Into.the.Void.

I am back in my hometown, Thessaloniki, for about a week and I carried with me the old laptop that I had tried installing the rule project…
I had nothing to do tonight..so I plugged in my wireless card, booted Damn Small Linux CD and went out to the balcony. Why not try to check if there are any wireless networks around ? In fact there was one:

root@ttyp2[root]# iwlist ath0 scan
ath0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:30:4F:4B:66:6C
Mode:Master
Encryption key:off
Quality:17/94 Signal level:-78 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm
Mode:Master
ESSID:"nkoumle"
Frequency:2.412GHz
Bit Rate:1Mb/s
Bit Rate:2Mb/s
Bit Rate:5Mb/s
Bit Rate:11Mb/s


I connected there..and ran the dhcp client…

root@ttyp2[root]# iwconfig ath0 essid nkoumle
root@ttyp2[root]# pump -i ath0


Drums rolling….ta ta!!

root@ttyp2[root]# ifconfig ath0
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:20:A6:4C:BD:7F
inet addr:10.103.5.61 Bcast:10.103.5.63 Mask:255.255.255.192
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1


The IP seemed quite weird to be from a home…and looked like it was from the range that Thessaloniki Wireless Metropolitan Network (TWMN) was given a few years ago, when each greek major city was given an IP range for their Wireless Networks inside the 10.0.0.0/8 range. Pinging the router/AP gave me results of 10-100ms. I tried finding a spot in the balcony where I could get more stable ping times but I couldn’t find one. It didn’t really matter though…I was so excited that a few msecs wouldn’t stop me!
Even though I could resolve internet hostnames and addresses I couldn’t ping or browse any internet hosts. Then I tried surfing around TWMN. I opened up http://www.twmn and I looked around. I tried to register with their forums but I couldn’t because they require a confirmation email. Since I can’t access any of my email accounts without internet access I can’t register in their wireless forum either. The bad thing is that it’s not even readable as a wireless guest.
I knew that TWMN and Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN) are linked together, so I tried surfing http://www.awmn. Success!! Everything worked quite smoothly there. I even sent a pm to a TWMN user that I know, orion, from AWMN’s forum.
Then it was time for IRC. Damn Small Linux features a tiny irc client named “naim”. I tried to connect to irc.twmn…but there was no luck. Then I tried irc.awmn and I got instantly connected.
I had also heard about AWMN’s proxy mesh network. It’s an effort by many awmn users that share their dsl bandwith by creating a squid proxy mesh network with lots siblings, so there is some kind of load balancing. I started reading the last pages of the thread but I couldn’t find any working proxies. Then I remembered that it was koki that started it all…and looked for her website inside awmn. I came up to http://koko.awmn and there she had information about how to connect to her proxy.
So I entered 10.20.220.2 port 3128 at my firefox preferences…and that was it!!! SUCCESS! I had full access to websites through koki’s proxy server. I am in Thessaloniki and my “internet provider” is 500km away…in Athens!
Here’s the traceroute to her proxy server:

root@ttyp0[root]# traceroute 10.20.220.2
traceroute to 10.20.220.2 (10.20.220.2), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 ap.nkoumle.twmn (10.103.5.1) 526.158 ms 151.747 ms *
2 doom2nkoumle.bb.twmn (10.122.255.177) 143.23 ms 368.749 ms 130.249 ms
3 taz2doom.bb.twmn (10.107.255.81) 13.83 ms 60.137 ms 317.052 ms
4 uom2taz.bb.twmn (10.107.255.57) 32.055 ms 14.761 ms 64.038 ms
5 volto2uom.bb.twmn (10.107.255.33) 82.341 ms 78.228 ms 49.779 ms
6 sourdos2volto.bb.twmn (10.107.255.49) 83.058 ms 61.406 ms 72.943 ms
7 dfragos2sourdos.bb.twmn (10.107.255.2) 81.377 ms 41.603 ms 101.131 ms
8 thmmy2dfragos.bb.twmn (10.106.255.254) 200.073 ms 105.749 ms *
9 thmmy.swn (10.106.3.1) 65.299 ms 132.49 ms 361.869 ms
10 10.17.122.158 (10.17.122.158) 529.931 ms 368.65 ms 313.583 ms
11 10.17.122.131 (10.17.122.131) 417.191 ms 74.76 ms 48.881 ms
12 10.17.122.129 (10.17.122.129) 64.119 ms 84.001 ms 79.828 ms
13 10.17.122.169 (10.17.122.169) 82.863 ms 41.323 ms 93.686 ms
14 10.80.190.121 (10.80.190.121) 87.61 ms 68.538 ms 90.206 ms
15 10.26.35.181 (10.26.35.181) 132.605 ms 343.975 ms 120.142 ms
16 10.26.35.54 (10.26.35.54) 134.826 ms 105.009 ms 128.925 ms
17 10.20.220.74 (10.20.220.74) 79.456 ms 89.032 ms 196.706 ms
18 10.20.220.2 (10.20.220.2) 144.206 ms 150.446 ms 103.555 ms


I am actually posting this entry for this insane connection!

This is really inspiring. Community networks at their best. Thanks a lot to everyone that contributed in order for this to happen. Thanks a lot to nkoumle (whom I don’t know) and to koki (that I only know her though IRC and forums)…

Filed by kargig at 02:14 under General,Internet,Linux,Networking
5 Comments | 4,058 views

This post has been updated! Please read this one too: rox icons + ivman continued

Whenever some people looked at my desktop they always mocked me for some of the features that were missing from fluxbox + rox and were present in the big WM like Gnome or KDE. One of those “neat” features is the automounting of cd-rom/dvd disks or usb flash drives and the appearance of an icon of those on the desktop.
I stared reading the Gentoo Wiki and the Gentoo forums on the subject. I came up with these 2 pages:
HOWTO_ivman on and automount add icons desktop dynamically ivman+rox. Following the Gentoo wiki guide I was able to easily install ivman and hal and configure the local users to be able to mount unknown devices automatically. So the first part was really easy. Then it was time to make rox appear a new icon on the desktop every time a new media is found.
I first tried to follow the gentoo forum post, to make rox appear icons on the desktop with every new media but it didn’t quite satisfy me. I faced various problems with the scripts posted there mostly about media without volume.label and about cds/dvds that got ejected but their icon was never removed from the desktop. My search for a more elegant solution than trying to fix those scripts continued and I ran into this page on the RoxWiki: Hints And Tips/HAL.
That post involved some patching of hal, but I wasn’t willing to do that. Instead I tried to make the scripts posted there without patching. And indeed I succeded.
Follow these steps to “reproduce”:
1) create a shell script named rox.panelput with the following contents: THERE IS A NEWER VERSION OF THIS SCRIPT —> rox icons + ivman continued

#!/bin/sh
### Change "Top" below to the panel you want your devices on...
rox --RPC << EOF
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<env :Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope">
</env><env :Body xmlns="http://rox.sourceforge.net/SOAP/ROX-Filer">
<pinboard$1>
<path>$2</path>
<x>20</x>
<y>50</y>
<label>$2</label>
</pinboard>
</env>
EOF


2) Become root and make it executable and move it to /usr/bin/:
chmox +x rox.panelput ; mv rox.panelput /usr/bin

3) Edit .ivman/IvmConfigProperties.xml and paste the following inside there:

<ivm:Match name="ivm.mountable" value="true">
<ivm:Property name="hal.volume.is_mounted">
<ivm:Action value="true" exec='rox.panelput Add "$hal.volume.mount_point$"' />
<ivm:Action value="false" exec='rox.panelput Remove "$hal.volume.mount_point$"' />
</ivm:Property>
</ivm:Match>


4) As root again rename your /usr/bin/eject to /usr/bin/eject.old and create a new shell script named eject
mv /usr/bin/eject /usr/bin/eject.old

#!/bin/bash
rox.panelput Remove $1; eject.old $1


This is needed because we did not patch hal. What the patch would do to hal is make it not forget the “volume.mount_point” after a device removal. That would cause ivman to succeed when it would try to rox.panelput Remove “$hal.volume.mount_point$”. That’s not the case without the patch though. After a device is removed from the system hal does not know anymore which was the $hal.volume.mount_point$ so the icon never gets removed from the rox desktop. But since I use as label the path of the device, I can remove the device and icon together with that custom script. It a really simple hack, not an ellegant one, but it works.

5) restart ivman as user and watch rox add icons to your desktop.

It should look like this:

Pros:
1) Fast and easy way to have icons of media on your rox desktop
Cons:
1) Does not diplay the volume.label of a media but just the mount point
2) Does not automatically position new icons one below the other. If you insert 2 media, the last icon will fall on top of the previous one.

Improvements for the future:
1) Automatic placement of the icons one below the other
In oder to do so I will have to count how many icons have already been created on the desktop and store them in a temp file.

2) Icons should have volume.label as their label and not the mount point
It’s easy to do it for media that do have a label, but what about the ones that don’t ? eg my dicicam Olympus C-70z does not have a volume label. Maybe an “Unknown Device” would be the solution there…but then I will lose the functionality of my custom “eject” script…I’ll have to look into it.

3) Make icons be different according to media type (usb flash/cdrom/dvd/etc)

In a few words…I have to make it behave like the user from the gentoo forum wanted his scripts to behave…

Filed by kargig at 00:41 under Linux
5 Comments | 10,132 views

Mr. Christos Berelis, a minister in the previous Government wrote an article in a newspaper criticizing the current Government over it’s agreement-contract with Microsoft and for it’s lack of open-source use inside the Government. The article (in Greek) is called “On Microsoft’s Tank” (my own translation), and it’s posted here Berelis’ article.

Mr. Berelis probably “forgets” what the government signed with microsoft when HE was a minister. Did he write any articles back then criticizing that agreement? Of course not! Here’s the agreement: Greek Government Announces Strategic Cooperation with Microsoft for the Security of IT systems. What’s even worse is that the agreement of Mr. Berelis’ Government regards Security. An IT section where microsoft has admitted is way behind it’s competitors.

Enough with lies. Face the reality and admit your mistakes. If you want to criticize the current government you MUST first criticize yours and accept your mistakes and apologize for them. Until then you are just trying to harvest some lazy voters Mr. Berelis. ENOUGH.

Old post about this: Linux in Europe vs Greece

Filed by kargig at 18:17 under General,Linux
6 Comments | 10,007 views

Following a previous post of mine Warcraft 3 on linux…
The latest warcraft III patch (1.20e) did not work with the old nocd 1.20c crack I had…

Follow these steps if you have the same problem….

0) Get/buy the latest cedega. It’s worth it if you play games on Linux.

1) Replace your old war3.exe with the original war3.exe from your last patch (you haven’t deleted it, have you ?)
2) Download http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/war3x/patches/pc/War3TFT_120c_to_120d_English.exe and http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/war3x/patches/pc/War3TFT_120d_120e_English.exe
3) Create a shortcut for the updater executables
4) Run each updater once.
5) Get this nocd crack: WARCRAFT.3.V1.20E.ENG.HELLKILLER.NOCD.ZIP
6) extract files in your game dir
7) Play 🙂

Tested with pvpgn too 🙂

*UPDATE*
Some changes have been made to eurobattle.net, so in order to play you have to apply this patch as well:
http://eurobattle.xhost.ro/w3battle_120e.rar
to execute it under cedega just create a new shortcut that points to the .exe file that you get after you extract the .rar file…

enjoy…

Filed by kargig at 12:07 under Linux
37 Comments | 56,209 views