Linux Screen – Window Management At It’s Best

Posted by on April 1, 2013 No comments

screen-linux Just in case you haven’t heard about Screen or don’t know what Screen is about, in short – Screen is the de-facto window manager in a *nix environment. Not only does it let you open and switch between multiple windows, Screen also let’s you run programs in it’s won environment, even if you close the current SSH session. This comes in handy when you have scripts that run for a long time and could potentially timeout in SSH. Another handy feature is to establish your window sessions, perhaps modifying several files in Vim, then log out for lunch and come back to find your windows just like when you left.

Let’s get started using Screen

Connect to a remote computer using a terminal via SSH. If you haven’t installed Screen already, you can do so using your distro’s package manager (in Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install screen). Once installed, start it:

$ screen Read more »

Unlocking your cell phone becomes illegal in the US

Posted by on January 24, 2013 No comments

google-nexus-4A 90 day window closes on January 26th, 2013 that effectively brings an anti hacking law into effect that was decided on by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) back in October 2012.

Unlocking is regarded as the act of removing a carriers restriction to use that phone on other carrier’s network for which the device has the necessary wireless standard for. That means, it will only apply to phones that are sold under contracts and don’t have been unlocked under support by the contracting carrier.

Will this further propel market activities for unlocked devices, such as the Nexus line from Google and Apple? Or will the carriers become more lenient or even more restrictive? Read more »

Prevent Denial Of Service attacks with mod_evasive

Posted by on October 11, 2012 No comments

With today’s widespread use of cloud computing due to low cost and ease of use, the entry level hacker has found an easy playground to pray on the unexperienced and unprotected. It’s just amazing how many attack scripts are running against a new AWS EC2 instance as soon as it’s started. So what to do? How to protect against intruders and hackers?

While there are different kind of attacks, in this article we focus on Denial Of Service Attacks. These are the kind of scripts that generate a huge amount of requests to a web server in the attempt to overload it and bring any website to it’s knees. Fortunately, there is an Apache Module called mod_evasive which we can use to detect traffic with malicious traffic pattern and in combination with other tools, such as iptables to stop and lock a possible intruder out. Read more »

Install Oracle Java JRE on Ubuntu 12.04

Posted by on July 19, 2012 No comments

Dealing with different versions of Java Virtual Machine or Java Runtime Environment (JRE/JVM) has always been a bit of a pain, especially on Linux, where we have not only different versions, but also different vendors. To make matters worse, some application require the original Sun/Oracle version, while others are perfectly fine with open source version.

In the past, Sun provided an installer for deb and rpm based distributions, but since Ubuntu 12.04, there is no luck. However, installing Oracle’s JVM manually is actually straight forward and not complicated at all, if one know the steps involved. That’s what this article is all about.

Note: We are running the 64bit version of Ubuntu, if you’re running 32bit, make sure you adjust for the correct file versions and paths.

Remove existing Runtime Environments

Let’s first ensure that openjdk is removed if it was previously installed.

sudo apt-get purge openjdk*

Read more »

Reset Apple Wireless Keyboard

Posted by on May 13, 2012 5 comments

If you’re like me and countless fellow Mac users that needed to reset their wireless keyboard, just to run into a lengthy process of research and frustration, well then you know what I’m talking about.

It’s completely inexcusable that such a simple, yet highly demanded task is poorly documented by Apple. After all, it appears that besides using a wireless device on more than one mac, users also seem to face issues with sudden connectivity problems at random.

The steps for resetting the wireless keyboard are really simple, just follow along:

  1. Turn off the keyboard, better yet remove the batteries
  2. Click the bluetooth icon in the upper toolbar, then select “Set Up Bluetooth Device”
  3. When the Bluetooth Set Up Assistance is up and start searching for devices
  4. Insert the batteries and HOLD the power button, do NOT let go
  5. Your keyboard should now appear in the assistant
  6. Select the keyboard from the list and click continue, while still holding the power button
  7. Once you get the pairing code, let go of the power button and type in the code.

Your keyboard should now be paired and working. The trick is to hold down the power button during the entire process, simple yet rarely documented.

Fakeproc causing high cpu utilization

Posted by on March 13, 2012 No comments

I recently was called for help by a WordPress based site owner, suspecting that her site was hacked and cpu utilization of her Ec2 instance was pegged at 100%. She rebooted to remedy the situation, hence I initially could not find anything wrong, no suspicious processes running and network socket connections seemed fine.

The next day she contacted me again, this time right away while her site was bogged down. Despite extremely high cpu utilization, I was able to ssh into the instance after all. And there they were, a bunch of processes appearing to run as “/usr/bin/fakeproc”.

A quick search for a script file did not reveal anything, but socket connections piled up, indicating that the system was compromised as a host of some sort. Killing the processed did not work either. Read more »

Setup A Hosted Git Repository With Gitolite

Posted by on November 15, 2011 1 comment

Git LogoGit has gotten a lot of hype recently, especially among smaller development teams and contractors, for its flexible, distributed environment, ease of use and while Subversion is the old kid on the block, there are pros and cons for each. This article assumes that you already know the intrinsics of the different version control systems and you’ve decided that Git is for you.

Gitolite is a package that allows us to host our repositories using one dedicated user that has restricted access to the host OS and provides access to the source code.

The following steps helped me successfully install and setup Git on a Ubuntu Server 11.04, install gitolite to host my Git repositories and allow secure access over SSH. I’ve not tested other Linux versions, but assume it should be very similar.

The basic steps include:

  • Create User
  • Generate SSH keys
  • Install Git
  • Install Gitolite
  • Administer Gitolite

Read more »

Facebook New Features And Changes Announced At F8

Posted by on September 26, 2011 No comments

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his crew presented the latest Facebook features at f8 today, to a crowd of developers and reporters during Facebook’s F8 keynote. There are many of new changes and features coming to Facebook and we have an outline of them for you.

News

A wide range of new social apps, such as Digg, Gizmodo, USA Today, The Guardian, Flipboard, Yahoo and many more will provide apps tailored to Facebook.

Music and Video

Like apps, music providers will think of ways to engage users on Facebook, like listening to the same music at the same time with your friends. And so will video providers, such as Hulu, Netflix, Flixster and others. Read more »

Tweak User Interface In OS X Lion

Posted by on August 15, 2011 No comments

OS X LionThe user interface changes of Apple’s new operating system, Lion, are obvious to experienced Mac users. But some of the changes might have you scratching your head, when you don’t for example see traditional scroll bars, the mailbox and folder list, or large enough icons in the Finder sidebar.

You might also be annoyed by the new “reverse scrolling” feature, and the reappearance of that ping sound when you receive new mail messages. Plus, you may be wondering what the “Arrange” button and the extra items in the Finder sidebar are all about.

If you’re a veteran Mac user, you probably have figured out how to change a few things in Lion to get them back the way you like. But if you’re still confused, read on. Read more »

Create mobile and iPad versions of your WordPress site

Posted by on August 4, 2011 No comments

WPtouch ProHaven’t you thought of creating mobile/iPad versions of your WordPress site? Is it worth the effort? If there just was an easy way to get them created and maintained. Well, there is..

WPtouch is a WordPress plugin for self-hosted WordPress websites that shows a well-designed mobile theme version of your site when visitors use their favorite touch mobile devices like the iPhone/iPod touch, Google Android phones, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre/Pixi, Samsung bada and Blackberry Storm & Torch devices. There is a free version and a paid Pro one. Read more »