Hacking
11
Aug 11
One less GNU tool: tmux replacing screen
So, you are busy working on a project, switch between browser and your vim session running in a screen back and forward. You continously resize the terminal and switch tabs, then you switched back to your vim session running in a screen and … boom! Screen is dead once again. Obviously GNU screen has not [...]
12
Jul 11
zsh: for lazy system administrators
Another cool zsh trick. As I am hopping to all kinds of machines all day long in my role as UNIX system administrator, for convenience, I can now just type the hostname into my shell: Previously: ~% localhost zsh: command not found: localhost After installing this into my ~/.zshrc: We get: ~% localhost Last login: [...]
24
May 11
Web server: are you using strong encryption?
Most of the analysed websites by Qualys that are using SSL are still using SSLv2 or even SSLv1 for their encryption. SSLv2 standards were formed in 1995 and can be called outdated without a doubt. Therefor it is recommended to use at least TLSv1 (which is dated back in 1999, but hey) but rather TLSv1.2. [...]
11
Feb 11
How to improve Ubuntu part 2
In my previous post I wrote about improving Ubuntu, this article mainly focussed on using Ubuntu as a server. There are also issues with using Ubuntu as a desktop, I will try to clarify why and how to fix these issues. Windows layout Since Ubuntu 10.04 you get a new looking theme, with all window [...]
30
Jan 11
How to improve Ubuntu
First of all, remove all unwanted crap you get installed without asking: maze@valentine ~$ sudo apt-get purge \ command-not-found{,-data} \ landscape-{client,common} \ canonical-census Secondly, I want to manage /etc/motd myself: maze@valentine ~$ sudo sed -e '/^session[ \t]*optional[ \t]*pam_motd\.so/d' -i \ /etc/pam.d/login \ /etc/pam.d/sshd or, alternatively, make /etc/motd immutable (this could raise warnings at login time): [...]
11
Oct 10
Chaos Communication Camp 2011
So, what are you doing next summer? The folks from CCC announced the dates for the summer camp, time to make some holiday arrangements! Went there with the MoNoNoKe folks back in 2007 having a blast, so I definitely don’t want to miss this one. From http://events.ccc.de: We found a date and we found a [...]
9
Oct 10
Ad-free Android apps
Sick of all the (Google) ads in your Android apps? So am I, long live squid as a transparent proxy. Add this to your squid.conf: http_port 127.0.0.1:3129 transparent acl google_crap_path urlpath_regex ^pagead/ acl google_crap_path urlpath_regex ^pageads/ acl google_crap dstdomain adwords.google.com acl google_crap dstdomain pagead.googlesyndication.com acl google_crap dstdomain pagead2.googlesyndication.com acl google_crap dstdomain adservices.google.com acl google_crap dstdomain [...]