Dave's Grumblings

I've given my site, minus zero, a complete overhaul - you can see the results at minus-zero.org.

There's a brand-shiny-new blog there as well - blog.minus-zero.org. If you're reading this message on blog.minus-zero.org, then you're still viewing the old blog. Hold tight, you should get the awesomeness of the new stuff soon! Try refreshing this page, or try again a little bit later. The internet hasn't caught up with me yet ;)

I stopped working on pyBackPack a long time ago. The final year of my degree didn't leave a lot of spare time for hacking on the code, and it fell by the wayside.

Now, however, my good friend Andy Price has picked up the torch, and is going to continue pyBackPack's development. He's taken ownership of the code, and I've detached myself from it officially. Andy's created a project page, and the bug tracker and SVN systems are up and running. I've set up redirects on my website so all old links should be sent to the right places - please let me know if anything doesn't work any more.

Best of luck to Andy!

While working on a forthcoming project (watch this space...), I decided it'd be a lot easier to test the code on my local machine rather than SUCS's server.
Tiger (yes, I'm a Mac user these days) comes with Apache 1.3, which is rather outdated, so I looked into updating to a more recent release. Fink has Apache 2.0, but I decided to go all-out and try and get Apache 2.2 running. It turned out to be relatively easy.

Here's my setup:

• OS X 10.4.7 on an Apple MacBook
• XCode 2.3
• Python 2.4.3 from python.org

First of all, we need to get Apache compiled and installed.

$ wget http://www.mirror.ac.uk/mirror/ftp.apache.org/httpd/httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz

$ tar zxf httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz

$ cd httpd-2.2.3

$ ./configure --with-mpm=worker --enable-so

$ make

$ sudo make install

That should install Apache into /usr/local/apache2.

Next, download and compile mod_python:

$ wget http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.apache.org/httpd/modpython/mod_python-3.2.10.tgz

$ tar zxf mod_python-3.2.10.tgz

$ cd mod_python-3.2.10

$ ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python

$ make

$ sudo make install

That'll build mod_python and put the appropriate files in /usr/local/apache2/modules.

Configuring our newly-compiled Apache to replace OS X's default one is easy enough - a few changes to /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf and extra/httpd-userdir.conf is all it takes. Download an archive with all the necessary patch files here. Note - these configuration changes don't cause Apache 2 to behave exactly like Tiger's Apache 1.3, and there may be parts I've overlooked that could be exploited.
To apply the patches, run the following as root (from the directory with the extracted contents of the archive):

# patch /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf httpd.conf.patch

# cp httpd-userdir.conf /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra/.

By now, you should have a working Apache 2 setup on your Mac, but how can we make it start at boot? This is relatively easy - we can use /Library/StartupItems to accomplish this. The zip file contains the files you need to put in this directory to automate Apache's startup.
Unzip the archive and then cp -r Apache2 /Library/StartupItems/. as root.

That's it! To get the server started, you can run sudo /sbin/SystemStarter start "Web Server" and then browse to http://localhost/ to test your new Apache installation! And then, of course, you can dive into the world of Python.

Announcing my latest product of procrastination - pyClick 0.1

pyClick is a pseudo-driver for the Griffin AirClick USB for Linux. It's written in Python, and provides a mapping between keys on the AirClick remote and running user-configurable commands on the PC. By default, it is set up to control a media player such as Rhythmbox or Banshee by simulating X keypresses.

Get it now!

It's been brought to my attention that I don't post as often as I should.
I have but one retort, Mr Blackstock:

Swansea was blanketed in snow overnight, and the sight that greeted me when I peeped out from the curtains at 7:30 this morning prompted me to brave the cold to take some photos.

Walking across the crisp and unmolested snow in the almost deserted park was a nice way to start the day, rather than the drudgery of having to haul myself onto campus for lectures.

Click a thumbnail for the full-size view:

The whole gallery is here (generated by the Rather Good f-spot). Comments and critique are both welcome!

So I turned 22 last Friday. I spent the day relaxing with my lovely lady, which was rather good. I worked my first shift at the new student shop in the evening, and although I felt slightly bad about leaving Jen on her own she assured me that she'd be fine, and would keep herself entertained.

The 5 hours at work dragged on and on, until I was finally set free at 10. Jen came to meet me and we wandered home, discussing the romantic night we were going to spend together. When we got back to the house, Jen instructed me to go through to the kitchen and get a bottle of wine from the fridge. With a huge grin on my face, thinking it was my lucky night, I blundered into the lounge and fumbled for the light switch in the darkness.

All of a sudden, the lights came of their own accord and the sound of loads of people shouting "SURPRISE!!!" greeted me. The house was incredibly warm compared to the bitter Swansea air outside, and my glasses had fogged over. I was completely taken aback and didn't really have a clue what was going on! It soon became apparent that the room was packed with loads of my friends all wishing me a happy birthday and wondering why I looked so shell-shocked. A huge grin came across my face as I realised what was going on, although I staggered around for a short while not quite sure if I was awake or dreaming. The rasterbated photo of my ugly mug just added to the surrealism of it all.

The party was a huge success, and I'm totally in awe of how much effort was put into the organisation and secrecy of the whole enterprise. Big thanks, kisses and love to Jen, Steve and Sey for all the hard work you put into it, you're the best! Jen's sangria was delicious, and a little more intoxicating than was assumed (right, Sara?).

Thanks of course to everyone who came along to make the night so much fun, hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did. It was really humbling to have so many people there for a party for me! Wow.

Oh! I almost forgot the cake. It was a true masterpiece (if you're wondering what the hell the design on the top is all about, I refer you to Goatse), and delicious to boot. Sey, you did a brilliant job, though I just can't picture you in an apron in the kitchen with a tube of pink icing.

More pictures of the event: Andy's and Seyhan's.

Oops. (from Boing Boing).

While procrastinating hard in the library, I was taken by a sudden desire to listen to some music from my ever-expanding collection. The only slight drawback was that I'd left my iPod at home, which made it somewhat difficult given that my laptop is devoid of any music.
Realising that my desktop PC has its music shared (using Samba) with the rest of the home LAN, I set about trying to connect to it from my laptop on the University's VPN.
On Windows, the process is as follows:

1. Execute net stop server from the command prompt (Win+R>cmd>OK). This stops Windows' Samba server on the local machine (we're effectively replacing the local server with the remote one).


2. Open PuTTY and select the 'Tunnels' option from the 'SSH' menu in the left-hand pane


3. For each of the following port numbers: 137, 138, 139, 445; enter the port number in the 'Source port' entry box and hostname:X (where hostname is the name of the box with the Samba shares, and X is the same port number you put in the 'Source port' box) in the 'Destination' entry box, and then click the 'Add' button.


4. Return to the 'Session' option at the top of the left hand pane and enter the name of the remote host you're connecting to (in general, the hostname of the internet gateway on the home LAN).


5. It's probably a good idea to save this little setup for future use, so give it a name in the 'Saved Sessions' box and hit 'Save'.


6. Click the 'Open' button, and enter your username and password when prompted (assuming you don't have SSH keys set up...)


7. You should now be able to enter \\127.0.0.1 in the Windows 'Run' box, and after authenticating with a valid Samba username and password you'll be presented with all the visible shares of the remote machine. These can be browsed and mapped to network drives, as with any Samba share.


8. That's it!

Of course, this makes several assumptions - you need to have a machine on the home LAN you can SSH into, for one. But it's a simple hack that seems to work. It's also got the added benefit of being encrypted.

Something like Icecast would probably be a more sensible long-term solution, but for a quick and easy way of listening to your tracks, it does the job nicely. :)

I received one too many stupid e-mail forwards today, and snapped. This was originally going to be sent back to the person who sent it to me, as well as the reels of other e-mail addresses in the headers, but I decided against it and have blogged here instead.

A little knowledge goes a long way...

The e-mail I dissect below and many others like it get passed around the 

internet like wildfire because it's easier to notice the CAPITAL LETTERS and 

hit 'Forward' than it is to spend 30 seconds reading the text thoroughly and 

realising it's mostly nonsensical junk.

(The full body of the original message is at the end of this e-mail)





> This is not a joke!



Yes, it is. The mere fact that this phrase is contained (as the first line, no 

less) in the message pretty convincingly discredits what's going to follow. How 

many real security bulletins have to reassure the reader that it's all true? 

The message probably originated from someone who a) was bored, b) thought it 

would be hilarious to waste their and others' time, or c) had nothing better to 

do than spread a bit of good ol' fashioned FUD (see 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD )





> Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such

> asYahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.



Funny, that. Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL are arguably the 3 biggest webmail 

services, so when it says 'especially' it's probably referring to the majority 

of people who receive this mail.

In addition to this, there is nothing whatsoever to make a webmail user more 

susceptible to this perceived threat than a user who reads email in a dedicated 

client such as Mozilla Thunderbird (which is Free! 

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/)





> This information arrived this morning direct from both Microsoft and Norton.



It did? To whom was this information directly sent? Strange that this 

supposedly critical revelation gets no mention on any of the news sites, or 

Microsoft or Norton's web sites.





> Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the

> Internet.



Yes! Spread the FUD far and wide!





> You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point

> presentation

> "Life is beautiful." If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY

> CIRCUMSTANCES . Delete it immediately. If you open this file, a message

> will appear on your screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no

> longer beautiful."



OK, up until this point the actions of opening a Powerpoint file from an e-mail 

have been feasible. However...





> Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC...



What?! We've rocketed out of the realms of possibility now. Powerpoint is 

designed for PRESENTATIONS. Not erasing your hard drive. It may well be the 

case that Powerpoint has an implementation of Visual Basic for Applications, 

but this is designed for automating simple tasks and adding some basic 

scripting capabilities to your slides, not evil subterfuge.

Having said that, VBA *is* capable of some nasty things, and not being a

Powerpoint guru (I've never used it) I can only assume there isn't a

dialog asking if the file has come from a trusted source that the user has

to acknowledge before any scripts are executed. Otherwise why do so many

people fall victim to it?





> ...and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail 

and password.



Let's get this straight... The person who sent *you* the e-mail will get your 

name? Shock horror! Wouldn't they already have known that?

As for getting your e-mail and password, this is ridiculous. The password is 

stored as a one-way hash (meaning there is no 'decryption' routine, just 

brute-force attacking which takes a *long* time), and it would be very 

difficult for a humble presentation to find and crack this hash.

I'm not entirely sure what is meant by 'gaining access to your e-mail', but 

considering the target audience of this message is webmail users, it seems to 

be a contradiction because the user's e-mail messages are stored on a remote 

server.





> This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.

> AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus software's

> are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker

> who calls himself "life owner."



AOL are backing up these claims of widespread data-loss and anguish are they? 

Then why do I see no mention of it on their website? I must admit, that titbit 

of information, the hacker's name, almost convinced me the story was real for a 

second there. I almost found myself forwarding the mail to everyone I know and 

then sweating with anticipation of the next message to hit my inbox lest it 

carry the dreaded 'Life is beautiful.'





> PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and ask

> them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY.



This is the one part of the e-mail I do agree with. Why don't you forward 

*this* e-mail on to everyone who would otherwise have received the original 

message from you? Why not send it back to the person who sent you the mail in 

the first place? Arming yourself with some knowledge isn't a bad idea, and 

sharing that knowledge is even better.

Life *is* beautiful, why not make your inbox beautiful too?





---- Original Message ----



>>Subject: VIRUS WARNING

>>Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:53:49 +0000 (GMT)

>>

>>This is not a joke!

>>

>>Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such

>> asYahoo,

>>Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning direct from

>>both Microsoft and Norton.

>>

>>Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the

>>Internet.

>>

>>You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point

>>presentation

>>"Life is beautiful." If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY

>>CIRCUMSTANCES . Delete it immediately. If you open this file, a message

>>will appear on your screen saying: "It is too late now, your life is no

>>longer beautiful."

>>Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person

>>who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.

>>This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.

>>AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus software's

>>are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker

>>who calls himself "life owner."

>>

>>PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and ask

>>them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY.

I've had my energies focussed on entirely the wrong things recently, it's a habit that I'm finding increasingly difficult to break. I told myself that this year would be different, that I'd focus my time more effectively on the appropriate things (such as that not-so-insignificant entity, University), and here I am, in the third week of term and already struggling to find the motivation to knuckle down and get on with what's important rather than what's fun. It seems like a monumentous amount of effort to concentrate on the first, and only, piece of coursework for longer than 15 femtoseconds at a time. What's infuriating is that even if I don't get any work done, the end of the day rolls around and I've got absolutely nothing to show for all my time spent avoiding coursework. The cycle needs to be broken, I can't continue like this in my 3rd and final year. You'd have thought by now that I'd have the self-discipline to just get on with it, but seemingly I don't. I've become used to settling for second-best, and just floating along without really pushing myself. A 55% average for the past two years might not be considered 'bad', but I know I'm capable of so much more. Time to get my act together.

Readers who visit the actual blog rather than via RSS will notice the rather nice new-look blog theme. It's in keeping with the main site and was (mostly) done by Andy. Thanks Andy. Thandy.

I'm all settled in to the house and it's certainly come to life now that everyone has moved in. Fun times are ahead, I predict :). The kitchen is a little on the small side considering there's 6 of us, but nothing's perfect. The landlord/lady seem to be on the ball as well, which is nice. A few days after requesting a dining table, they arrived with a gigantic refectory-style beast, which has pride of place in the middle of our lounge.

The Great Job Hunt paid off, and I've been offered an evening job at Woolworths... It's only a temporary position, so I'll probably have to go through the whole process again in January, but whatever keeps the wolves from the door in the meantime. I had a group interview today which was a bit scary but I must have done a good enough job of impressing/deceiving (pick one ;)) the interviewers so no complaints there.

This year I'm going to try harder to give my bike the love and attention it deserves, and it's not a moment too soon. 12 months ago (when I started riding it with any degree of regularity) I was fairly routine with the maintenance - a weekly clean, oil and tweaking of the brakes - but it didn't last long and the poor thing has had nothing but maltreatment since last January. It all came to a head this week though, and I've replaced brake blocks, an inner tube, bearings, rear spindle and handlebar grips with about 15 trips to the bike shop. Nothing major, but it still needs work. On the TODO list as soon as the loan comes are the bottom bracket bearings, re-adjusting the gears and an overall clean and grease.

Jen's coming tomorrow, which is going to be good fun, and then on Monday it's Jo's Quarter of a Century Celebrations AKA the Mumbles Mile in wigs. Can't wait. :D

Oh what an exciting life I lead.

I've become something of a man of leisure since my return from the holiday. It's rather nice to not have to worry about deadlines, going to work and other such things. I should be a slacker more often :)

I've been able to indulge in some pet projects - the current focus of attention is an AJAX webmail client. At the moment I'm doing it the hard (easy?) way - Python CGI. No doubt this isn't the most efficient or sensible way of doing it, but it's a scratch for an itch. Redeveloping the system using a framework like Django or mod_python (ok, not a framework per se) would probably be a simple task because there's not a lot of code written yet.

minus-zero.org finally has some kind of coherent design and content, although there's not an awful lot to see yet. The pages are static HTML, generated from a template by a simple script. This could be interesting when the site expands, we'll see.

In other news, I'm heading back to Swansea on Sunday. The Great Job Hunt will then begin, as I attempt to find some form of income to offset the new house's huge rent costs. Hopefully having my CV (which I've yet to write...) bolstered by having 'Google paid me money!' splashed across it will help. Though having said that, I doubt if the average shopkeeper gives a monkey's. :)

My holiday and the Google Summer of Code both ended on the 1st of September, and they were great fun.
I put together the final (as far as being accepted for my SoC submission) release of pyBackPack and it's the best yet.

Screenshots



Changes

• SSH Backups and restores
• When performing a backup, a progress indicator is shown.
• Increments on the restore page are listed most recent first.

Download
.tar.gz: pybackpack-0.4.tar.gz
SRPM: pybackpack-0.4-2.src.rpm
RPM: pybackpack-0.4-2.noarch.rpm
deb: pybackpack-0.4-all.deb
Update - The RPMs were re-rerolled with fixed dependencies, they should work OK now.

Bugs
If you come across any bugs or problems don't hesitate to get in touch, either by leaving a comment here, e-mailing me, or using the bug tracking system at http://sucs.org/~davea/trac

Thanks
I'd like to say a huge thanks to Elliot Lee (my mentor from Red Hat) for all his help, guidance and invaluable advice.
Also to Graham Cole (chckens) and Jeremy Katz for bug spotting, and pointing out some of my slightly weird interface design choices. :)
I almost forgot! My eternal gratitude goes to Jen for letting me take her laptop on holiday so I could work and for putting up with my hacking instead of relaxing by the pool. :D

Of course, it's not finished yet, and all you hundreds of faithful readers will be pleased to know that the future releases of pyBackPack will be documented right here. ;)

Here's the latest batch of updates, nothing too major - a more streamlined interface, better checks on overwriting files, etc.

Download
.tar.gz: pybackpack-0.3.tar.gz
SRPM: pybackpack-0.3-1.src.rpm
RPM: again, still on holiday so no RPM. Sorry!

Let me know how you like it :)