Linux Server Security Secrets and Administration

How to obtain the flash videos in Firefox 4

2011-04-30T21:20:00.001-03:00

Flash videos were stored in /tmp/FlashXXXX and i was able to copy them to another place like cp /tmp/FlashXXX ~/Desktop/new.video.mpeg.

Since Firefox 4 i thought for a moment that everything changed and my happy days were over but i was wrong, i remembered that with Linux there are no sad days.

How to obtain the flash videos with Firefox 4:

When the video already finished loading in the browser (being Youtube or any other), do this:

ps -ef | grep libflashplayer.so | grep -v grep 

walter   20040 19812 9 11:52 ?        00:53:34 /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.17/plugin-container /home/walter/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so 19812 plugin true

Now, with the PID, inspect what it is opening:

root@talento:~# lsof -p 20040 | grep Flash
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/walter/.gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
plugin-co 20040 walter   16u   REG        8,2 1249930 21708868 /tmp/FlashXXQANNm2 (deleted)
root@talento:~#

You are interested in the file descriptor id, these are the file descriptors from that process:

root@talento:~# ls -la /proc/20040/fd/
total 0
dr-x------ 2 walter walter 0 2011-04-30 21:12 .
dr-xr-xr-x 7 walter walter 0 2011-04-30 21:06 ..
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 0 -> /dev/null
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 1 -> /home/walter/.xsession-errors
l-wx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 10 -> pipe:[18679239]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 11 -> pipe:[18679240]
l-wx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 12 -> pipe:[18679240]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 13 -> socket:[18679243]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 14 -> /home/walter/.mozilla/firefox/2te1hj2x.default/cert8.db
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 15 -> /home/walter/.mozilla/firefox/2te1hj2x.default/key3.db
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:15 16 -> /tmp/FlashXXQANNm2 (deleted)
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:16 17 -> pipe:[19890054]
l-wx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:16 18 -> pipe:[19890054]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:16 19 -> pipe:[19890055]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 2 -> /home/walter/.xsession-errors
l-wx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:16 20 -> pipe:[19890055]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:16 21 -> socket:[19890059]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 22 -> socket:[19338003]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 23 -> anon_inode:inotify
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 3 -> socket:[18679123]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 4 -> anon_inode:[eventpoll]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 42 -> socket:[18679124]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 5 -> socket:[18679236]
lrwx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 6 -> socket:[18679237]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 7 -> pipe:[18679238]
l-wx------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 8 -> pipe:[18679238]
lr-x------ 1 walter walter 64 2011-04-30 21:12 9 -> pipe:[18679239]

What is of our interest if the Flash process, displayed in the previous lines.

Now, you can copy the file to a safe place, because, if you close Firefox, those files are released and lost.

cp /proc/20040/fd/16 ~/Desktop/A.Movie.mpeg

Now if you want to put everything in a script:

root@talento:~# cat saveflash.sh
#!/bin/bash

PID=`ps -ef | grep libflashplayer.so | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`
FD=`lsof -p $PID | grep Flash | awk '{print $4}' | sed 's/u$//'`
cp /proc/$PID/fd/$FD "$1"

And remember, you can "invite me a coffee" :)

Yahoo KDD Cup

2011-02-26T12:21:00.000-03:00

In a few days starts the Yahoo KDD Cup, i'll participate in this one. It is an interesting task where the rate of users has to be predicted. The prediction task is based on previous users behaviour, finding patterns and common music/artists/genre and profiling new customers based on the music they do like. I hope i have fun during this competition and keep learning from these experiences.

If possible, i would keep doing all my mining/machine learning scripts in perl, so i will share the solutions for the problems i had to face during this experience.

I wanted to search an id inside an array, to do this i did:

open TODO, "todo" or die $!;

my @todo = ;

close TODO;

@array = ();

foreach (@todo) {

   my ($id, $type) = split(/\t/);

   chop ($type);

   $array[$id] = $type;

}

my ($id, $rank, $day, $time) = split(/\t/, $linea);

Installing R project for statistics in Fedora Linux.

2010-06-27T13:49:00.001-03:00

Is is as easy as this:

[root@dyn8382 ~]# yum install R R-devel
[root@dyn8382 ~]# R
>install.packages("arules", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")

http://www.r-project.org/

Datamining with Linux

2010-06-03T12:29:00.001-03:00

I'm currently doing the Datamining Specialist course and i try to use open source solutions, and if not open source, linux solutions... because i am a unix user.

This is a list of software i recommend to try, i am studying some features and they are
all great:

WEKA (http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/)

Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or called from your own Java code. Weka contains tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization. It is also well-suited for developing new machine learning schemes.

The R Project for Statistical Computing (http://www.r-project.org/)
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Matlab (http://www.mathworks.com/)
This is a commercial software that can be used to create models of artificial neural networks and any kind of math problems.

dTree ( http://www.aispace.org/dTree/)
This tool demonstrates how to build a decision tree using a training data set and then use the tree to classify unseen examples in a test data set.

If you know some other soft, please post it and i'll try it.

VMplayer crash in fedora 12

2010-04-04T20:13:00.001-03:00

After installing VMplayer from the bundle, the 3.0.1 version i were surprised because it crashed just one second after running it. Thanks that another co-blogger posted the solution, too simple in fact:

cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib

mv libcurl.so.4 libcurl.so.4.old

Credits:

here and here

If you need to recompile the modules because some of them is failing, you can do it this way:

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

If you need more help and you want to get in touch with me Why not contact me ;-)

Errors compiling VMware Server on Fedora 12

2010-04-03T20:24:00.000-03:00

Hi! Today i downloaded vmware server to use it on my Linux workstation. I am using Fedora 12 with the latest kernel update so i had not much hope to compile the vmware kernel modules without some troubleshooting.

After solving the problems, here i share the solutions i hope to help you. If you find it useful, remember that you can Invite me a kaffee ! :)

1. Download the latest VMware workstation (It is free)
https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/p/activate.php?p=server20&lp=1&ext=1

Note: I downloaded the rpm version.

2. Install it:
yum install VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.rpm

3. Try to compile the modules:
vmware-config.pl

Ok.. in this moment a lot of warnings and errors appear between them, errors with vmnet, vmci, etc...

make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.32.10-90.fc12.i686'
Unable to build the vmnet module.

Unable to build the vmci module.

4. Patch the modules:

- Download from http://www.erdemap.com/store/2.6.32.10-90.fc12.vmmon.tar.gz
wget http://www.erdemap.com/store/2.6.32.10-90.fc12.vmmon.tar.gz

5. unzip & untar it.
6. execute the patch shell script *inspect it first, it is very VERY basic*
7. After installing the patches, execute the vmware-config.pl

Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                 [ OK ]
   Virtual ethernet                                        [ OK ]
   Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0                       [ OK ]
   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background)        [ OK ]
   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1                              [ OK ]
   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background)        [ OK ]
   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8                              [ OK ]
   NAT service on /dev/vmnet8                              [ OK ]
   VMware Server Authentication Daemon (background)        [ OK ]
   Shared Memory Available                                 [ OK ]
Starting VMware management services:
   VMware Server Host Agent (background)                   [ OK ]
   VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access
Starting VMware autostart virtual machines:

If you need more help and you want to get in touch with me
Why not contact me ;-)

Five Easy Ways to Secure Your Linux System

2010-03-30T22:50:00.000-03:00

On the heels of last week’s entry on using DenyHosts, and Nikto the week before that; I thought it appropriate to continue in the security vein with five more simple techniques that you can use to protect your systems. These include using account locking, limiting cron use, using DENY access to services, refusing root SSH logins and changing SSHD’s default port.

Keep reading..

Account Locking

Cron Restriction

Deny, Deny, Deny

Deny SSH by Root

Change the Default Port

Nice Free software video

2010-03-24T08:58:00.005-03:00

Error compiling cairomm

2010-02-26T14:16:00.000-03:00

While compiling cairomm i got this error:

configure.ac:37: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_DISABLE_STATIC
If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:38: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LIBTOOL_WIN32_DLL
configure.ac:39: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1

Solution:
Install libtool:

[root@dyn854450 ~]# yum install libtool

Badly formed XML, there is no tag

2010-02-26T13:50:00.001-03:00

Using glade-3 i got with this error/warning:

[walter@talent Projects]$ gtk-builder-convert uno.glade uno.xml

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/bin/gtk-builder-convert", line 772, in 

sys.exit(main(sys.argv))

File "/usr/bin/gtk-builder-convert", line 760, in main

conv.parse_file(input_filename)

File "/usr/bin/gtk-builder-convert", line 161, in parse_file

self._parse()

File "/usr/bin/gtk-builder-convert", line 233, in _parse

assert glade_iface, ("Badly formed XML, there is "

AssertionError: Badly formed XML, there is no  tag.

Try saving the file as a libglade project and then try again. It work'd for me.

TEDxBuenos Aires

2010-02-26T12:07:00.001-03:00

The famous TED conference'll take place in Buenos Aires. I'm already pre-registered.

http://tedxbuenosaires.org/?p=1001

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators

2010-02-04T09:09:00.002-03:00

One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function.
However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more.
The calculators also typically support the Reverse Polish notation (RPN). This is a prefix notation wherein every operator follows all of its operands. In other words, instead of pressing 6 + 8 and the enter key, in RPN you type in 6 8 +.

Keep reading +

Open source in 2010

2010-01-27T07:46:00.000-03:00

Is 2010 the "year of open source"? Probably not, but by the end of the year expect to see open source software everywhere.

Mobile Linux

2010 is going to be a huge year for open source software (OSS) in the mobile sector and we can expect to see OSS appearing on everything from mobile phones to netbooks to tablets.
Of course, thanks mostly to the open source Symbian operating system, open source is already the dominant player on mobile phones, despite the disproportional hype given to proprietary systems such as Apple's iPhone and RIM's Blackberry. But Nokia hasn't done a particularly good job of promoting Symbian's openness since it acquired it in 2008.
Google, on the other hand, has done wonders with its Android OS which is now right up there with the likes of the iPhone and is getting better all the time. Android will, without a doubt, be in the headlines throughout the coming year as Google takes other mobile makers on head-to-head.

+ Keep reading...

Fedora, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris Benchmarks

2010-01-26T13:16:00.002-03:00

With Debian GNU/kFreeBSD using the FreeBSD 7.2 kernel, we threw the full FreeBSD 7.2 operating system into the comparison mix. FreeBSD 8.0 was added in since that is the latest FreeBSD stable release at this time. OpenBSD 4.6 was used as another *BSD comparison while OpenSolaris 2009.06 was used to represent some Sun Solaris numbers. Fedora 12 provides a look at some of the latest Linux packages available more so than the Debian snapshot from 2010-01-14. The 64-bit versions of all operating systems were used during this testing process.

+ keep reading...

openSUSE Brings New Li-F-E To School

2010-01-22T16:58:00.000-03:00

With education budget trends resembling a ski slope (downhill) it only makes sense to look to open source for help. With the 11.2 release of openSUSE comes a separate project targeted at schools and school children.

openSUSE for Schools (or Linux for education aka Li-f-e) packs a huge number of applications targeted at all grade levels. Packages for both desktop and server are included. They've also provided things like Internet filtering software to help parents and educators protect kids from potential problems. For classroom use you'll find tools for creating a kiosk mode or live CD bootable on older machines.

+ Keep reading....

1. Desktop Options
2. Server Option
3. Applications Galore!

openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e represents a significant step forward in delivering the tools needed to support virtually any school or educational requirement.

Linux and USB 3.0

2010-01-22T11:17:00.000-03:00

The newest, fast interface, USB 3.0, is finally out, but only one operating system has native support for it: Linux.

Ever get tired of Windows people proclaiming how their operating system has device support for this, that, and the other thing and Linux doesn't? Well, now you have a perfect come-back. The newest, fast interface, USB 3.0 is out and only Linux has native support for it.

+ keep reading...

Linux started supporting USB 3.0 in the September 2009 release of the 2.6.31 Linux kernel. Neither Windows 7 nor Snow Leopard currently supports USB 3. Windows support? That will have to wait for Windows 7 SP1 ---whenever that shows up.

+ keep reading...

Users who have been around for a while may be saying what about Firewire, aka the IEEE 1394 interface standard. It's true that Firewire, Apple's name for their implementation for the technology, was faster than USB 2.0. Firewire 400 could reach a peak throughput of
400Mbps and 800 could, as you might have guessed, hit 800Mbps.

+ keep reading...

PERL on AIX 6.

2010-01-15T16:34:00.001-03:00

$ uname -a 

AIX aix6_103 1 6 00CE44E44C00

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

$ oslevel -s

6100-03-01-0921

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

$ ./hola.pl

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.

perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:

        LC_ALL = (unset),

        LC__FASTMSG = "true",

        LANG = "es_AR.8859-15"

    are supported and installed on your system.

perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

HOLAA!!

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

# This error is caused because perl has set by default a locale setting that has not been installed. Look at the "locale -a" command:

$ locale -a
C
POSIX
en_US.8859-15
en_US.ISO8859-1
en_US
team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

# So... the solution would be:

# 1) Install the locale configured in Perl or..

# 2) Set the LANG variable to the correct value:

$ echo $LANG

es_AR.8859-15

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

$ export LANG="en_US.8859-15"

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

$ ./hola.pl     

HOLAA!!

team02@aix6_103 [/home/team02]

Six office alternatives

2010-01-05T09:37:00.000-03:00

Microsoft will release Office 2010 in June but until then there are some great alternatives.
In June Microsoft will release a final version of its Office 2010 productivity suite. Naturally many users will upgrade, at substantial cost, to the latest version of the popular Office suite, but for those not so eager to hand over their money to Microsoft there are still many great alternatives. And they are free.

OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)
ABIWord (http://www.abisource.com)

Google Docs and spreadsheet (http://docs.google.com)
ThinkFree Office Online (http://www.thinkfree.com)
Zoho (http://www.zoho.com)
NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org)

Keep reading...

Open Source in 2010: Nine Predictions

2010-01-03T11:03:00.001-03:00

Even though this is the end of the decade only for those who can't count, retrospectives seem more common than predictions in the last days of 2009. Or maybe, after a year of recession, all the pundits are nervous about the future.

But, never being one to follow a trend or get nostalgic, I prefer to look ahead to what the next year holds for open source software. Everything always happens ten times faster in open source than in mainstream computing, but, even by open source standards, 2010 promises to be an interesting year.

Keep reading...

1) Complete Free Video Drivers Arrive

2) The Community Turns to a MySQL Fork

3) The Release of GNOME 3.0 Threatens a User Revolt

4) The Differences Between Free Software and Open Source Flare Up Again

5) Open Source Continues to Struggle with Feminism

6) Google Chrome OS Brings a Verdict on Cloud-Based Desktops

7) Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome Compete on the Browser Front

8) Raindrop and WAVE Fail to Find Users

9) The Nexus One Becomes A Geek Tool

Keep reading...

Ten Linux features Windows could do with

2010-01-03T01:41:00.000-03:00

Linux and Windows users may be polarised into rival camps, but there is no reason one operating system should not benefit by borrowing from the other, says Jack Wallen.

Keep reading...

1. Compiz
2. Multi-user
3. Log files
4. Centralised application installation
5. Cron
6. Regular release cycle
7. Root user
8. Pricing
9. Installed applications
10. Hardware detection

Keep reading...

What more should i do after installing Fedora 12 ?

2010-01-02T19:28:00.001-03:00

I gave some tips to do after installing Fedora 12:

http://serverlinux.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-should-i-do-after-installing.html

These steps should be done as superuser (root) or with a "sudo" in front of every command.

And now you can also do this to view plenty of media files with their codecs:

yum install mplayer mplayer-gui gecko-mediaplayer mencoder

yum install xine xine-lib-extras xine-lib-extras-freeworld

Navigate to: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ and download the packages

that matches your cpu architecture.  If you have a 32 bit processor, it may be

this file: all-20071007.tar.bz2.

You can also cut & paste this:

wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2

And then:

sudo tar -jxvf all-20071007.tar.bz2 --strip-components 1 -C /usr/lib/codecs/

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-livna

yum install libdvdcss

Joining multiple files with lxsplit

2010-01-02T10:46:00.000-03:00

I downloaded multiple files, they were splitted so i had to join them back. The files are commonly splitted to make it easier to download and to minimize the damage if the connection gets lost,
of course, we are not considering a normal FTP or SSH with resume capabilities.

1) First install the lxsplit
yum install lxsplit

2) Now it is time for some scripting:

for i in $(seq 1 9); do lxsplit -j M.part$i.rar.001; done

for i in $(seq 10 19); do lxsplit -j M.part$i.rar.001; done

And that is all.
Happy new year for everybody.

Best Linux releases of 2009

2009-12-31T13:37:00.000-03:00

The year ended with a flood of new Linux releases. Here are some of the best.
Karmic also included by default Ubuntu One, Canonical's file synchronising and collaborating software. It is very similar to the Dropbox service which allows users to automatically synchronise desktop files with an online service as they work. Ubuntu One's advantage is that it is tightly integrated into the Ubuntu desktop. It's downside is that it only works on Ubuntu at present.

+ keep reading

Mandriva Linux 2010 (http://www.mandriva.com)

OpenSuse 11.2 (http://en.opensuse.org)
Fedora 12 (http://fedoraproject.org)
Linux Mint (http://www.linuxmint.com)

+ keep reading

Fixing Your Holiday Photos With GIMP

2009-12-30T11:09:00.000-03:00

The holidays are such a great time for getting together with family and friends.I bet you take a camera along. Or better yet, maybe there's a shiny new camera waiting for you under the tree. I know I take lots of photos over the holiday season.

But you know what? A lot of my photos don't come out very good. Shooting conditions at those family get-togethers sometimes aren't the best, and you're probably distracted by watching Uncle Albert trying to sneak another...

+ Keep reading..

How security will look in 10 years

2009-12-30T01:56:00.000-03:00

Tom Espiner surveys the security landscape for the shape of things to come.

Nevertheless, I shall bite the bullet and make my predictions for the security landscape at the end of next year and in 10 years' time. Just make sure you keep a copy of this article, ready for ridicule in 2020.

1. Ubiquitous cloud computing
2. ID and access management
3. Public sector moves online
4. The internet of things
5. Mesh networks
6. Mobile botnets
7. Super-fast broadband
8. DNSSEC
9. IPv6
10. Cyber warfare and industrial espionage

Keep reading...