anal - Relief of trauma of the anal mucosa - Daniel
- Se a minha vó tivesse saco seria o meu avo - If my grandma had balls she'd be my grandpa - Daniel
- Uma mordidinha na bunda é gostoso - A little bite in the ass is good - Alkmim
- Eu posso ser feio, mas na cama eu sou foda - I may be ugly, but I'm the shit in bed - Alkmim
- I like facials!!!! (loud and enthusiastic) - Lucy
- Gostaria de ouvir a sua cadela ladrar - I would like to rear you dog bark - Veiga
- Procurei o seu nome, virei para o outro lado e nao encontrei - I looked for your name, turned around and could not find it - Lucy
- A coisa que eu estou a perguntar, é duas - The thing I'm asking is two

Portuguese only

- 2 P de patos e um T de tatu mudo - Maite
- Obrigado por segurar aí as pontas - Daniel
- Isso é uma sequência de momentos que têm de ser - Veiga
- A sua cadela é macho ou fêmea? - Veiga
- A linha está um bocado fraca
- As ligações do brasil são um bocado chatas - Danny P.
- Aguarde um segundo enquanto eu lhe arranjo um engenheiro de telefonia
- Eu nao sei se estou confusado ou nao
- Mas eu sou consideravelmente certo que escrevi...
- Só vou meter voce a guardar pontas
- Voce tem que instalaçar o software
- Se alguma coisa acontecer, é só telefonar pa dentro
- Faca maria faca - Kathleen
- Quando falas com uma pessoa, tens de falar com a pessoa
- Não se percebe.. é como 2 gregos a falar entre si
- Ele foi-se permufar
- Vamos estar em contato come você brevemente.Espero que vai estar tudo pronto hoje
- O senhor manda pa dentro
- Voce podiria abrir uma conta debaixo do seu nome
- Depois de voce abrir o cadrastro - Andre
- Quando as códias se tocam
- Já foi á nossa 3com website?
- Hub? É um hub? sabe o que é um hub? Eu vou-lhe dizer outra coisa completamente diferente
- O senhor mandou a fonte feituosa
- Falei com o nosso engenheiro de nota fiscal
- Acredita que não passou aqui uma hora sem pensar em você, e como nos podemos assistir você
- Como por nossa conversação, eu e-estou enviando-o esta e-mail.
- Se você poderia e-mail mim toda a informação pertinente.
- Codigo de fecho de correio = Codigo postal

I'll keep updating this as I hear more an more stuff...

Vic.

Organizing all your audio with Jinzora

2007-06-08T13:05:00.001-07:00

If you are like me and like to keep all your music stored on you PC for easy access, you are going to love this.

I have all my music saved on my main PC (one of the 11). I’m kind of a neat freak when it comes to computers, so I keep it all organized by Genre => Artist => Album => Music.

A while ago I was looking for a server type where I could store all my songs and have easy access from the network. That’s when I stumbled on Jinzora’s name on the Ubuntu forum. It’s a great application that let’s you import all your music information to a database (My SQL) and easy access it from anywhere with a browser (LAN or WAN). Here’s is some screen shots and a link for a live demo:

Some of the features included are:
- Import music information by folder (like me) or by ID3;
- Use different players, even a built in flash player (XSPF);
- Download music;
- Download album art;
- Download lyrics;
- Create users and playlists by users;
- Play random cds, artists or songs;
- Others

I literally felt in love with the application. Requirements are not that high. Any old Pentium 3 PC is more than enough for an in-house streaming. I’m using a Pentium 3 (about 500MHz) and 384Kbps upload to my ISP. I was able to stream to 3 different users at the same time over the Internet with no problem.

You will need a LAMP OS, which can be achieved easily with Ubuntu. Just follow the steps here.

Now configure your web server using the configuration files. I’m not going to get into that here.

Once your server is up and running, web/php/mysql are installed, it’s time for us to create a user and database on MySQL. This can be done easily by using the following commands:

$ mysql -u root
mysql> create database [database];
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON [database].* TO '[user]'@'localhost'
-> IDENTIFIED BY '[password]' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Copy all your media to a folder on the server. I actually bought a new HD and mounted it to fstab. I was stupid enough to buy an 80Gb HD, and I’m now getting close to being full. You can also mount a NFS or SMB share.

After that, download Jinzora to your server (See Jinzora.com for download link) web root folder (usually /var/www), extract the tar.gz file, change the folder permission/ownership (to web user) and execute Jinzora:

$ sudo tar -xzvf [file]
$ sudo chown -R www-data [jinzora folder]
$ sudo chmod 777 [jinzora folder]
$ sh configure.sh

You can now use a browser to access your install page, either from another PC or from the same (127.0.0.1/[Jinzora folder]). The installation is pretty straight forward from now on. It will give you information if something is wrong, which you can search on the web or on the Jinzora official forum for an answer.

One common error msg will be in regards to your PHP configuration. It will show something in regards to this:

max_execution_time:
memory_limit:
post_max_size:
file_uploads:
upload_max_filesize:

You can change these settings on “/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini”. Open:

$ sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Press Ctrl+W to find value and change it to the value indicated on the web-based install page. Ctrl+x to save.

If you are not sure about the “Create Database” field on step 6, just simply use drop and recreate (if it’s a new database).

Don’t forget to delete the install file after you are done. Access the web page (computer address/Jinzora folder) in case you don’t know what the file is and Jinzora will remember you.

Installation is done. Now we can tweak a bit of the options from the main Jinzora page.

Go to the Jinzora page and logon using your admin password. Click on Admin Tools button (looks like a hammer and a screw driver), go to System Tools => Settings Manager => Main Settings => Playlist and add the value “xspf” to “embedded_player”.

Another important thing to add (in my opinion) is album art. Admin Tools => Meta Data => Retrieve Meta Data.

You can also add lyrics by going to Admin Tools => Meta Data => Retrieve Lyrics.

You should now be set. Open a port on your router/firewall or just listen from anywhere on your LAN.

Vic.

known_hosts Clean Up

2007-06-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Have you ever got the following message:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
5c:9b:16:56:a6:cd:11:10:3a:cd:1b:a2:91:cd:e5:1c.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/user/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /home/user/.ssh/known_hosts:1
RSA host key for [host or IP] has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

This usually means that the host IP or name is not matching the entry recorded on known_hosts file. This would be as easy as deleting the entry on the known_hosts file and try to reconnect, but apparantelly on Ubuntu, those entries are encrypted.

This adds security, and if I'm not mistaken is also an option that can be configured on other distros.

If you open you know_hosts file (~/.ssh/known_hosts) you'll see that it looks something like this:

myserver1.com,64.2.5.111 ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEA11F
V0EnGahT2EK8qElocjuHTsu1jaCfxkyIgBTlxlrOIR

[1]AAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEA11FV
0EnGahT2EK8qElocjuHTsu1jaCfxkyIgBTlxl

To get around this problem is very simple. All you have to do is issue the following command:

1- This will delete the entry for the host

$ ssh-keygen -R [hostname or IP]

2- This will display the entry

$ ssh-keygen -F [hostname or IP]

Hope that was enough info. Let me know if you have any question or any corrections

Vic.

Welcome!!!

2007-06-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Welcome to my blog!!! I hope you will enjoy your visit and find the information I post here useful (or at least of some use)

A little bit about me in case you don't know me. My name is Victor. I'm a Brazilian who's been living in Canada (Toronto area) since late 2000. I'm a single dad, born in 1981.

I've been working in the IT area for the past year. I'm currently working as Tech Support for 3Com call center.

I'm also a Linux noob and fanboy. Started using Linux (Ubuntu) on November 2006 as I was studying for my Network+ certification, and I've not been able to stop since them. I just love the operating system.

I spent a lot of my time playing on my computers at home, about 11 of them (diagram). They include BSD, Ubuntu and a few that are left of Windows.

Anyways.... I hope you enjoy.

Vic.