I’ve not much to report on Linode improvements since I first joined, save the new control panel and significant bump in RAM available to plans. Oh, and StackScripts are nifty too, enabling one to rapidly deploy fully-functional servers.

Being one who strives for a vanilla as possible install upon deployment, I’m appreciative of Linode’s pv-grub feature which allows customers to run kernels provided by their distribution of choice.

Thanks, Linode.
Thlinode.

Over the phone I walked the more tech-savvy of the two through routine troubleshooting steps… clearing browser cache,
ipconfig /release and /flushdns, and rebooting the computer and router.

When the problem persisted after the reboot, I decided to log in remotely and poke around. Soon I realized the error occurred with any Google service… which handle sign ons through https://www.google.com/. Firefox’s network settings appeared kosher and though I could access http://www.google.com, https://www.google.com returned the interrupted connection error.

So I fired up the command prompt and pinged www.google.com. The IP returned was 204.152.194.149 which turned out to be owned by QuadraNet. My first thought was malware had altered the DNS settings of the computer, but ipconfig stated it was using the DNS servers I had specified some years earlier, and netstat didn’t reveal anything which could have been intercepting DNS lookups.

Having hit a wall, I ran full scans with Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes. Neither found any problems. Grrr.

Pondering possible causes to DNS problems, I wondered if Windows had an equivalent to *nix’s /etc/hosts. If so, malware could have altered it to have www.google.com resolve to 204.152.194.149. After a bit of googling, I learned Windows’ hosts file is located at WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/hosts. I opened the file and saw this. Most ungood. I removed the entries save the required 127.0.0.1       localhost line and tried to save the file, only to be hindered by another error. Oops, it was read-only. But what now? “Access denied” when I attempt to remove the attributes protecting the file? No matter, for I was able to rename the file thus rendering it impotent. Upon creating a new, proper, hosts file, immediately the issues vanished. www.google.com resolved to a Google-owned IP, and the ability to sign on to Google services was restored.

I don’t know what altered the hosts file. Last month I removed the malicious Internet Antivirus 2011 from the same computer, but the sign on problem wasn’t reported until over a week later.

One of my system’s hard drive is encrypted. Each time I boot it, I’m prompted to enter a passphrase. With Ubuntu, Plymouth is charged with the task of displaying the prompt and associated messages. Upon entering the passphrase, keystrokes are echoed as bullets.

I don’t appreciate this behavior in any application. If the aim is to mask the password/passphrase, why echo anything at all? Thankfully, disabling it in Plymouth requires but a simple modification to /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.script:

if (index < bullets) {
-            password_dialogue.bullets[index].sprite.SetOpacity (1);
+            password_dialogue.bullets[index].sprite.SetOpacity (0);
         }

It’s necessary to run sudo update-initramfs -u to affect the change.

Technically this doesn’t disable the bullets; it renders them invisible. Good enough.

Additionally, the prompt text and error messages can be altered/removed by editing /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/cryptroot.

While participating in the StackScripts (henceforth SS) beta I wrote the LEMP stack and associated LEMP_lib. LEMP stands for “Linux nginx MySQL PHP”; an alternative to LAMP “Linux Apache MySQL PHP” stacks. I wrote them solely for the sake of beta testing but ended up publishing them when SS went live in hopes others would benefit from my work. I expected someone more skilled than I to come along and write a decent LEMP SS and mine would fade into obscurity. I was content with such an outcome… after all, I wouldn’t call myself a programmer, but a sysadmin. My programming abilities suffice for writing appalling Bash scripts to assist with system administration tasks, nothing more.

To my surprise, people actually used my SS to deploy their Linodes and as a result I felt responsible to maintain and improve my scripts. I actively did so for a time and altered them to reap the benefits of Ubuntu 10.04, which includes a more recent nginx package; and PHP 5.3.3, which introduced PHP-FPM support. Unfortunately now my lack of free time and disposable income prevent me from developing further (oh sure improvements work on my dev systems, but Linodes are a different story), but I still make the effort to update them when new versions of PHP and Suhosin are released.

A few authors have written LEMP-related StackScripts based upon mine, so perhaps they’ll conjure up something better. I certainly hope so.

Despite my affinity toward tinkering, however, I’m wary of rooting my phone. That is, altering it to obtain unrestricted control of its function… primarily because I’ve yet to be convinced the binaries, etc. to do so are benevolent. I rely on my phone and thus am reluctant to trust the How-Tos copypasta’d around the intertubes which lack sufficient explanation of the rooting process.

Alright, enough background information.

As I resolved to not root my Droid, I sought applications from the Android Market to augment its functionality. The most impressive I’ve installed so far is Tasker. It blows Timeriffic, an app I used previously, out of the water and puts an inferior paid app, Locale, to shame. The magnitude of granularity Tasker provides is astounding. The most complicated task I’ve conjured up so far is:
Mute all sounds and cease all vibrations during my sleeping hours unless my fiancée calls.
Child’s play. Tasker is capable of much more. This relatively simple task scrapes the tip of the Tasker iceberg.
I take that back. I haven’t scraped the tip of the iceberg, I’ve merely flown over it and said, “Oh, that’s neat.” It will probably be several days until I fully realize Tasker’s potential.

I’ve read Tasker users have complained the app is buggy and complicated. As if. The interface is straightforward and dialogues provide informative explanations of their workings. Apparently the practice of pressing a question mark to learn about a particular function is beyond the comprehension of some. If you aren’t such a person and seek to expand upon your Android phone’s versatility, I recommend giving Tasker a try.

“I’m sorry, I cannot sell you alcohol, for the Earth has orbited the sun only about nineteen times since the day of your birth.”

“The Earth has completed just over eighteen revolutions during your existence, but less than sixteen since the person you had a sexual encounter with was born. Therefore you are guilty of statutory rape.”

“Only when one has been on this planet long enough to witness thirty-five revolutions around the great star in the sky can they be deemed fit to become President of the United States.”

Granted, such phrases may not be spoken or thought, but the same line of reasoning applies to age limit laws. That is, the line of reasoning becoming of a believer in astrology, not a lawmaker.

Any person who enforces such laws is without a doubt of an irrational mind and has no place within a justice system, where it is absolutely imperative objectivity and logic prevail.

This is my tribble. She is adorable.

Last month Rackspace Cloud solicited technical questions from users to be addressed in a podcast. Though the podcast hasn’t been published yet, they did release a short one in which Slicehost/Rackspace Cloud guru RackerHacker addressed a nerdy question submitted by yours truly.

Having a love for VPSs which burns with the intensity of a thousand suns, the situation of Xen’s inclusion in the Linux kernel has me concerned. Unfortunately I’ve the mental capacity of a frozen cup of pudding, so reading discussions on various mailing lists about the kernel and Xen made my brain ache, hence my submitting a question for the podcast.

I won’t repeat the contents of the podcast; you’ll have to listen to it yourself. Suffice to say, even if full Xen support isn’t reintroduced in 2.6.34, it’s good to know folks like RackerHacker are striving to make newer kernels work on Xen-based VPSs.

Having better things to do with my time than stare at this clock all day, I attempted to download the image for each minute of the day. Alas, I was greeted with a slew of 403s. The site implements some dark magic to hinder visitors from arbitrarily downloading the images. Undaunted, I sought a method to have the bijin and discovered a number of useful scripts. My two favorites (read: they don’t consume an inordinate amount of memory) are:

Ruby:
bijint.rb from Yamashiro0217の日記

Bash:
bijint from taichino.com

The scripts I mirrored here are identical to the originals, though in practice I removed the sleeps. Both can be easily altered to download images from similar sites such as gal-tokei or binan-tokei.