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Showing posts from 2006

30 Years of public-key cryptography

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A turning point in cryptography happen 30 years ago. Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman released a paper titled New Directions in Cryptography . This paper goes on to define ideas around public-key cryptography plus more! Listen to podcast of Diffie , Hellman and other panellist at the event to mark the occasion.

Redhat and Oracle, Unbreakable or Unfakeable

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Oracle has announded that it will be supporting Redhat under the Unbrakable Linux program. Redhat have responded with an unfakeable advertisement.

Hacked Car Park Sign?

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An excellent hack, what did they hack into, the sign its self or the backend computer? More details can be found at The Register

The 250th Black Country Derby, The Result

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We lost 3 - 0.

The 250th Black Country Derby,

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A football match has never caused me to blog until now. Wolves are playing away at the Hawthorns against West Bromwich Albion on Sunday 22nd October 2006, High Noon kick off!. It's been 4 years, 10 months, 21 days since the last game and I couldn't get tickets for the game :-( . I'm missing out on the most eletric atmosphere ever". I'm planning to drive by the Hawthornes just to hear it! Now, the result is key, Mick McCarthy's Wolves must draw or win so I can hold my head up high on work Monday morning. Albion are on form and are scoring goals with new manager ( Tony Mowbray ) , assist manager ex wolves ( Mark Venus ) all lines up for us to get beat! But I have FAITH ! Come on ye WOLVES

Free NES emulator in browser!

Play those old NES games within our browser http://vnes.thatsanderskid.com/ Loads of time guaranteed to be wasted reminiscing over those old games. My favorite is Kung Fu.

FreeNX on Gentoo

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This is how I got the latest available FreeNX server and Windows Client to work on Gentoo. I've found FreeNX invaluable for administration remote Gentoo/Linux and Solaris servers. Install FreeNX software USE="nxclient" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -avt "=nxserver-freenx-0.5.0.20060311-r1" Create a node configuration file. cp /usr/NX/etc/node.conf.sample /usr/NX/etc/node.conf Define authorization file in node configuration. vi /usr/NX/etc/node.conf add line SSH_AUTHORIZED_KEYS="authorized_keys" Add a remote user to FreeNX. As default FreeNX use PAM to authenticate user's password. The behavior can be changed by enabling internal FreeNX password in node configuration file. /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --adduser <username> FreeNX, uses a default public key for initial communication to the FreeNX server. (user nx) Replacing the key is more secure but the private key has to be installed on all clients which access th...

Veritas Volume Manger Freeware!

I've been a long time user of Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and File System (VxFS), since version 2.6 Now there is a restricted version available for free, support Solaris SPARC, Solaris x64 and Linux. http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/sfbasic/index.jsp Andy

[Solaris] Setting the console serial port Solaris 10

As fan of serial port consoles on my Sun SPARC servers, I do get fedup with slow console baud speeds. Setting console to 19200,8,n,1 on Solaris 10 Change console speed in the eeprom $ eeprom ttya-mode=baud-rate,8,n,1,- Set the console for ttymon $ vi /etc/ttydefs console:19200 hupcl opost onlcr:19200::console Repace /kernel/drv/options.conf with the following # 19200 :be: ttymodes="2502:1805:be:8a3b:3:1c:7f:15:4:0:0:0:11:13:1a:19:12:f:17:16";

[LINUX] SLES 9 xfree86 on IBM x346

Graphics configuration generated by SAX2 would only allow 640x480, due to miss identifing the RSAII capabilities. IBM RSAII is remote managment inbuild on IBM x346 and others. Edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, under Section "Device", as follows: Section "Device" Option "nodri" Identifier "ATI Radeon (generic)" Driver "vesa" VendorName "ATI Radeon (generic)" BoardName "ATI Radeon (generic)" EndSection Monitor Section add/change Option "dpms" "off" Section "Screen" ... ... DefaultDepth 16 Subsection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1024x768" EndSubSection EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Anaconda Configured" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "USB_Mouse" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Mouse0" "SendCoreEvents" EndSection

[LINUX] SUSE which service pack is installed

There are two ways to find which service pack is installed on Novell Enterprise Linux 9 $ cat /etc/SUSE-release | grep -i patchlevel $ SPident

[Solaris] Remount a read only filesystem with write access

I offen mount /usr as read only for small increase in security, but offen need to remount the /usr for patching. $ mount -n -o remount /usr

[UNIX] Logs in the background

I like to watch system logs of Swatch and Apache 2 on the background. The command line is long and option rich! $ kstart --skiptaskbar --skippager --alldesktops --onbottom Eterm -x -O --buttonbar no --scrollbar no --no-cursor yes --geometry 80x25+5+20 -e tail -f /var/log/messages

[MS] Kill Script

Do you like me want all the power for that windows application, latest game or crack a password with cain . Kill all thoes services in the toolbar. Download PSKill from Sysinternals and save in the system path. Create a batch file (.bat) with your favourite editor (I use VIM ). This is mine below. c: type pskill-all.bat rem Kill batch File rem option -t needed when process has children! pskill.exe -t GoogleDesktop.e pskill.exe nettime.exe pskill.exe eraser.exe pskill.exe pageant.exe pskill.exe firefox.exe pskill.exe soffice.exe pskill.exe ClamTray.exe pskill.exe justshed.exe pskill.exe realsched.exe pskill.exe PccNTMon.exe

[Linux] X-server ScreenShots from the CLI "ImageMagick"

Build some documentation for a customer and required some screenshots, KDE has Ksnaphot . But I wanted many screen shots and need a simple cli command to capture various screens. ImageMagik provides the " import " command which does just the job from the command line. To capture the whole desktop as a JPEG use the following. $ import -window root screen.jpg To save in a diffrent grapics format change the extention of the output file. (gif,pnm,pmm,tiff etc..) To capture single window ie firefox You need to find the window name, two methods of getting the "window name" 1. use xwininfo, which will then ask you to click target window and display information. 2. xlsclients -l display list of windows Note you can use a window title or the DECIMAL window ID, xwininfo and xlsclients output in HEX. $ import -window WINDOW ID DECIMAL > screen1.jpg $ import -window " WINDOWS TITLE >" screen2.jpg

[UNIX] [MS] Getting compression to work with WinSCP/Putty and OPENSSH 4.2

Ive been unable to get a SSH2 connection with compression on my WindowsXP/2003 boxes using SSH clients Putty and WinSCP to my Gentoo development machine (gendesk). The changes I had made recently update to OpenSSH_4.2p1 (OpenSSL 0.9.7e). OpenSSH 4.2 has a "Compression delayed" option in /etc/ssh/sshd_config which protects the zlib (compression) library until authentification has been achived. Putty doesn't support "Compression delayed" option and ssh clients that use Putty code such as WinSCP will have teh same problem. Workaround Change "Compression delayed" option to "Compression yes" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Welcome to 2006

Another year gone past, makes you think what did you achive last year and what can you do this year! Family, Health and my company WTL Plc are my priorities this year. Family, Spend more time at home and just to be around for my wife and kids. Health, this has been my biggest achievement in 2005, Lost 10Kg and regularly do "Circuit Training". And I have never ever been fitter! WTL Plc , 2005 has been my busiest and most stressful year in 16 years at the company. But look forward to forging a better future for WTL and especially its employees in 2006. Big focus on technical advancement.