With all the networking gear and headless servers and whatnot I manage, I still frequently use RS-232 connections. Since it's been a long time since I had a computer with a built in serial port, I have a couple USB-serial adapters I use for this purpose. I just found another one in a drawer and thought it would be nice to have hooked up to my other computer so I don't have to move the adapters around. What I found is an old blueberry-iMac themed Belkin F5U103 USB-serial adapter. I connected it to a router console and to my computer and it was recognized by Linux 3.0.0 and attached to /dev/ttyUSB0, but despite the apparent flow of data (this thing has some status/activity lights) I couldn't get a router prompt or anything human-readable using kermit or minicom. This adapter has supposedly been supported in Linux for a long time, but I wasn't finding any useful info about making it work for me. I was about to give up and assume it was defective until I stumbled onto this post about FreeBSD users testing the same adapter back in 2003: http://markmail.org/message/6snsp5cndmakspzs

Hmmm... " an off-by-1 error in the speed setting code"? I reconfigured kermit for 4800 baud instead of 9600 and sure enough, it works. You just have to set the port speed to the next slower standard rate than expected by the connected device.

Posted by ra at 23:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Shame on me for thinking Google would take a different tack on this.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/567

The relevant part of their ToS states: "In order to access certain Services, you may be required to provide information about yourself (such as identification or contact details) as part of the registration process for the Service, or as part of your continued use of the Services. You agree that any registration information you give to Google will always be accurate, correct and up to date."

This does NOT say that you must register using the name on your birth certificate or government ID, etc. If you are known friends or fans by a name other than your given name then that is still an accurate, correct name.

They want celebs on Google plus, but are Google going to force Lady Gaga to register as Stefani Germanotta? Unlikely. I'm pretty sure this guy's name isn't listed on his driver's license as $0.50 either: https://plus.google.com/114809488257853535663/

EDIT:
The Google+ Content Policy also addresses the name issue, using different language: "To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable"

Some more good info on the topic here:
http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/
http://infotrope.net/2011/07/24/more-comments-on-google-plus-and-names/

And a data collection effort for people who have had their profiles suspended, here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFZHSEZ6ZURPQkpyTldMMXFFNkJrU0E6MQ#gid=0

EDIT+:
Another good article on this subject:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/07/27/google-misses-an-opportunity-privacy-is-an-important-part-of-openness/

There is yet another page at Google explaining their profile name policy and this one is more specific than the other two I've seen, stating that you must use the name you go by "in daily life".
http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271

Posted by ra at 12:49 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I recently revamped my home and business networks and found myself in need of a way to automatically attempt hostname resolution in two different dns domains.

This can be easily acheived by editing /etc/resolv.conf like so:

search alpha.example beta.example

However, I use DHCP so I wanted a DHCP solution. DNS search domains can be specified using DHCP option 119, which is supported by both dnsmasq and isc-dhcp-server on Debian Squeeze. Client-side DHCP support for DNS search domains, especially multiple search domains, is reportedly rather limited; but fortunately it's supported out of the box by Debian and Ubuntu so it's just a matter of getting the server-side configuration correct. I had some trouble finding the correct syntax and as a result my first attempts (using apparently incorrect examples I found on the net) resulted in failure, as indicated by this log message on the client:

dhclient: suspect value in domain_search option - discarded

After fixing the server-side config (isc-dhcp-server 4.1.1) to match the following format, it works great:

option domain-search "alpha.example","beta.example";

If you use dnsmasq for DHCP, this should be useful:
http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq-discuss/2005q2/000231.html

Posted by ra at 14:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

This wasn't the first time I've unsuccessfully tried to connect to an open wireless network from the command line using iwconfig (which should be a simple task) and this time I was determined to find the solution. In this case I was running Knoppix, but I've had the same problem on Debian and [XK]?Ubuntu as well.

I tried...

iwconfig wlan0 essid rasberry
iwconfig wlan0 essid rasberry mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 essid rasberry mode Managed chan 1
iwconfig wlan0 essid rasberry mode Managed chan 1 ap 00:01:02:03:04:05
-etc-
dhclient wlan0

...but no matter what, I couldn't get an IP or even see any DHCP traffic from my device at the router. Furthermore iwconfig wlan0 would consistently report that I was not associated.

¡FRUSTRATING!

Lots of searches turned up little more than inapplicable solutions and unanswered questions.

So I checked dmesg to see if there were any errors being reported and found something like this:

deauthenticating by local choice, reason=3

OK... that's not MY choice, so WTF? Turns out that even though I started knoppix in runlevel 2, network-manager was running, which had wpa_supplicant running, (even though I was not connected to a network, have no predefined network profiles, am not running any network-manager clients, etc) and as I see it, wpa_supplicant was fighting with me for control of the wlan adapter config. So that was helpful... NOT!

I killed wpa_supplicant but it was immediately respawned by network-manager so I had to stop network-manager and then kill wpa_supplicant, and THEN, FINALLY, I was able to connect to the network with a simple:

iwconfig wlan0 essid rasberry; dhclient wlan0

Posted by ra at 15:14 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I haven't blogged in a while. Oh well. I think I might be doing something blog-worthy soon, just now right now.

In the meantime, I have noticed lots of sad, stale, abandoned blogs on the net which make you wonder if the person died or something, but others concede that they have left their blog behind and went to facebook.

Well that just pisses me right off, and it prompted me to post this to make it clear that I am NOT on assbook. Nor will I ever be, because facebook sucks. I would rather volunteer for an unpaid role in a scatological porno than join facebook (eww).

I have not blogged because I didn't feel like it. Period. End of story.

Okay, I'm glad I cleared that up.

Posted by ra at 20:49 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Sometimes you have an Ubuntu server. But what you need a Debian server. And you could reinstall the system with Debian but you either can't or do not want to (i.e. you are lazy). In a future post I will expand on how and why I find myself in this situation, but suffice it to say that I have a few times. But what to do about it?

The thought may have crossed your mind: Can you [up/down/cross]-grade an Ubuntu system to a Debian system*? I prefer the term crossgrade. After all, Ubuntu is based on Debian and they both use the apt package manager and so they have quite a bit in common.

So, the answer? Yes, Virginia; you can!!... maybe... possibly... there is a chance it could work, anyway.

* You may also wonder whether you can go the other direction; Debian to Ubuntu. I would guess that it would work as well as the Ubuntu to Debian procedure (i.e. I hope you have an ample supply of four-leaf clovers on hand) but I haven't tried it, as I personally have no reason to.

DISCLAIMER: This is probably a crazy stupid thing to do. Especially on an important system and even more so if you are planning to try it on a remote system (WTF is wrong with you??). Stop being so lazy and just back up the system and config and reinstall it properly. There is no guarantee that this will work. It's totally NOT supported. If you ask most people they will probably just tell you that it doesn't or won't work. Just because it worked for me doesn't mean it will work for you.

Continue reading "ubuntian crossgrade"

Posted by ra at 00:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

So not only did I get a Motorola CLIQ this month, but I also got a new laptop! FINALLY! It does not exactly meet my stated criteria, but it's pretty damn close! (holy bang abuse, batman!!!)

I got a Dell Studio 14z. It has a 1600x900 LED backlit screen, a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo and 3 GB DDR3 ram. It also weighs about half what my old laptop did (OK, not really, but including the power adapter it might be close) while easily besting it in processing power, noise, etc. So far I'm very happy with it.

Posted by ra at 22:02 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)