Into.the.Void.

Ok jabber is cool…really cool features…but which server should one install if he wants a server for a medium sized network ?
I wanted to setup a jabber server for our local wireless network. I first tried jabberd2. It’s kinda easy to install it with basic settings. If you just want basic stuff it’s great…but I wanted conference support. In order to install conference support I had to download mu-conference which is based on Jabber Component Runtime. But JCR needs special glib version and crap like that. Simply PATHETIC. I tried to install it with the current version I had in the server (which was newer than I should have…pfff) and I constantly got segfaults and when I managed to stop them then I could not create any conference room. PATHETIC again.
So I searched for another server. I found ejabberd

ejabberd is a Free and Open Source distributed fault-tolerant Jabber server. It’s mostly written in Erlang, and works on many platforms (tested on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and Windows NT/2000/XP).

Ok…now what’s erlang ? damn… I had never heard about it before…anyway, I installed erlang and then compiled ejabberd. It has a pretty straightforward configuration file..and the only thing I had to do was create an ssl certificate for TLS auth. I don’t know how “secure” this server is…but I don’t mind that much after all…if anyone wants to install another more secure server…he is FREE to do so…

Filed by kargig at 19:17 under General
1 Comment | 3,054 views

Acinonyx did it again. He made more changes to the firmware of the dwl-900ap+ and added some more features.
New Additions:
1) Power output control from 0dbm to 18dbm in steps of 2dbm
2) Extra Channels (Japanese 14 and Europe 12,13) for those with the US version.

Enjoy this great firmware here:
Download dwl-AP900+ firmware 3.06_mod_0.6
or here: Download dwl-AP900+ firmware 3.06_mod_0.6

Filed by kargig at 10:32 under General
1 Comment | 3,412 views

Yesterday I decided to install the new IMP webmail client on a server that I administrate. I used to have Horde 2.2.X rel and IMP 3.2.X versions along with some other goodies that horde project offers (mnemo, kronolith, etc) but the new IMP 4.X needs a newer horde platform (version 3.X). I started downloading the necessary tarballs and then unpacking them. I thought that an “upgrade” would be feasible…and it was…until I did “something” wrong. I was fiddling with the new webbased configuration of the new horde…I had already made IMP 4.X work with the new horde…when I did something and everything stopped. I tried to recovery some backup config…but without results.
So I started from the beggining making a clean install. After about an hour everything was working great apart from some cosmetic bugs but all looks great now. I’ve also imported some horde preferences from the old installation (I had kept an sql backup of that database before I dropped it) so that some users did not lose their filters.
Most interesting feature of the new IMP is (for me) the pgp/s-mime support. I think it’s the first webmail client that supports pgp/s-mime encryption/decryption/signing using your keys. I’ve used it’s pgp features and it works great. No problems at all with any operations I’ve tried.

great work by the horde project. I recommend the update from any old imp to the newer version to anyone using his webmail for something more than just “funny emails”.

Filed by kargig at 19:10 under General
No Comments | 2,604 views

Hello all and happy new year 🙂

I am still at holidays so there’s not much to write…just some wishes..
My only news is that my mobile phone (siemens sl45i) is slowly dying after more than 2.5 years and I’m trying to find which one to buy now. I’m probably going to buy sony-ericson K700i when I gather the money it needs…Any other suggestions in that category (from 250E to 350E)?

Filed by kargig at 14:09 under General
No Comments | 2,616 views

A guy from Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network with nickname Acinonyx published his hacked firmware for dlink AP900+ rev C that:

If you can read Greek check here: http://www.awmn.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10601
To DOWNLOAD the firmware: http://www.awmn.net/forum/download.php?id=4109

a screenshot: http://www.awmn.net/forum/download.php?id=4108

Filed by kargig at 12:32 under General
3 Comments | 7,438 views

In order to read rss feeds in windows I have a client called Abilon (and yes it’s freeware!). I really like it’s clean design and it’s features. It’s neither bloated nor lacking features.
I had a problem with it though when it came to reading some rss feeds that were on https sites. So I thought I should give it a try and contact the author. I have done this with many other progs …but I never got such friendly and fast answers as the Abilon programmer gave me. The problem was fixed within a day…and it’s christmas! (the new version available on the site “2.5.3 build 196” has got no probs with https sites any more, at least all my sites are working perfectly right now)
It’s great when you send your suggestions to improve a program that you use and like and the programmer responds in a very polite and helpfull manner. It’s a big big + (plus) for Abilon that it’s programmer listens to people suggesting him some changes. Imho it’s the only way to improve a program…listening to requests…

Abilon

Filed by kargig at 17:30 under General
No Comments | 3,034 views

While browsing the net I came up with this music collection for xmas made on old machines 🙂

Featuring the sounds of Yerzmyey on the Spectrum, Nullsleep on the NES, Vim on the VIC20, Paul Slocum on the Atari 2600, Bit Shifter on the GameBoy, Goto80 on the C64, Dma-Sc on the Atari ST, and Hally on the X68000

You can download all the files for free…I might check the rest of the songs there as well 🙂

Have fun ppl 🙂

Filed by kargig at 21:26 under General
No Comments | 3,216 views

It may sound weird…but looks like yahoo! is protecting its users privacy quite firmly. Reading this cnn article I totally agree with yahoo! . If that soldier wanted his mom to read his email he should have cc’ed or bcc’ed all his email to her. Since he didn’t…his emails go with him. I’d certainly not want anyone reading my files/emails, or whatever other personal I have, after my death. I have chosen to publicize parts of what I think and write and that’s all, nothing more nothing less.

If they want their sons’ emails they should hack his account … and they’ve got 90days to do so 🙂

Filed by kargig at 01:48 under General
No Comments | 3,398 views

Very nice article on tools you need to crack wep in most wi-fi networks. enjoy 🙂

http://securityfocus.com/infocus/1814

Filed by kargig at 04:12 under General
No Comments | 3,362 views

Bryan Erickson (oh come on…google to find who he is) posted a newletter from St. Mary’s church in Colorado Springs that gives indications for parents so they can understand whether their kid is turning away from the Lord….It specifically talks about gothic culture and stuff like that.

Please seek immediate
attention through counselling, prayer, and parental
guidance to rid your child of Satan’s temptations if
five or more of the following are applicable to your
child

read the “signs” here… http://www.livejournal.com/users/hexfix93/52879.html

My favorites:

omg I am doomed…

I am going straight to hell for what I do and what I’ve done all those years…who cares…could be fun…I’ll certainly meet a lot of friends there 🙂

btw if you haven’t seen the latest video clip from velvet acid christ…do it now! Pretty toy

Filed by kargig at 14:28 under General
No Comments | 3,378 views

While reeding my rss feeds today I came up to this interesting article. 2 guys wrote a p2p application in 15 lines of python code just to prove how hard it is to restrict p2p apps. Everyone can write or customize one. It may not be fancy with buttons and stuff like azureus…but it surely is achievable. Buttons and colors and and and….can be added at any time later on since the base application works.

There was an interesting thread on bugtraq too these last days about secure file deletion on unix system. It’s pretty interesting and there’s some clues about ZFS, the new solaris 10 FS. One of sun’s engineers says that they will add secure file deletion support sometime in the future inside their FS utils. Where does linux stand here ? I am not aware of any such future thoughts for it. Don’t linux users have sensitive data to protect or is it that linux is silently becoming so much a “desktop-OS” alternative to windows and forgets some of it’s main goals like security ?

And again rises the same question…is “wiping” enough to protect our files or should we all create and use encrypted partitions/loops for our disks where we will save all sensitive data ? It’s far better to “wipe” (or think you’ve wiped) some encrypted crypto-loop than thinking you have deleted your new ATM card’s PIN or your company’s financial data or…or…..

Filed by kargig at 13:04 under General
No Comments | 3,315 views

Following the post of my friend Patroklos in his blog (who in turn follows the post of Diego Doval) I’ll publish my own list of 10 songs:

1. Pink Floyd – A Great Day For Freedom
2. converter – sadist
3. lights of euphoria – fortuneteller (zillo club mix)
4. icon of coil – everything is
5.

Filed by kargig at 03:28 under General
1 Comment | 3,473 views

One of the latest tasks I have is to monitor the perfomance and stability of around 20 wireless schools in the city.
Perfomance is quite is to do. I configured all routers to listen for snmp queries and fired up MRTG. The I set up smokeping to measure delays…and I had a fair view of what’s going on. Or that was what I though. I saw that the traffic was minimal. My guess was that schools were not using the broadband service we had offered them as they should. That is sometimes the case where teachers have no clue on how to use the broadband internet and/or kids have no intention to learn some new tricks and prefer to mock on people that use the internet as a tool.
Later on I set up a machine with syslog-ng and configured all schools to log “wirelessly” there.

logging trap debugging
logging IP.IP.IP.IP

where IP.IP.IP.IP is the IP of your host with the syslog daemon (preferably syslog-ng).

Then one day the wireless BSU had probs and schools had to use their isdn backup to reach the net. I had to do sth so that logging to my syslog did not begin a new session by dialing from the isdn backup. If logging was enabled and no filters were activated, then when one dial session was terminated the syslog messages from the router to me opened a new session just to tell me that the previous one terminated. And this could go on for hours and hours.
So I added a filter to the dialer and blocked syslog packets from opening the isdn.

< previous rules >
access-list 102 deny udp any any eq syslog
access-list 102 permit ip any any
dialer-list 1 protocol ip list 102

If any of you use syslog-ng for your machines (and you should) then try php-syslog-ng

Filed by kargig at 11:53 under General
No Comments | 4,694 views

Today my blog “suffered” a flood from spambots trying to post ads…but unluckilly to them…NO posts were “allowed” in due to the new patches. There were 81 unique attempts to post a comment.

Better luck next time boys!

Today my best friends’ gf got her university degree…We are going out tonight to celebrate…I wonder when I’ll get mine…I hope I’ll have mine by Feb 2006 or sooner. We shall see! For the time being I have to study for my exams starting on December 1st. Wish me luck…

Filed by kargig at 20:49 under General
No Comments | 3,459 views

Yesterday I updated php to one of my machines to enable freetype and GD support. On that system I also had IMP webmail. I had forgotten the exact flags I used when I compiled the older php version I had at that machine, so the webmail did not work with the new version. After some googling for the error msgs I got, I found out I needed to add –with-imap and –with-imap-ssl flags to the configure script. I run the script but it couldn’t find the imap libs…I was sure I had them someplace…but where ? I found out where my imap sources were and recompiled imap. Then added some dirs after the flags

–with-imap=/koko/lala/imap-2002e
–with-imap-ssl=/koko/lala/ssl

And recompiled php…restarted apache and expected the webmail to work. Nope…it didn’t.
I opened up the servers.php file of the imp configuration, read the comments once more and changed the server type. It needed a /novalidate option because my certificate was self-signed. I wonder why it worked earlier….who knows….

btw, the latest php 4.3.9 seems a LOT faster in many scripts, nice 🙂

Filed by kargig at 11:10 under General
No Comments | 3,263 views