Archive for the ‘Hacking & Configuring *nix’ Category

Warning about FireFox GreaseMonkey plugin

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Swiiftfox fanwork logo

Swiiftfox fanwork logo

I was and still am going to install Greasemonkey plugin for my SwiftFox (optimived version of Firefox, with patches an code optimization for CPU in use).

There are however security issues - some fixed unlless you use old version (in case you have old ccomputer that can’t run veru modern FF) and some are easy to prevent. IF you read the documentiation, and in this case the section “Avoid Common Pitfalls“. Of course reading the whole manual is a good idea.

I may infact intead of regular FF plugins start making Greasemonkey scripts, though that willl require the user to installl Greasemonkey to get my add-on - oh welll, I could think that if he doesn’t then he does not need it - or better yet, maybe he does not even deserve it (tee-hee, I make a joke).

Anyway, have a nice day - I have gone FF add-on mental, pretty soon I will post all add-ons that I installed and yound actually worthy to keep.

Sometimes solution is too easy to see (RealVideo .mvb in Debian)

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

I just got some new video files but instead of divx packed inside .avi they came in .mvb files unknown to me. Trying to view them with xine I was surprised that I did not have a correct codec installed and revealed that the format was RealVideo (RV40).

I was so blinded by the thought that I should have almost any possible commonly known codec installed that I spent several apt-cache searches by looking for something else and completely missing on packet - which I then spotted and was humbled by the fact I had forgotten to install it. The command I needed to get it work was simply:
apt-get install w32codecs So never fool yourself, even though your guru mind should know all the switches and gears to make a steampunk computer tick, you might still miss the most obvious package for whatever problem you bump into :)

Using OpenDNS nameserver on Debian

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

There are many reasons why a user might want to use OpenDNS quality dns nameservers instead of service providers dns servers. Maybe the providers nameserver does not work that well, or maybe your country and/or provider is one of those who have set up domain name based internet content filtering that you want to pass - this is the case here in Finland where the claimed use is to prevent access to child porn sites but most of the sites filtered are not of that sort at all, many not even regular porn sites and sometimes there have been really bad mistakes (like w3c site ending on the list).

On opendns.org there is a simple guide on how to set Linux (there is one for Windows too) to use OpenDNS - all you have to do, according to the site, is to edit /etc/resolv.conf and replace IP’s on nameserver lines with ones of OpenDNS. While this works at least on Fedora (and supposedly on most other flawors of Linux), at least with Debian and Ubuntu there is an extra step. This one is for those using cable connection with DHCP:

1st. edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and add followind line to end of file:
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
…then find the line starting with “request” that lists the information to read ask from DHCP server and remove the option “domain-name-servers“.

2nd. edit /etc/resolv.conf like instructed on opendns.org. Replace the nameserver lines with these:
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

edit: I’m not sure if the second step is needed or even effective on debian.

3rd. Now you could just wait until the information from DHCP gets renewed or to make the changes work instantly you can run:
/etc/init.d/networking restart

Notes: You need to get root access to edit the files and to restart networking.

to restart the ssh server on a fedora

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Someone had googled the text in title of this article on google and end up on my site.

To restart sshd on Fedora just run (as root on console): /etc/init.d/sshd restart

I hope that clears things up.