Recently in Misc Category

I just read this (in German):

http://heise.de/-1413109
(in short: For ARM devices, Microsoft insists on having UEFI secure boot for their Windows 8 system, and metro apps will only be available on the Microsoft app store with signed code).


My comment:
The game is already at its end, my opinion.

Everybody wants closed platforms, "ecosystems". Nobody wants an open platform, besides us "freaks".

Developers DO want a closed platform, as a radical DRM/Licensing will generate guaranteed revenue and they can bully the user like they want to motivate them to pay more.

When you wonder why your known_hosts file has changed or you don't find your hosts:

|1|AEf8B/QCP+1wRKA761Cq/woad4s=|HVEWXKDdRpZmO3GeQ5T37xCFwgE= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1
yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAt20HN/iasjy9KEW/BGjtxlsy8oebyEEnZvKAnjMck0EEVbA5rtE4dzisnbrYwZ4
67JP+p9UGZDQa4jbVo2ZHmz28nQapmw1WpLBD2wSN66PsMk5QCxICxBC6PDCOlwakQvLNES2B9R2cuev
G9Ag2ni+2Qdb17gEkkh2MZ91INylAzM7QWW7soGoSf1TsshSHexfMt12zb6kWxRuRCeT4fOzlJNOmPgr
uE3wTt/kfEbvPBZwDyUbEKApfYIxO8ic+FyO7qFEjHkhqT7px/oJMLS279uUHlhG+KWtPxYPhWaYulPZ
hhdn4D6pR+6shjPsH4VTyAUGwf7usKUvJZP59Ww==

Then your ssh server software is a new version which hashes the known hosts file entries. To remove entries from there because the host key differs (you installed the host completely from scratch), just type:

ssh-keygen -R hostname

or

ssh-keygen -R ipadress

That's it.

If you have a new ssh package, you may hash yourself your known_hosts file by typing:

ssh-keygen -H

A real case of RTFM of OpenSSL ...

After un upgrade of OpenSSL to Version 1.0.0 (from 0.9.8) the certificate authority chain of my certificate did not show up any more (was not given by the TLS server). A look in the OpenSSL manual could have helped to save 20 minutes of error searching :)

A

for i in *.pem; do ln -s $i `openssl x509 -noout -subject_hash -in $i`.0; done

was enough to restore the hash index links for my CA certs (the files did not have any whitespace or punctuation marks in their filename so $i was enough).

The manual states:

-subject_hash
outputs the ``hash'' of the certificate subject name. This is used in OpenSSL to form an index to allow certificates in a directory to be lookedup by subject name.

-subject_hash_old
outputs the ``hash'' of the certificate subject name using the olde ralgorithm as used by OpenSSL versions before 1.0.0.

Fascinating.

May many of your wishes may become true in 2012.

Just in case you want to try it.

In case you've forgotten your Express Service Code to enter when calling Dell support service:

It's the same as the Service Tag. Dell claims it to be a "mathematical conversion", in fact it's just another representation.

Dell's Service Tag uses the digits 0-9 and the letters A to Z. So each digit of the Service Tag can be from 0 to Z. 0 represents zero, A is 10, B is 11, ..., F is 15, G is 16, H is 17, ..., Z is 35 (10 numerical digits, 26 letter digits). The service tag is a "number" in a base-36-system.

Example:

B78FWQ8  (this is a random example!)

B: 11, 7: 7, 8: 8, F: 15, W: 33, Q: 26, 8: 8

So at the end the "Express Service Code" for Service Tag B78FWQ8 is:

11 * 36^6 + 7 * 36^5 + 8 * 36^4 + 15 * 36^3 + 33 * 36^2 + 26 * 36^1 + 8 * 36^0

equals 24382049408. This is the express service code.
 

It has gone.

But it can be brought back in life by this little extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/rss-icon/

At the university of Konstanz we are deploying the SOGo groupware system. Until now, SOGo stores a "username:password"-Cookie in the user's browser as the system seems to be meant as a groupware system for a closed user group.

But because our students and employees are all around the world, I wrote a little apache module to obfuscate the cookie using a session identifier and a user key only known by the user's browser - you will need it to decrypt the session. So if somebody steals the session database it will be useless for him - without the user's key he (or she) won't be able to use the session.

This blog will move to a newer hardware. The IP networks will remain the same.

If you're looking for an open groupware with a decent web interface including CalDAV support for calendar clients, look at SOGo.

It uses an existing IMAP server for mail and an SQL database for calendar and contact data. A setup with RedHat 5.5 (or CentOS 5.5) works fine (atfer adding the rpmforge and sogo repositories). I am using PostgreSQL as database engine and Cyrus IMAP 2.3.16 as imap mail store. Enterprise directory (and authentification) data is fetched from an LDAP or an SQL data source. It is built with GNUstep and configuration is done as GNUstep defaults (command "defaults").

http://www.sogo.nu/

Firefox 3.5/3.6 and IE 8 are supported for the web frontend.

Or: Why MySQL is not a database but only a "database".

Imagine this query:

mysql> select summaries0_.bw_eventid as bw1_1_, summaries0_.bw_strid as bw2_1_, bwstring1_.bw_id as bw1_70_0_, bwstring1_.bwseq as bwseq70_0_, bwstring1_.bw_lang as bw3_70_0_, bwstring1_.bw_value as bw4_70_0_ from bw_event_summaries summaries0_ left outer join bw_strings bwstring1_ on summaries0_.bw_strid=bwstring1_.bw_id where summaries0_.bw_eventid in (select bweventobj1_.eventid from bw_recurrences bwrecurren0_ inner join bw_events bweventobj1_ on bwrecurren0_.masterid=bweventobj1_.eventid where (bwrecurren0_.bw_rstart_floating='T' and bwrecurren0_.start_date<'20100322T000000Z' and (bwrecurren0_.end_date>'20100315T000000Z' or bwrecurren0_.start_date=bwrecurren0_.end_date and bwrecurren0_.end_date>='20100315T000000Z') or (bwrecurren0_.bw_rstart_floating is null) and bwrecurren0_.start_date<'20100321T230000Z' and (bwrecurren0_.end_date>'20100314T230000Z' or bwrecurren0_.start_date=bwrecurren0_.end_date and bwrecurren0_.end_date>='20100314T230000Z')) and bweventobj1_.bw_col_path='/user/pascal.gienger/Training' );

+--------+--------+-----------+------------+-----------+--------------------------+
| bw1_1_ | bw2_1_ | bw1_70_0_ | bwseq70_0_ | bw3_70_0_ | bw4_70_0_                |
+--------+--------+-----------+------------+-----------+--------------------------+
|   2251 |   2674 |      2674 |          0 | NULL      | MLBf                     | 
|   2493 |   2933 |      2933 |          0 | NULL      | Cvlqxpqz                 | 
|   2848 |   3322 |      3322 |          0 | NULL      | Vlqehfhva                | 
|   2927 |   3405 |      3405 |          0 | NULL      | fb.nt-Lkqivqm            | 
|   3057 |   3557 |      3557 |          0 | NULL      | Glqsd                    | 
|   3116 |   3616 |      3616 |          0 | NULL      | KGWG                     | 
|   3212 |   3718 |      3718 |          0 | NULL      | MlwfQPE                  | 
|   3361 |   3873 |      3873 |          0 | NULL      | Eklmzmmlsfeei            | 
|   3573 |   4098 |      4098 |          0 | NULL      | HYX-Rjdmmtyubvbqeczvwxz  | 
|   3622 |   4149 |      4149 |          0 | NULL      | Uayfhjjlge               | 
|   3741 |   4283 |      4283 |          0 | NULL      | Sflnh QK/Flkudduiwmkbdqz | 
+--------+--------+-----------+------------+-----------+--------------------------+
11 rows in set (1 min 1.69 sec)

1 Minute!!!!! After seperating the outer and inner join the same table displays just after some seconds:

I am back after two weeks in Cameroon. At Zurich Airport "my" town was already shown at the display auf the airport train station - telling me that the frostiness is back.

It is snowing, people are silent, everybody looks down. They don't talk to each other, the white faces are showing a mix between frustration, boredom and unhappiness.
Ok, there are no thieves trying to aggress me, there's no ague (Malaria), there's no chaotic traffic and no "motivation money" or boodle as well - but there isn't a warm family, no beautiful women with their special smile and no lust for life either. Not to mention the extraordinarial food which we substitute here by industrial products.

I thought this time it will be easy - not as last year when I returned from Ivory Coast - but I was proved wrong. It's even tougher. I am back in frostiness - where all seems to pe perfect, where everybody's telling to me that I should be lucky because I am in Europe and I have all I need. But that's not true, I am cold. Frostiness is back.

In Cameroon Orange (France Télécom) offers a "high speed" connection (with 512 kbit/sec download rate and 128 kbit upload) for 75000 CFA francs per month (approx 100 euros!).

A "Livebox" device has to be bought separately which is in fact a simple NAT/WLAN/DSL/Ethernet router. The Wimax antenna (which forms the primary internet interface) is connected to the ethernet WAN port - yes you heard right, here internet connections are done via Wimax - there are nearly no fixed lines at all in most of the parts of the country).

Turning the livebox on it flashes. I managed to take photographs of it (see above, click on the images to get bigger ones).

The Wimax connections works but roundtrip latency is between 350-400ms which is very high and noticeable. The livebox itselfs crashes often - once a day for sure :(

More on this tomorrow!

so answers to your questions will be delayed.

To all my dear readers:

I hope you will pass well to the new year 2010 and that your expectations, projects and lucky feelings will succeed in the new year!

Yours, Pascal

In Germany, we begin to celebrate Christmas at the evening of Dec 24th, as opposed to many other countries (celebrating Christmas due to Christianity).

On 24th, children get their presents which are put under a christmas tree, which is decorated with glass balls and (mostly electric) candles.

Dec 25th and 26th are national holidays.

What's that? From time to time I see this referrer in my log statistics. Which application is causing this? I found nothing on the net to solve this puzzle.