Living an unfocused life (notes by a geek)

What a great start to a Monday Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:27:00 +0000

Flat tyre, rusted on. Took nearly half an hour after I got the bolts off just to prise the damn wheel off.

Grrr.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Go on then, #ShowUsYourDecorations - this is a whiteboard design I did at work.

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:30:00 +0000

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Using the recursive_import.php script for importing photos to the #Horde module Ansel with subdirectories

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:21:00 +0000

I have a problem with the excellent Horde module "Ansel" - their photo
display and manipulation application - which I'm
documenting-until-I-fix-it.

If you have a lot of photos and you want to import the lot in one go,
there's a script called recursive_import.php - you'll find this under
/path/to/your/horde/install/ansel/scripts/recursive_import.php and it
takes the following arguments: -d /path/to/directory -u USERNAME -p
PASSWORD

I'd been using it thinking it would handle directory navigation a bit
better than it did, by running it as follows:

php recursive_import.php -d import_dir -u fred -p bloggs

Infact, I needed to do it like this:

php recursive_import.php -d `pwd`/import_dir -u fred -p bloggs

This is because the script navigates up and down the directory
structure as it works out the contents of each directory, instead of
handling the referencing properly. I plan to look at this properly
tomorrow when I've got a day off, but if I don't, or if the patch
doesn't get accepted, at least you know how to fix it now! :)

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Use GMail's SMTP gateway using the command line from !Ubuntu without lots of config #tips

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:28:00 +0000

I'm writing a few little scripts at the moment, and one of them needed to be able to send an e-mail. I'd not got around to sorting out what my SMTP gateway was from my ISP - but I do tend to use GMail's SMTP gateway for non-essential stuff.

I thought I could easily setup sendmail, but no, that's SCARY stuff, and then I thought of Postfix, but that needs an awful lot of configuration for an TLS based SMTP connection, so I did a bit of digging.

Thanks to this post over at the Ubuntu Forums, I worked out how to get a local port 10025 to run, but PHP kept complaining, so I next looked for a "sendmail replacement", in comes nullmailer.

So, thankfully this is all rather easy.

sudo apt-get install openssl xinetd nullmailer

sudo tee /usr/bin/gmail-smtp <<EOF >/dev/null
#!/bin/sh
# Thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=918335 for this install guide
/usr/bin/openssl s_client -connect smtp.gmail.com:465 -quiet 2>/dev/null
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/gmail-smtp

sudo tee /etc/xinetd.d/gmail-smtp <<EOF >/dev/null
# default: on
# description: Gmail SMTP wrapper for clients without SSL support
# Thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=918335 for this install guide
service gmail-smtp
{
    disable         = no
    bind            = localhost
    port            = 10025
    socket_type     = stream
    protocol        = tcp
    wait            = no
    user            = root
    server          = /usr/bin/gmail-smtp
    type            = unlisted
}
EOF
sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd reload

sudo tee /etc/nullmailer/remotes <<EOF >/dev/null
127.0.0.1 smtp --port=10025 --user=your@user.tld --pass=Y0urC0mp3xGM@ilP@ssw0rd
EOF
sudo /etc/init.d/nullmailer reload

Setting all this lot up was pretty easy with these guides. There's no reason why it wouldn't work on any other version of Linux (provided you can install all these packages).

Good luck with your project!

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A contradiction in terms? Advertising #fail at Co-op

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:22:00 +0000

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[Politics] "Digital Economy Bill" = Internet Disconnection Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:28:00 +0000

It's very rare that I'll inflict my political views on people by
e-mail, however, this has recently come up, and I wanted to make sure
that you understand what this newly proposed law could mean to you.
It's only relevant to people in the UK, to ex-pats or Armed Forces
people, so if you want to forward it on - please do, but please think
before you forward, and don't just blanket send it to everyone.

** If you don't want to read all of the below, then I'd encourage you
instead to have a look at http://www.dontdisconnect.us/ **

In the Queen's Speech [1] when parliament was opened for the 2009-10
session, the following was said:

"My Government will introduce a Bill to ensure the communications
infrastructure is fit for the digital age, supports future economic
growth, delivers competitive communications and enhances public
service broadcasting."

The bill referred to is the "Digital Economy Bill", which is due to be
introduced to Parliament this or next week, and it's caused a lot of
fuss with us Technophiles.

Essentially, this bill allows "Rights Holders" (for example, Music
Labels, Film Studios and Television Networks) to contact your ISP and
insist that they issue you with a formal notice if they *believe* you
to be unlawfully sharing their content on the internet. After "a
certain threshold" the government has suggested [2] that it would be
acceptable to temporarily disconnect you from the Internet. A law
similar to this one was recently introduced in France, which insists
on disconnection after 3 warnings.

Now, again, this seems fair, if you can't do the "time", don't do the
crime... but, how do they actually know it's you? Because of certain
technical limitations of the Internet, everyone sharing a single
internet connection (for example in a house, at an office or a
internet café) will appear to come from the same internet address, and
this will cause you problems in this law, because:

* If you let someone use your computer to access the Internet, and
they unlawfully download some files, then the bill payer will be
blamed.
* If you have a Wi-Fi connection which is not properly secured [3],
and someone uses that connection to share a file they've downloaded,
again, the bill payer will be blamed.
* How about if your computer gets infected by malicious software
(spyware, becomes a member of a botnet, or worse still, is actively
hacked) and they use that as an untraceable machine to download their
content - again, the bill payer is blamed.

My other worry is that none of this goes in front of a court of law -
this all occurs between the ISP and Rights Holders, so if you get
disconnected, it will happen without any judicial oversight and the
prosecution's burden of proof is never required... someone (usually
outside the UK) will accuse you of breaking the law and you will then
get disconnected from the Internet. To me, that hardly seems very
fair.

There's a petition [4] against this law which is currently available
to be signed (provided you live within the UK, you are an ex-pat or
are a member of the Armed Forces), and, if you agree that it isn't
fair, I would strongly encourage you to write to your MP [5]. If you
do decide to write to them, please review the content at the Don't
Disconnect Us website [6] and review some of the letters which have
already been written [7] [8] as this e-mailing service will remove
duplicate e-mails so if you just copy the content it'll never get to
your MP.

Thank you for your time. The links I have referred to above, labelled
[x] are listed below if you want to read them.

[1] Queen's Speech: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21361
[2] Stephen Timms defends the Digital Economy Bill:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/20/digital-economy-bill-stephen-timms
[3] Ways to secure your WiFi connection:
http://www.dontdisconnect.us/secure-your-wireless/
[4] The petition against the Digital Economy Bill:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/
[5] You can contact your MP via e-mail at this website:
http://www.writetothem.com/
[6] Don't Disconnect Us official website: http://www.dontdisconnect.us/
[7] A letter I wrote to my MP:
http://jonspriggs.posterous.com/a-letter-to-my-mp-threestrikes
[8] A letter written by someone else to their MP about this law:
http://grahambinns.com/blog/2009/11/24/digital-economy-bollocks/

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A letter to my MP #threestrikes

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:52:00 +0000

Dear Andrew Gwynne,

I'm writing to you, as my MP, to ask for your support, to try to
discourage the implementation of the Digital Economy Bill that was
introduced recently.

This proposal is very worrying to me, as a Free Culture (Open Source
Software and Creative Commons) Contributor and activist. A large part
of the distribution of this Free Culture Content is performed over
peer to peer networks, such as BitTorrent, and it appears that this
law is trying (in part) to discourage the use of peer to peer
networks, on the grounds that they may be used to unlawfully transfer
files.

I also worry that during discussions of this law between Stephen Timms
(Treasury Secretary) and The Guardian newspaper, he suggested that a
temporary account suspension from one's ISP would be an acceptable
movement without any judicial overview. Given that Finland has
recently recognised Internet Access is now such a fundamental part of
our day-to-day lives that they are classing it as a Human Right, I
worry that this movement could effectively prevent many of your
constituents from being active in society.

I've also noticed that many ISPs and most of the policing and
intelligence services have stated they disagree with the
recommendations of this bill (for a variety of different reasons), I
would be grateful if you could support their position and reject this
bill in it's current state, if you are able, when it is presented.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Spriggs

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Locally Monitoring Interfaces on Nokia Firewalls (and - by a link - McAfee Sidewinders) for Failover

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:47:00 +0000

I recently wrote a document on http://jon.spriggs.org.uk/blog explaining how to monitor the interface of a McAfee sidewinder to see when it failed over. I don't know why I didn't write it on Posterous, but if you're following me on Posterous, and you think that you might want to know how to use Perl to repeatedly loop over the same command, and show the results with a date stamp underneath it (a bit like the watch command) then you'll find this page really useful. In the mean time, I've also written the same script for the CSH shell, which is used, amongst other places, on Nokia Firewalls.

Introduction

One of our requirements with one of our customers is to perform regular and routine failover tests. As the interface is not responsive to providing information about when service has failed from Primary to Secondary and back again, I re-wrote the script I adjusted for McAfee Sidewinders to run on the SECONDARY NODE to show the interface address of one NIC every 5 seconds. I'll also show how to slightly modify the script with different time delays and interface names. Please note, there may be much better ways of doing this. I needed something in a hurry, and this gave me what I needed. If you've got any better ideas, please drop me a note at jon@spriggs.org.uk or note below how to do it :)

Steps to perform

SSH to the Secondary node.

Check you're not already primary with the command ifconfig eth-s1p1c0 | grep inet this should return one line showing something like inet mtu 1500 1.2.3.4/24 broadcast 1.2.3.255

Type this
while (-e /bin/csh)
ifconfig eth-s1p1c0 | grep inet
date
sleep 5
end

Perform your action to provoke fail-over, which may be to unplug an interface attached to the primary firewall, reboot the firewall or unplug a switch directly attached to the firewall. In response (and after approx 1 minute, based on your HA configuration) you should now see in the script's output, it now shows two lines (or maybe three) - as follows:

inet mtu 1500
inet 1.2.3.4/24 broadcast 1.2.3.255
inet 1.2.3.5/24 broadcast 1.2.3.255 vrrpmac 0:0:aa:bb:cc:dd

Perform your failback and after 1 minute or so, it should revert to just the single line - 1.2.3.4 or equivelent for your network.

Tweaks

In the bold section above, replace the interface name identified (here it's eth-s1p1c0) with an interface you know will fail over, you can also make bigger or smaller the sleep command - here it's 5 seconds, but there's probably no reason why it couldn't be 1 or 10.

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Supporting multiple machines in GNOME using VNC

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:36:00 +0000

I was recently asked how to configure VNC for user support across a series of machines running GNOME. I'm in the process of trying out a few different platforms at the moment, and didn't have my GNOME machine to hand and working right, so I decided to work it out from what I've done in the past. Here's the bulk of the e-mail I sent him to try and help him out. Maybe this will help you at some point.

If you find any errors (especially around the option names in the actual dialogue boxes) please post a note so I can correct this!

Thanks!

On most GNOME based systems (which includes Fedora), you can active "Remote Desktop Sharing" for users.

Go to System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop Sharing (or something similar). I'm afraid I've just recently moved my systems to KDE, so I don't know the exact options, but I believe it'll say something like "Enable remote connections" (tick that), and "User is prompted to permit connection" (this will be down to policy) and "Remote user needs to enter a password" (this will need some text to be entered).

Once you have these for one system, you can automatically set this for all the other computers.

From the command line, type
gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/remote_access

This will return all the settings you have made. Here's mine:

view_only = false
alternative_port = 5900
prompt_enabled = false
icon_visibility = client
lock_screen_on_disconnect = false
disable_xdamage = false
mailto =
use_alternative_port = false
enabled = true
disable_background = false
network_interface =
require_encryption = false
authentication_methods = [vnc]
vnc_password = &&&&&&&&&&&&
use_upnp = false

(I've removed the password for my box)

You can use this gconftool to set the same variables on your computers you've already deployed, either per-user, as a default policy for each machine, or as a mandatory policy for each machine.

This article from Sun's GNOME configuration guide explains how to set variables: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-6878/6jfpqt2t5?a=view while this is an overview of all of the GNOME configuration tool (including that article): http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-6878/6jfpqt2sv?a=view and lastly, this is how "Vino" the VNC client for GNOME works: http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/remote-desktop.html

I hope this helps you!

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#lrl2009 #legochallenge Langridge loves his logo

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:13:00 +0000

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#lrl2009 #legochallenge by @thinkl33t

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:50:00 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Watching an interface on McAfee's Sidewinder with Perl

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Introduction

One of our requirements with one of our customers is to perform regular and routine failover tests. As the interface is not responsive to providing information about when service has failed from Primary to Secondary and back again, I have found [1] and modified this perl script to run on the SECONDARY NODE to show the interface address of one NIC every 5 seconds. I'll also show how to slightly modify the script with different time delays and interface names. Please note, there may be much better ways of doing this. I needed something in a hurry, and this gave me what I needed. If you've got any better ideas, please drop me a note at jon@spriggs.org.uk or update this script yourself :)

Steps to perform

SSH to the Secondary node.

Check you're not already primary with the command ifconfig em0 | grep inet this should return one line showing something like inet 1.2.3.4 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 1.2.3.255

Please note the exact syntax of this command - perl is a tricky beast at the best of times, and if you don't have your apostrophies and backticks in the right place, it won't run right!

Type this command: perl -e 'for (;1;) {print `ifconfig em0 | grep inet`; print `date`; sleep 5}' and press return. This loops until you press Ctrl+C, showing the line, like I showed you before starting inet and then the next line shows a date and time - this is so you don't go crazy and think the process has stopped...

Perform your action to provoke fail-over [2], which may be to unplug an interface attached to the primary firewall, reboot the firewall or unplug a switch directly attached to the firewall. In response (and after approx 1 minute, based on your HA configuration) you should now see in the script's output, it now shows two lines - as follows:

inet 1.2.3.4 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 1.2.3.255
inet 1.2.3.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 1.2.3.255

Perform your failback and after 1 minute or so, it should revert to just the single line - 1.2.3.4 or equivelent for your network.

Breaking down the script

Here, I've broken down the command before with short blocks of information about each part of the command you're running.

perl (which is a scripting language) -e (which means "evaluate the following string in quotes") ' (that's an apostrophy - the symbol on my keyboard at least, below the @ character) for (;1;) (note, those are normal brackets - shift+9 and shift+0, which, in combination with the for and ;1; bits, means loop around the following commands forever, or until the break command is sent) { (that's a curled brace symbol - shift and the character next to the letter P) print (sends the following string) ` (backtick - the character to the left of the 1 key - which means execute the command between two of these symbols and return the result) ifconfig em0 (get the interface configuration for the interface em0) | (the pipe or bar character - next to the letter Z) grep inet (grep is a unix command to search for strings - in this case, the string inet which identifies the IP address) `; (backtick again and then a semicolon to say stop running that command and start doing the next thing) print `date`; (print the response from the command "date" - which returns a date string - and then do the next command) sleep 5 (the sleep command waits integer X number of seconds - here 5, but you could easily say 2 or 10 here - depends on how impatient you and the project manager are!) } (curly brace - meaning to close the for loop from near the beginning) ' (apostropy - which instructs it to close the string that the perl interpreter is evaluating)

Notes

[1] from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/555116/repeat-a-unix-command-every-x-seconds-forever - sadly, we can't use the watch command on a Sidewinder, as it doesn't have it installed.
[2] Assuming your firewall is in a Primary/Standby configuration (not Standby/Standby), has enabled "Monitor link status" and has addresses to monitor with - presumably the non-HSRP addresses of your attached routers attached to that interface.

XRDP

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:53:00 +0000

I recently was asked how to provide an RDP session to a Linux Machine. Phoowey! I replied, you can't RDP to a Linux box, and yet, someone I work with pointed me in the direction of XRDP - a package on Sourceforge.

I performed the following steps on a VMWare host running Ubuntu 8.10, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work on 9.04 or even 8.04.

Why would you want to RDP to a Linux machine? If you've got a windows host, you don't always want to be running more and more different software to access that remote host - like VNC or X over SSH, so this seems like an effective solution if you don't want your client machines to need additional software.

Some people don't like to permit SSH through their firewalls as you can do an awful lot with a badly configured SSHd. In another situation, we have been using a device (which I don't manage I should add) to access a development network. This device acts as a reverse proxy, and permits access to various websites, but most importantly, also proxies access to RDP systems, so this request was driven by that need.

Here's what I did to configure up the XRDP on this Ubuntu 8.10 desktop

# apt-get install build-essential libpam0g-dev libssl-dev tightvncserver

Visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/xrdp/ then click on Download, Browse all packages, click on the latest release (currently 0.4.1), Copy the link for filename xrdp-x.x.x.tar.gz

# wget http://path/to/file/xrdp-x.x.x.tar.gz
# tar xfz xrdp-x.x.x.tar.gz
# cd xrdp-x.x.x
# make
# sudo make install
# cp /usr/local/xrdp/xrdp_control.sh /etc/init.d/
# update-rc.d -f xrdp_control.sh defaults

When did @andrewdisley pose for this model? #Look-a-like

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:07:00 +0000

chown -R us ./base (as seen at #ubuntumcr)

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:35:00 +0000

I know it's an April Fools, but... from ThinkGeek - Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:05:00 +0000

Zoom

Slumber in the Belly of the Beast

In the sub-zero wasteland of the planet Hoth, only the strong survive... and of course those lucky Jedi protected by the thick skin of a Tauntaun. Now after exhaustive movie viewing research and analysis ThinkGeek Labs has isolated the exact synthetic compounds needed to re-create Tauntaun fur. What have we done with this supreme knowledge? Created a Tauntaun sleeping bag of course.

This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and glowing lightsaber zipper pull. Now when your kids tell you their favorite Star Wars movie is "Attack of the Clones" you can nestle the wee-ones snug in simulated Tauntaun fur while regaling them with the amazing tale of "Empire Strikes Back".

Use the glowing lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the belly of a dead Tauntaun and placing Luke inside the stinking (but warm) carcass. If your kids don't change their tune on which Star Wars film is the greatest ever, you can do your best Jar Jar impression until they repent.

Product Features

Classic Star Wars sleeping bag simulates the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass
Built-in embroidered Tauntaun head pillow
Glowing Lightsaber zipper pull
Great for playing pretend "Save Luke from the Wampa" games
Teach your children about the best Star Wars movie ever
Fully Licensed Lucasfilm™ Collectable
Fits children (and small adults)
100% Polyester construction, Machine washable
Exterior Dimensions - 32" x 60"

via thinkgeek.com

Oh my god, this is *so* wrong!

A birthday present from Jules... Go crazy in a sweet shop for half an hour!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:44:00 +0000

The paper bags from back left to front right:

Lemon bonbons
Cola Pips
Strawberry whips
Chocolate Lolly
Cola Cubes
Toffee Bonbons
Milk Bottles
Chewy Nuts (which are actually toffee)
Caramel and Custard sweets
Pint Pots (not mine! Yuck)
Cherry Lips
Liquorice Torpedos
Pineapple Cubes

Yum Yum!

It's my Birthday! Here are my b'day cards:

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:32:00 +0000

In the run up to my Wedding to Jules, I'm out with Jim, Marie and Chloe #JJWedding

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:19:00 +0000

#Headbanging at #Metallica at the #MEN-Arena last week. Sorry it's 90degrees out. #Video

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:03:00 +0000

Click here to download:

VIDEO0009.mp4 (1089 KB)

The view from my doorstep (#UKSnow)

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:42:00 +0000

I curse the fact I left my work laptops at work this weekend! Oh well, it probably still won't teach me!

#StagDo Pictures of the VASE of Drink. I was impressed :)

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:05:00 +0000

I'd had probably 3 or 4 shots out of the bottle before I emptied the rest of the 70cl into a vase, and topped up with coke. Nice. Photos by Jamie Dexter of Dextr.co.uk

See and download the full gallery on posterous

#StagDo om nom++ Sunday Roast

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:39:00 +0000

SNOW! (View from my window again)

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:47:00 +0000

Christmas Day - Take 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Spriggs) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:06:00 +0000

Because I wasn't very well over the Christmas and New Year fortnight, Jules and I agreed to go out for a Christmas Lunch, have a few drinks and then home for Christmas Pudding and Brandy Butter.

So far, we're up to Christmas Dinner. We had a couple of drinks at The Orangery (very nice), we're at the Carvery (the only place we could guarantee turkey after Christmas) and we're just trying to decide what to do next.

Ruby_Gem (http://twitter.com/ruby_gem) said you can't go out for Christmas Dinner, but I guess this disproves that theory :)

Oh, and on this plate, the turkey is somewhere under the roast potatoes, peas, cabbage, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, gravy and of course Yorkshire Pudding :D