I just upgraded my server from FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE to 8.0-RELEASE.
The upgrade steps are very clearly stated in the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE Announcement.
Everything went as planned, until the penultimate step, where I was supposed to follow Colin Percival’s instructions and rebuild all my ports before executing the final: freebsd-update install.
Instead of rebuilding my ports, I just executed the last step (# freebsd-update install), which rendered *all* of my third party application unusable. This of course includes bash(1)! I was now unable to start a new bash session, hence unable to start new ssh connections, as my user’s default shell is /usr/bin/local/bash.
Continue reading “FreeBSD: keep root’s shell inside /bin!”
I have read many tutorials that explain how to install a debian on the G1 phone (running Google’s Android too).
Here is a compilation of what I have done on my Samsung Galaxy (i7500) in order to get a root access and install a debian system on it.
1- Root access
2- Debian installation
Continue reading “Running Debian on a Samsung Galaxy under Android”
As I heard a lot about NetBSD lately, especially with NetBSD5.0 being released, I thought I would give it a try.
I admit, I had a preconceived idea of what I was going to face. I thought I would have to go a couple of time through the installer, try to understand how to use the partitioner, etc. But I was wrong. Ten minutes after booting up the iso image, my first NetBSD was up and running!
Even though all this documentation is available in the NetBSD guide, here are all the steps I went through to install my machine.
My installation was done using kvm-84 on a debian (testing) machine.
Continue reading “My first shot of NetBSD (5.0)”
Hello, it’s me again!
Dans un tout autre contexte, je vous propose d’élaborer un exemple d’insécurité informatique sur les machines Windows (XP ou Vista) qui sont branchées sur Internet.
Il y a quelques jours, des chercheurs de l’université de UC Santa Barbara, ont publié un rapport résumant la méthode de prise de contrôle d’un Botnet appelé TORPIG.
Continue reading “Windows, botnets et vos données privées”
This is just a small post that may help those who are trying to install the wifi modules of a BCM4328 card on a debian OS using ndiswrapper.
The debian wiki explains very well how to install the necessary windows drivers using ndiswrapper, so I won’t go into details. Here are the main steps:
$ sudo apt-get install module-assistant wireless-tools
$ sudo m-a prepare
$ sudo m-a a-i ndiswrapper
$ sudo ndiswrapper -i /path /to/your/driver/DRIVER/bcmwl5.inf
$ sudo ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4328) present (alternate driver: ssb)
Continue reading “Debian, BCM4328 and ndiswrapper”
I don’t know how you feel about it, but when my hand touches the touchpad “mouse pad” while I am typing on my keyboard, and changes to windows focus or the mouse positioning, it annoys me, A LOT!
So here’s what I did to get over this issue on my debian box. It shouldn’t be very different on other distributions. (I’ll update this post in case I ever try it somewhere else)
Continue reading “Disable touchpad while typing on keyboard”
I have added a new page to my blog today. It lists commands/tips I collected over the past couple of month. I will be updating it every once in while.
Please don’t hesitate to comment suggesting/correcting commands :)
I hope this can be useful!
Cheers,
Ignace M -ghantoos-
A week ago, I encountered some space problems on my FreeBSD system during a system wide portupgrade. Fortunately, I had backed up my system just before the adventure, so my system was saved.
The procedure I followed to restore my data, was:
1- recreate my partitioning, giving 10 more Gigs to the system, using the FreeBSD installation CD
2- copy all the data on it
Since I backed up my FreeBSD system on an external ext3 hard drive, I needed to copy it back from “outside” my freebsd system. My first option was to use Fixit from the FreeBSD installation CD set, but I had problems mounting my partition because of the inode block size of my ext3 partition. Bref. I decided to mount everything from my Linux (ubuntu) system, and copy everything back from there!
I only way to do this was to recompile my kernel with the right “UFS write” flag. And it JUST WORKED!! I copied back __ALL__ my FreeBSD system on the new slices, rebooted my machine, and here I am writing this post from my old-new FreeBSD system! :)
Continue reading “Mounting UFS in read/write under Linux (debian)”
As I needed to minimize yum’s output for a project I was working on, I thought it was just about changing the debugging level. But I found out yum’s debugging level could add information, but not minimize it. So wrote a small python script that does the job.
What I wanted to do, is replace yum’s output with a very simple progress bar showing only the different stages of a yum procedure (dependencies/download/install/remove/update).
The script is quite easy to use:
Usage:
$ yum-parser.py (-u | --update)
$ yum-parser.py (-i | --install) package_list
$ yum-parser.py (-r | --remove) package_list
$ yum-parser.py (-s | --search) 'regexp'
$ yum-parser.py (-h | --help) package_list
For a reason I still ignore, when redirecting yum’s generic output to a file (e.g. yum -y install irssi 2>&1 > yumoutput), the “Downloading Packages” part doesn’t appear. To remedy this problem, I had to insert some threading to have a “patience bar” (i.e. back and forth [ = ]) while the downloads are processed.
You can find the source code here.
Continue reading “YUM output parser (yum-parser.py)”
