Opera-ize your Firefox and an awkward chat

Yesterday I installed a new firefox extension. Fasterfox gives firefox a nice speedup. Now it can almost be compared to Opera. Anyway…I think this extension is already my second favorite extension…after the Bugmenot extension of course.

Yesterday I had the most awkward chat to date. My friend Charis (aka Charmed[]) was on a plane from US to Germany and flying over the atlantic when he started chatting with me on my Greek Jabber server . I was amazed. That was so cool. Internet on a plane, what’s better than that when flying for hours and hours ? Watching boring movies ? naaah…
He was more than 30 hops away from me when I tracerouted him, with more than 3 seconds lag, but what the hell…it’s far better than nothing 🙂
I wish I could have internet here in Greece inside trains, planes, etc. Last time I travelled from Athens to Thessaloniki by train my mobile phone was unable to work throughout the whole travel because there was no signal…Internet on a train here in Greece is like 20 (light ?) years away from the current situation…

howto find music on the net for free!

1) one nice way is using google to find unprotected ftp and http dirs with indexes…try a search like this:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Deftones”

You will get plenty results 🙂

2) del.icio.us could be handy too…if you are not looking into something really special..
http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3

3) Soulseek
Soulseek started as a netword dedicated to electronic music sharing…It has faced many many problems in the past…but has a LOT of dedicated users that are willing to share. There are many channels and no moderators…so things can easily get out of hand inside the chatrooms.

Have fun…

p.s. I really MISS napster…

sux# strings napster.exe | grep -A 5 Copyright
Copyright 1999 Napster, Inc.
Build
1318
Release Version
v2.0

good old days…

void.gr was moved!

Void.gr has moved to a new (and hopefully better) hosting provider. Thnx a lot to Dinos, Global Networks and www.ghost.gr for kindly hosting void.gr.

This blog will soon move to a subdomain of void.gr…stay tuned!

yahoo’s expired certificate screenshots

such a shame for such a big company…



was it so difficult to replace the cert a bit earlier ?

*edit
Yahoo changed today it’s certificate with another one…

First Post with Opera

Hello all, this is my first post with the Opera Browser. It’s the first time I install it and I only did it because yesterday Opera celebrated it’s 10th Birthday and gave away registration keys for free. I would never install a browser that’s adware, and now that I had the chance to legally have the full browser in my hands…I thought I should give it a shot.
My first impressions are quite good. It’s certainly faster than firefox, eats less memory, it’s quite stable with plugins like acrobat and mplayerplug-in…and it has a nice interface. I can also visit some webinterfaces of machines like cisco 340AP that firefox could not. Firefox needed to enter the login/password everytime I went to a different page in the webinterface…but Opera does not have a problem with such things. It also has built in mouse gestures, where in firefox I had to load an extension for this.
I had around 7-8 extensions in firefox that made my life easier. The only thing that I really miss in opera is the BugMeNot extension :(. I haven’t really looked into Opera so I don’t know if it’s possible to load “extensions”…if there is a way…I am sure someone will write a BugMeNot one.
The only problem I faced so far was at my e-banking site. It did not load the menu right…I don’t know if this is an Opera fault or mine. Maybe some javascript setting. I will look into it though.

That’s it for now…I go back to studying…September exams are coming. Good luck to everyone.

traffic shaping a dsl line with linux

The case is like this:
[code]
Internet < --> [dsl modem] < --> [linux box] < --> [Lan]
[/code]

DSL modem is connected on eth2 on linux box and the rest of the Lan on eth0. I had a serious problem with people leaving edonkey clients opens all night..limiting the download speed to 20kb/sec but forgetting to limit the upload. The current dsl line is 384/128 so having the uploads unlimited…is like killing the line.

The solution was to setup a QOS script. And here it is:
[code]
#!/bin/bash

DEV=”eth2″
LOCALIF=”eth2″

# Reset everything to a known state (cleared)
tc qdisc del dev $DEV root 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
tc qdisc del dev imq0 root 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -F POSTROUTING 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -Z POSTROUTING 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -X POSTROUTING 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -F tosfix
iptables -t mangle -F ack
ip link set imq0 down 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
rmmod imq 2> /dev/null > /dev/null

if [ “$1” = “stop” ]
then
echo “Shaping removed on $DEV.”
exit
fi

tc qdisc add dev $DEV root handle 1: tbf rate 85kbit burst 1600 limit 1
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 1:1 handle 2: prio bands 4
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 2:1 handle 10: sfq perturb 10
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 2:2 handle 20: sfq perturb 10
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 2:3 handle 30: sfq perturb 10
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 2:4 handle 40: tbf rate 40kbit burst 1600 limit 3000
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 40:1 handle 41: pfifo limit 10

iptables -t mangle -N tosfix
iptables -t mangle -A tosfix -p tcp -m length –length 0:64 -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A tosfix -m limit –limit 2/s –limit-burst 10 -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A tosfix -j TOS –set-tos Maximize-Throughput
iptables -t mangle -A tosfix -j RETURN

iptables -t mangle -N ack
iptables -t mangle -A ack -m tos ! –tos Normal-Service -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A ack -p tcp -m length –length 0:64 \
-j TOS –set-tos Minimize-Delay
iptables -t mangle -A ack -p tcp -m length –length 64: \
-j TOS –set-tos Maximize-Throughput
iptables -t mangle -A ack -j RETURN

# Is our TOS broken? Fix it for TCP ACK and OpenSSH.

iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -p tcp -m tcp –tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK ACK -j ack
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -p tcp -m tos –tos Minimize-Delay -j tosfix

# Here we deal with ACK, SYN, and RST packets

# Match SYN and RST packets
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp -m tcp –tcp-flags ! SYN,RST,ACK ACK \
-j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:1
# Match ACK packets
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp -m tcp –tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK ACK \
-m length –length :128 -m tos –tos Minimize-Delay \
-j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:1

# Match packets with TOS Minimize-Delay
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp -m tos –tos Minimize-Delay \
-j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:1

### Actual traffic shaping classifications with CLASSIFY

# ICMP (ping)

iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p icmp -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:1

# Outbound client requests for HTTP, IRC and AIM (dport matches)

iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp –dport 80 -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:2
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp –dport 6667 -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:2
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp –dport 5190 -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:2
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp –sport 80 -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:3
iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCALIF -p tcp –dport 1024: -j CLASSIFY –set-class 2:4
[/code]

It WORKS for me…I don’t know whether it will work for you though. I take no responsibility. I will explain it no further because comments do exists and it’s really easy to understand what’s going on if you read a couple of tc tutorials from the net. Many ideas about this script were “stolen” from other scripts I studied while trying to make mine.

Have fun with it…

Here’s an mrtg graph to see how it’s working. Watch the blue line which is the uploads. It never goes beyond a reasonable limit and download stays unaffected:

gaim-latex plugin

There’s a very nice plugin for Gaim that allows one to send latex code via IM to other people who have the same plugin (if they don’t they just see the latex code).

I find it very usefull since I’m a student in a math department and I often exchange math fomulae with people even through IM.

I wonder how one would describe this latex code in “normal IM text”:

$$ f( x) =
\sum_{i=0}^{\infty}\frac{f^{( i )}(x )}{i!} $$

but…check this:
gaim-latex plugin for Gaim in action

If you exchange math formulae with colleagues via IM … you’ll want this one 🙂

Introduction to TOR

Today I’ve decided to use Tor a bit. One can say it’s an anonymity tool…but it’s not only that. It’s something more like an underground internet community. You can read an excellent article about Tor too.

Some quotes from the Tor site:

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more.

Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to figure out who and where you are. Tor’s technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against “traffic analysis,” a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

To the point…Using Tor and privoxy you have access to what’s inside the Tor network. There are hidden wikis, book collections and even more.
This link goes to Tor Network Hidden Wiki and this one goes to KIRA – online list of Tor featured sites.
Notes from the Underground is pretty cool too.

The complete details of connecting to the Tor world are here: Tor Documentation
Oh…if you want anonymous P2P with Tor…check this page about Tor+azureus.
Check this graffiti I’ve found while surfing a site inside the Tor network…I think that it’s great…

P.S. This was posted using the Tor network…my apache logs are clear about this 🙂