fen's site

Converting (x|k)ubuntu-desktop to xorg-less ubuntu-server type install.

aaron — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:40:12 +0000

… is done by entering these commands replacing ubuntu-desktop with k/xubuntu-desktop and gdm with kdm if you have kubuntu-desktop installed. The commands will require either prepending ’sudo’ or running as root.

Disclaimer: These commands are correct to the best of my knowledge and i have personally used them to remove ubuntu-desktop, but I provide no guarantees that this won’t hose your particular system, so as always, you undertake these steps at your own risk.

# /etc/init.d/gdm stop # apt-cache search ubuntu-desktop|grep Depends:|sed s/Depends:\ // |sed s/,//|xargs apt-get remove --purge
This will auto abort, View the list make sure its not going removing anything critical, then run the command again appending ‘-y’ to the end.
# apt-cache search ubuntu-desktop|grep Recommends:|sed s/Recommends:\ // |sed s/,//|xargs apt-get remove --purge
Same process again.
# apt-get autoremove

There can sometimes be straggling packages left behind, but that should take care of the vast majority. I had some packages left on my system, namely some open office languages, and an xorg driver.

To view your currently install packages:
# dpkg --get-selections|less

Remove any remaining packages that look graphical in nature, if you don’t know, ask on the ubuntu forums or irc support channel, i’ll take no responsibility for you hosing your install.

Once that’s done you can install openssh/lamp/bind etc.

3M announces first to market pocket digital projector

aaron — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:26:03 +0000

mpro110 pocket projector

Just.. wow, i’ve seen the similar sized projectors at trade show rundowns, but i didn’t think they’d make it to market so soon.

Popsci has the scoop.

http://www.popsci.com/gear-%2526-gadgets/article/2008-09/3m-launches-first-pocket-projector

Edit: .. and its hit slashdot.

mpro110 announce pic

MITM Attack Prevention: Perspectives

aaron — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:30:57 +0000

Two students (Dan Wendlandt, Ethan Jackson) from carnegie mellon university have developed a system to improve the security of host fingerprint based authentication, protocols that use this type of authentication are secure web traffic(https) and secure shell (ssh), the system is explained by thier site as such:

Perspectives is a new approach to help clients securely identify Internet servers in order to avoid “man-in-the-middle” attacks. Perspectives is simple and cheap compared to existing approaches because it automatically builds a robust database of network identities using lightweight network probing by “network notaries” located in multiple vantage points across the Internet.

They’ve developed so far an ssh client based on OpenSSH and an extension for Firefox 3.

Email spam prevention techniques: sender specific forwarders

aaron — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:58:52 +0000

For some time now, when i would be signing up for a web service, download, weblog subscription or some other online gadget where an email address is required for sending information, i would create a temporary mail forwarder specifically for that sender.

I decided that logging into my server to create the forewarder in my database was a bit much work for something i was doing increasingly commonly, so i did what any self respecting hacker would do, i rolled my own script that can insert, remove and track forwarders, it’s reasonably secure for your average php hackjob.

index-header.php contains an email validator class from google code (project page), its clean and its fairly fast.

Adding forwarder

This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.


/* Copyright 2008 Aaron Tate
 
    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.
 
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.
 
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see .
*/
session_start();
include_once('index-header.php');
$validator = new EmailAddressValidator;
 
if(!$validator->check_email_address($_SESSION['fe-sessdata']))
{
        session_regenerate_id();
}
$fe_conf_imapauth_servername = "localhost";
$fe_conf_imapauth_serverport = "143";
$fe_conf_imapauth_validate_cert = "/novalidate-cert";  //  can be 'novalidate-cert', 'validate-cert or '' (in which case it defaults to cert validation) -at
$fe_conf_pdo_engine = "mysql"; //see http://au.php.net/manual/en/pdo.getavailabledrivers.php
$fe_conf_pdo_host = "localhost";
$fe_conf_pdo_db = "dbname";
$fe_conf_pdo_user = "dbuser";
$fe_conf_pdo_pass = "dbpass";
try{
$fe_db_connection = new PDO($fe_conf_pdo_engine.':host='.$fe_conf_pdo_host.';dbname='.$fe_conf_pdo_db, $fe_conf_pdo_user, $fe_conf_pdo_pass);
}catch (PDOException $fe_db_exception){
        echo 'Error Connecting to database ('.$fe_db_exception->getMessage().')';
        die;
}
 
?>DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head lang="en-au">
<title>title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8"/>
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache"/>
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache"/>
<style type="text/css">
/* body styles */
body {
        font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
        font-size: 9pt;
}
h1,h2 { font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;}
h1{ font-size: 14pt;}
h2 {font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;}
/* Forms Style */
input {
        border: 1px solid #fff;
        background-color: #69f;
        color: white;
}
textarea{
    border: 1px solid #fff;
    background-color: #69f;
    color: white;
}
.formrow{
        color: white;
        font-weight:bold;
        background: #36f;}
#loginform{
        position: absolute;
        left: 50%;
        width: 500px;
        margin-left:-250px;
}
.inputtable input
{
        width: 300px;
        color: white;
}
.inputtable label
{
        padding: 20px;
 
}
style>
<script type="text/javascript">
function loadfocus()
{
 
        document.getElementById("fe_email").focus();
}

head>
<body onload="loadfocus()">

        if(!$validator->check_email_address($_SESSION['fe-sessdata']))
        {
                if(!strlen($_POST['fe_email']) >0 && !strlen($_POST['fe_pass'] >0))
                {
                ?>
                <form method="POST" action="index.php">
                                <table id="loginform" class="inputtable"><tr class="formrow"><td>
                                <label for="fe_email"/>Email Address: label>td><td><input tabindex=10 name="fe_email" id="fe-email"/>
                                td>tr><tr class="formrow"><td>
                                <label for="fe_pass"/>Password: label>td><td><input type="password" tabindex=11 name="fe_pass" id="fe-pass"/>
                                td>tr><tr><td>td><td>
                                <input type="submit" value="Login"/>
                                td>td>table>
                        form>
                
                }
                else
                {       //Attempt to authenticate with IMAP server, set session and reload page.
                        $authtest = imap_open('{'.$fe_conf_imapauth_servername.':'.$fe_conf_imapauth_serverport.'/imap'.$fe_conf_imapauth_validate_cert.'}INBOX', $_POST['fe_email'],  $_POST['fe_pass'],OP_READONLY,1) or die("Error connecting to imap server: " . imap_last_error());
                        imap_close($authtest);
                        $_SESSION['fe-sessdata'] = $_POST['fe_email'];
                        echo '. htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '">Redirect';
                }
        }
        else
        {
                ?>
                <h1>Email forwarders for  echo $_SESSION['fe-sessdata']?>h1>
                
                if($validator->check_email_address($_POST['fe_source']))
                {
                        if(empty($_POST['fe_comment'])){ //insert forwarder sans comment
                        $fe_db_connection->exec('INSERT into forwardings(source,destination) VALUES(\''.$_POST['fe_source'].'\',\''.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].'\');');
                        echo  ''.$_POST['fe_source'].'->'.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].' Added.
';
                        }
                        else
                        {  //insert commented forwarder
                        $fe_db_connection->exec('INSERT into forwardings(source,destination,comment) VALUES(\''.$_POST['fe_source'].'\',\''.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].'\',\''. mysql_escape_string($_POST['fe_comment']).'\');');
                        echo  ''.$_POST['fe_source'].'->'.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].' Added w/ comment.
';
                        }
 
                }
                if($validator->check_email_address($_GET['delete'])) //remove forwader providing its destination matches the users email address.
                {
                        $fe_db_connection->exec('DELETE FROM forwardings WHERE source = \''.$_GET['delete'].'\' AND destination = \''.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].'\' LIMIT 1;');
                        echo '' .$_GET['delete'].'->'.$_SESSION['fe-sessdata'].' deleted.
';
                }
                if($_GET['logout'])
                {
                echo '. htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '">Redirect';
                $_SESSION['fe-sessdata']= null;
                }
 
                ?>
                <h2>Add/Edit Forwarderh2>
                <form method="POST" action="index.php">
                <table class="inputtable"><tr class="formrow">
                <td><label for="fe_source">Source Email Addresslabel>td><td><input type="text" tabindex=10 name="fe_source" id="fe_source" size=30 />td>
                tr><tr class="formrow">
                <td><label for="fe_comment">Commentlabel>td><td><textarea tabindex=10 name="fe_comment" id="fe_comment" cols=40 rows=5>textarea>td>
                tr>
                <tr class="formrow"><td colspan=2 align="right"><input type="Submit" value="Add"/><td>tr>
                table>
                form>
                <h2>Current Forwardersh2>
                
                // List current forwarders
                echo '';
            foreach($fe_db_connection->query('SELECT * from forwardings WHERE destination = \''.mysql_escape_string($_SESSION['fe-sessdata']).'\' ORDER by source ASC') as $row) {
                echo ''.$row['source'].'->'.$row['destination'].'.$row['source'].'">(delete)
'.nl2br($row['comment']).'
';
            }
                echo '
';
            $fe_db_connection = null;
                echo 'Logout';
        }
?>

Rustic colour sketching experiment..

aaron — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:12:03 +0000

This sketch was created using Autodesk (formerly Alias) SketchBook Pro, the entire sketch was never on paper, autodesk sbp has completely replaced paper sketching for me, it gives me professional tools, like air brushes, felt tips, ball points and a large variety of pencils in any colour I want and the touch of a pen, Im slowly getting used to the graphics tablet as a primary drawing impliment, plus im not wasting any paper this way, so its good for the environment too.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6848332&siteID=123112

I just wish there was something close to it, with an open source license.. if only i had the time.