Into.the.Void.

I woke up early today and because I have nothing to do…or there’s nothing I can do now…I started searching the web. I came up with a very strange tool.
AboutYou.
There’s a ton of information this tools provides you about your connection/browser/tcpip headers…even your dns servers. I am really curious to find out how this thing with the dns servers works, the rest is really easy to implement.Using dig ? If so why does it sometimes show some wrong entries ?I’d really like to have that source 🙂

Filed by kargig at 10:24 under General
No Comments | 2,445 views

Isn’t it boring to search with your mouse/keyboard all these menus insinde an application just to find something very simple ?
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are by default packed with keyboard shortcuts. What’s even better are the mouse gesture extensions…for people that are stuck using their mouse.

Check these pages for more info (comparison with other applications included).
http://texturizer.net/firefox/keyboard.html
http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/keyboard.html

Filed by kargig at 13:10 under General
No Comments | 2,361 views

This morning after about 25 hours of gaming (since monday night) I finished Doom3. As one get’s further and further into the game I’m sure he will like it more and more, like I did. The beggining of the game is quite dissapointing but you “get your money back” later on. The Hell level is one of the best levels I have ever played in a game. The graphics are awesome. There were times I just looked at the screen doing nothing more than enjoying the gfx.

some pics from Hell level:

Just play this game…Nothing more nothing less.
There are now various mods on the net for just about everything. My favorites are :

I guess that in 1-2 months time there will be even different (and good) playable scenarios based on doom3 engine/game.

Does anyone else noticed the connection between the movie “Event Horizon” ( Review ) and this game, or is it just me who thinks there is such a connection ? Teleporting allows Hell enter the world of humans and so on and so on…

Airpwn is a nice tool that was presented at defcon 12 this august.

Airpwn is a platform for injection of application layer data on an 802.11b network

And it works!
Check this site for more: airpwn. Don’t forget to take a look at the images…These guys were pwned. heh.

Filed by kargig at 20:42 under General
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As a true fan of mod_ssl I wanted to “convert” my webmail instances from http to https. The easiest way was to set it like this:


<Location "/webmail">
SSLRequireSSL
</Location>


But that was a bit problematic because when someone went to the old http://koko.foo/webmail he was presented with an error. It was time for my other favorite apache module…mod_rewrite
So I deleted the previous code and added the next piece of code inside the virtual host directive:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^/webmail(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/webmail$1 [R,L]


I also splitted the webdav configuration part (like I have done with ssl) because the httpd.conf was getting larger and larger, and it was already difficult to browse it and edit it.

That’s it for now…I am going to play a bit of Doom3 and then read a couple of pages from Da Vinci Code book I’ve bought.

Filed by kargig at 16:03 under General
1 Comment | 2,600 views

Firefox (0.9.3) and phpMyAdmin (2.5.7-pl1) were the next packages to be updated on my machines.
I also tweaked some apache settings for this domain (void.gr). I played a bit with ssl support and created some directory directives to protect sensitive data…like the phpmyadmin dir.
example:


<Directory "/foo/bar/lol/phpmyadmin/">
SSLRequireSSL
</Directory>


While playing with apache and SSL I’ve found out that you can’t use different certs for virtual hosts hosted on the same ip/port (link1, link2. I guess that’s why we are asked so many times on the web to validate a cert that looks like it’s coming from another host. They are probably sites hosted on the same machine and wanted both to use ssl, so they chose one of the FQDNs and stuck with it.

I also changed all the urls of this blog to follow the https scheme. Security … Privacy … Unknown words to most people surfing the “Net”.

Filed by kargig at 20:57 under General
2 Comments | 2,646 views

This morning while I checked the news I saw that libpng and putty clients needed updating due to security issues. Libpng is of course the most important and needs the classic make;make install in all machines that I have that use libpng…I hope it won’t break anything else, pffffff.

Advisories:
Putty: http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/370869
Libpng: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-217A.html

Have “fun”…

Filed by kargig at 11:59 under General
No Comments | 2,196 views

I’ve been playing Doom 3 since monday night I got back from vacations.
I was thirteen when I first played Doom I, and I was so excited to play the sequel of the game that I “grew up with”. I installed it…tweaked the options and fired it up. First impression ? AWESOME gfx,sound and very very very very scary atmosphere. But that was not the Doom I used to play or was it ? I still can’t decide. The monsters are now (that I’ve moved a bit further in the game) begining to look like the old ones, the guns too. So from that point of view I should be very happy, and I am. What looks strange is the tunnel-like pathways. There are no open-air places. As far as I can remember there were places in doom where you were in a large open place shooting monsters coming from all over the place. I haven’t seen anything like this so far. (There is an exaplanation though for this…everything is taking place on Mars in a big complex that provides oxygen and outside of it there is no breathable air…but what the hell..aren’t there big places in this complex ? 🙂 ) Furthermore…weren’t there secret places in Doom ? I’ve only found one or two places pretty “hidden”, that “weren’t so easy to go”…but it’s not like old Doom games. Something else now…What the hell are these PDAs ? Whose idea was that ? They are really annoying as far as gameplay is concerned. I admit that they make the game-scenario much better…but hey…this is not a movie..it’s a game…it’s supposed to be fun. Someone in a forum said that Doom3 looks like Halo with the atmosphere of original Doom. He might be right, but still I can’t make up my mind about this game…I’ll keep playing.
(If you are interested in reading more stuff about Doom3 read this blog: DOOM 3 – Sluggo’s Blog From Hell)

My friend Angelos has tweaked wordpress a bit to help me with privacy issues. I wanted the entries that have a password to protect them not to show up their title to users that view the blog and don’t have the password. Now if they don’t have the password all they see is “Protected”. I may post the diffs (if I get his permission) in the next days.

Filed by kargig at 20:05 under General
No Comments | 2,308 views

I am back from Zante. I had a great time. The beaches were superb. I will post pics when I print the film and scan the pics. We were lucky to meet some friends who had a car and knew the island pretty well. The drove us to some outstanding places that we would have never been able to go with public transport. The whole trip was also VERY cheap. I spent less than 300 euros (along with travel expenses) for 8 whole days! Of course we were staying at a camping, else we wouldn’t have managed to stay that long. More info soon cause I really need a rest now after so many hours of travelling with buses and ships.

Filed by kargig at 00:44 under General
No Comments | 2,151 views

Last night I went with a friend of mine to a club-bar in the city where it said it would play electroclash, gothic, ebm, industrial…etc. I can’t say it was bad. There were like 20 other people there listening to that music. Well some of them were there accidentally, but it’s ok. Some thought that ebm was like rave and tried to dance it like dancing rave or trance, pffffff. Some others (rockers, or heavy metal guys) thought they were listening to drums and they were headbanging all the time. In fact I think that less than 5 people including the DJ had ever heard that music again and knew what they were listening 🙁 …But the music was good. Mostly ebm…few industrial songs, but I am happy with that. Maybe next time it will be better.

Tomorrow’s the big day… I am FINALLY leaving for vacations! Currently I am writing some mp3s to my minidisc to take with me. First disc is almost full of Atari Teenage Riot. Here’s the playlist:


1. Atari Teenage Riot - Start The Riot (3:38)
2. Atari Teenage Riot - Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!) (3:02)
3. Atari Teenage Riot - Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture (3:51)
4. Atari Teenage Riot - Not Your Business (2:32)
5. Atari Teenage Riot - Heatwave (2:43)
6. Atari Teenage Riot - Atari Teenage Riot (3:35)
7. Atari Teenage Riot - Delete Yourself (4:30)
8. Atari Teenage Riot - Into The Death (3:26)
9. Atari Teenage Riot - Speed (2:48)
10. atari teenage riot - raverbashing (3:26)
11. atari teenage riot - cyberpunks are dead (3:35)
12. Atari Teenage Riot - no remorse (live in new york 99) (5:37)
13. Atari Teenage Riot - revolution action (live in san francisco 99) (4:44)
14. Atari Teenage Riot - paranoid (7'' remix) (3:07)
15. Atari Teenage Riot - sick to death (remix 97) (5:55)
16. Atari Teenage Riot - no success (digital hardcore remix) (4:18)
17. Atari Teenage Riot - redefine the enemy 97 (3:53)
18. Lightning Bolt - Saint Jacques (5:09)
19. Lightning Bolt - Ride The Sky (5:17)


The next discs will be hocico, dulce liquido, Velvet Acid Christ, suicide commando…or whatever else comes to my mind.

I am really bored to pack clothes…but I have to…and I have to carry a lot other things with me (torch, tiny machine to make coffee, etc etc). I hope I won’t forget anything behind.

Filed by kargig at 13:02 under General
No Comments | 2,580 views

Just found out that my last post wasn’t broke the rss feed. Some symbols (the “greater than” and “less than” weren’t parsed properly so I had to convert them to “(” & “)”.

😐

Filed by kargig at 03:33 under General
2 Comments | 2,807 views

Yeap…Yeap…it’s done. WebDav+mysql auth.
Sample config from apache httpd.conf follows:


<directory /foo/bar/moo>
Dav On
AuthMSFix on
AuthMSFixOnHeader User-Agent "Microsoft.*Webdav"
AuthMSFixMatch "^.*(.*)$" "$1"
AllowOverride None
order allow,deny
allow from all
<limit GET PUT POST DELETE PROPFIND PROPPATCH MKCOL COPY MOVE LOCK UNLOCK>
require user USERNAMEGOESHERE
</limit>
AuthName "THIS IS THE WEBSPACE NAME"
AuthType Basic
AuthMySQLHost host
AuthMySQLUser username
AuthMySQLPassword password
AuthMySQLDB htpasswd
AuthMySQLAuthoritative On
AuthMySQLKeepAlive On
require user USERNAMEGOESHERE
</directory>


I am using mod_AuthMSFix for correcting the webdav probs windows xp sometimes has.
What’s left is to make use of mod_auth_user_dir module.
Probably after vacations. I am leaving on sunday to Zante,Greece

Filed by kargig at 22:06 under General
No Comments | 2,245 views

I have several users on an http server (apache of course) and they all have a seperate dir for WebDav . The authentication is being done using the default htaccess file-scheme. I want to change that and use mod_auth_mysql. Searching google was not really helpfull. But I found a very interesting module called mod_auth_user_dir for multiple webdav users (this sounds familiar!). It says it supports various authentication modules…I might try it if I can’t make mod_auth_mysql work on it’s own with webdav.

What I’ve done so far is find how normal .htaccess authentication can be replaced with sql authentication.
Here’s a sample of an older .htaccess file and the newer one:

old
AuthUserFile /foo/bar/moo/.htpasswd
AuthName "lala la lalal"
AuthType Basic
< limit GET >
require valid-user
< /limit >


new
AuthType Basic
AuthName "lala la lalal"
AuthMySQLHost localhost
AuthMySQLUser htpasswd
AuthMySQLPassword THATSMYSUPERSECRETPASSWORD
AuthMySQLDB htpasswd
AuthMySQLAuthoritative On
AuthMySQLKeepAlive On
require user MYUSER


Why is it better ?

Btw, there’s a great script for automating the whole process of adding users, etc to the db.

Filed by kargig at 19:57 under General
No Comments | 3,653 views

I just went out to buy a book for the summer. Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” was for a long time inside my head and I wanted to read it…so I bought it. Reviews look spectacular, so during summer vacations it will be fun to read it, hopefully.

What’s really interesting is that the bookshop I bought it has a website www.mybook.gr . Of course it is under construction…like 90% of greek e-commerce sites, but hopefully, sometime it will be functional and I will be able to see what’s new every week.

I am also writing a few cds in order to make some space and prepare for the “after my vacations” format. It’s been a while I want to format my main pc. I have a spare disk exactly like my boot disk, so a software (or even hardware, my motherboard has integrated raid controller) raid looks like a great idea.I’ll try not to think about how many OS I am going to install yet, time will come.

Filed by kargig at 20:49 under General
No Comments | 2,200 views

The machine was moved to it’s place and it is up and running. Everything worked smoothly. Let’s see how long will it stand this time.
A second disk was installed for nightly backups, I will have to make it work though and write a few scripts for it.

First transfers have already been started…

Filed by kargig at 19:29 under General
No Comments | 2,299 views

This is my attempt to start a blog about things I do every day…

Filed by kargig at 11:27 under General
No Comments | 5,361 views