I’ve been using a Linksys WRT54GL router running DD-WRT for several years now. It runs OpenVPN and fits a surprisingly large number of features into 4 MB of flash and 16 MB of RAM. It has been stable and reliable, but it’s a very under-powered device by modern standards. I haven’t been happy with the pace of DD-WRT development, which takes a very long time to release large, monolithic updates. First I tried to upgrade it to OpenWRT, but the latest release is too large to incorporate OpenVPN in 4 MB of flash. So I replaced it with a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH running OpenWRT Backfire 10.03.
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Philip continues to play devil’s advocate / script kiddie for my telnet URL handler. My input checker allowed host/port definitions to begin with a hyphen character. That’s an invalid domain name, so I ignored the possibility that someone might try it. Philip used it to pass a switch to the telnet/ssh command.
After I wrote yesterday’s post, Philip reminded me of the dangers of not validating your inputs. Here is a better telnet/ssh handler which checks the URL passed to it.
Firefox’s telnet protocol handler in Linux stopped working some time after version 3.0. I manage a network of switches, routers, and other devices with command-line interfaces. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to click on telnet:// or ssh:// URLs again?
I’ve been searching for a good remote desktop client for a long time. My requirements are simple. It must:
- save passwords
- manage connections via the GUI
- support VNC and RDP
- work with our IP KVM
This last requirement is the kicker. When I change hosts on our Adderview IP KVM, it draws one frame at 0x0 resolution, and then changes to the resolution of the new host. This has crashed every VNC client I’ve tried except xvnc4viewer. Which of course, doesn’t save passwords or have a GUI (the raw X menu when you press F8 does not count).
I have tried KRDC, Vinagre, xtightvncviewer, and a number of simpler command-line VNC clients. They all seem to be designed to support the “my Mom needs tech support” problem, not the “I manage remote servers” problem. KRDC won’t even login to my KVM; it just hangs after authentication. I suppose that’s better than crashing, but it is still a show stopping bug for me.
I have two Skype accounts; one for work, and one for personal use. Unfortunately, the Skype client for Linux is somewhat limited. It can store two usernames, but it saves only the last password entered. Tonight, I hacked up a solution.
Tags: skype
Last week I upgraded from Kubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” to 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”. The word “upgrade” here is misleading, since I chose to reformat to take advantage of filesystem changes. However, I imported much of my customisations from backup. Here are my notes on Lucid, from the perspective of a long-time Kubuntu user.
Update 2012-02-28: Consider upgrading to BackupPC 3.2.0 to resolve this.
We recently upgraded our BackupPC servers to BackupPC 3.1.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. It’s working almost perfectly. However, the “Download ZIP archive” restore option no longer works. This is due to a bug in recent version of the Archive::Zip Perl module which generates corrupt ZIP archives.
I’m an engineer. I understand SSL, public-key encryption, man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, and certificate chains-of-trust. I look carefully at the URL bar before entering login or personal data, I don’t allow javascript to change the status bar, and I mouse over a URL and read it before I click. I’m paranoid as all hell, and I do not fall for stupid fraud schemes.
As of Ubuntu Lucid, the Sun Java JRE has been replaced with OpenJDK. Unfortunately, OpenJDK still isn’t a complete drop-in replacement for Sun Java. For instance, the Facebook “Upload Photos” applet doesn’t work correctly; the photos don’t have thumbnails and can’t be rotated before upload. The solution is to install the Sun Java JRE.
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