Driftnet

Driftnet is a small program which listens to network traffic and picks out images from TCP streams it observes. There's a modified version which can interact with Kismet to sniff wireless traffic.

It is an "evil" program but for network admins to catch unwanted traffic can be used, but I thinks it is not so ethical... anyway it's good to know that these kind of softwares exists.

But there's bad guys out there watching your network traffic while you use unencrypted or WEP encrypted wifi. Use WPA!

Network based Caller ID

Caller ID is -- like humans call it -- the phone number of the person who is calling you. Many phones can display it with it's small LCD. Your computer can display it too!

NCID - Network Caller ID it s small application with a client server design witch can get the caller id from the modem and the clients can connect to it and view it with a GUI application.

Before I forget to mention many plugins exists for other application for example MythTV to display Caller ID with NCID.:)

Linux file recovery

Opps... you have deleted something important? There is still hope!

If your file is a text file and you remember it's fragments you may find it (or parts of it) the following way: first of all be root!:)

For example the following command will search the disk /dev/sda4 for the text stone.log and it will print every occurrences and the previous 5 bytes and the next 100 bytes to the file recover.txt. You can found out your partition device's name with for example mount but this is another story...

grep -a -B5 -A100 "stone.log" /dev/sda4 > recover.txt

The upper information is for ext3 file system, for others there may be exists better tools.

You may only find parts of the file but this is better than nothing.

Free Software Sticker Book

Do you want a "Powered by Ubuntu" or "Linux" sticker on your PC? Then the Free Software Sticker Book is for you! You select from hundreds of stickers for printing and sticking on your Laptop / PC / anything!

Tracker beats Google Desktop for me

I have broken up with Google Desktop. I deleted it's cache a month ago to gain some free space. I restarted it after that and it still did it's first time index for about 3 weeks! So I removed it and enabled Tracker (I disabled it when it came with Gutsy because I was using Google Desktop that time for a while). It still indexing but it indexed more files than google's in a few hours and my computer was usable during that!

Update: It have finished indexing my 150.000+ files in less than 24 hours.

Neonomad

"refers, very generally, to people who take their work with them"

It's a lifestyle when you have no office and work with a laptop and wireless connections whenever you are, in parks, coffees, in your car at a parking. Usually programmers web 2.0 workers, managers do this.

I am a neonomad when the exams arrive, I have my stuff to learn and go away from home, away from my PC, any my refrigerator. I have something to drink and some little to eat (yup I eat a lot when I have to learn) and I go to a park or drive to a quiet place.

Nowadays I am thinking about a new laptop and 3G for my work...

The Day The Routers Died...

The Day The Routers Died...

(a song performed by the secret-wg in the closing plenary of the RIPE 55 conference)

a long long time ago
i can still remember
when my laptop could connect elsewhere

and i tell you all there was a day
the network card i threw away
had a purpose - and worked for you and me....

But 18 years completely wasted
with each address we've aggregated
the tables overflowing
the traffic just stopped flowing....

And now we're bearing all the scars
and all my traceroutes showing stars...
the packets would travel faster in cars...
the day....the routers died

Chorus (ALL!!!!!)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we'd better give it a try
I suppose we'd better give it a try

Now did you write an RFC
That dictated how we all should be
Did we listen like we should that day

Now were you back at RIPE fifty-four
Where we heard the same things months before
And the people knew they'd have to change their ways....

And we - knew that all the ISPs
Could be - future proof for centuries

But that was then not now
Spent too much time playing WoW

ooh there was time we sat on IRC
Making jokes on how this day would be
Now there's no more use for TCP
The day the routers died...

Chorus (chime in now)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we'd better give it a try
I suppose we'd better give it a try

I remember those old days I mourn
Sitting in my room, downloading porn
Yeah that's how it used to be....

When the packets flowed from A to B
via routers that could talk IP
There was data..that could be exchanged between you and me....

Oh but - I could see you all ignore
The fact - we'd fill up IPv4
But we all lost the nerve
And we got what we deserved!

And while...we threw our network kit away
And wished we'd heard the things they say
Put all our lives in disarray

The day...the routers died...

Chorus (those silent will be shot)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we'd better give it a try
I suppose we'd better give it a try

Saw a man with whom I used to peer
Asked him to rescue my career
He just sighed and turned away..

I went down to the net cafe
that I used to visit everyday
But the man there said I might as well just leave...

And now we've all lost our purpose..
my cisco shares completely worthless...

No future meetings for me
At the Hotel Krasnapolsky

and the men that make us push and push
Like Geoff Huston and Randy Bush
Should've listened to what they told us....
The day...the routers....died

Chorus (time to lose your voice)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55
Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die
IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh
But I spose we'd better give it a try
I suppose we'd better give it a try

Perl's 20th birthday

Today is the 20th birthday of Perl!

Larry Wall released version 1.0 of Perl on 1987 december 18. on comp.sources.misc newsgroup. It become one of the best (or the best) programing language for parsing text with it's regular expressions. And one of my favorite language. The world wouldn't be the same without it!

Let's check out perl.com and cpan.org!

Wayback Machine

Wanna see a web page in the past? You know that something was there for example 1 years ago? Let's check it on the Wayback Machine! It's a web archive, containing about 2 billion pages with it's versions from the past (since 1996) 95 billion.

For example Ubuntu.com was something like this at 2007.06.12.

Pendrivelinux

Check out Pendrivelinux.com if you want to install Linux on a pen drive / USB stick to be able to boot it whenever you are (with USB boot capable PCs) . These small Linux installations are persistent eg. you can save your settings and files on it. A pen drive around 2-4G large is suitable for everyday use.

SID (Commodore 64) music

These may make you have good memories! On Linux get sidplay for playing them!

Package of the day: imapsync

I have to migrate around 50 users' mailboxes from one server to another. There is IMAP on both. I have found the program imapsync which is like haven for me. It is a command-line tool, and it does the job for me very well.

Greylisting

I use greylisting on my server. I use a MySQL implementation decribed here originated to Johannes Berg.

I use it for a while so I can give some stats about it. It blocked 92% of the mails so they were spam. It had let pass a few of it, but I also use spamassassin that blocks them. Only about 1 per week lands in my INBOX. It was 10-20 before greylisting.

Conclusion: greylisting is good!

Open Flash Chart

I found a nice project Open Flash Chart, which is a Chart displayer in Flash. You can make great looking charts (line, bar, pie) to your webpage with minimal effort. (I have made my first chart to my web-page in 5 minutes!)

Let the next image talk instead of me:


Man, I hate Flash (I don't like flashing, rolling, noisy things on the web.) but I already use this thing in one of my web-pages!