You can get the packages by running the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
    'http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ main'
$ wget https://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins lastfm

Please remember to disable the old Last.fm plug-in before enabling mine (New Style Last.fm Scrobbler). Also note that my plug-in requires the lastfm client to work correctly.

If you are using Ubuntu Unity and you are missing the last.fm client’s systray icon, then take a look at Whitelisting the Last.fm Tray Icon in Ubuntu Unity.

Read more about the plugin and get the source code at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

You can get the packages by running the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
    'http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ main'
$ wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins lastfm

Please remember to disable the old Last.fm plug-in before enabling mine (New Style Last.fm Scrobbler). Also note that my plug-in requires the lastfm client to work correctly.

If you are using Ubuntu Unity and you are missing the last.fm client’s systray icon, then take a look at Whitelisting the Last.fm Tray Icon in Ubuntu Unity.

Read more about the plugin and get the source code at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

Run the following command in a terminal:

$ gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist \
    "$(gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist | \
       sed -e "s:\[:\['Last.fm' ,:")"

After logging out and back in, the last.fm client will show up in the systray again.

You can get the package by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ karmic main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ karmic main

to /etc/apt/sources.list.
After adding those lines, do:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install rhythmbox

The repositories are signed with my GPG key which can be imported into your apt keyring with

$ wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

Please remember to disable the old Last.fm plug-in before enabling mine (New Style Last.fm Scrobbler). Also please note that my plug-in requires the lastfm client to work correctly.

Read more about the plugin and get the source code at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

You can get the package by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ jaunty main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ jaunty main

to /etc/apt/sources.list.
After adding those lines, do:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install rhythmbox

The repositories are signed with my GPG key which can be imported into your apt keyring with

$ wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

Please remember to disable the old Last.fm plug-in before enabling mine (New Style Last.fm Scrobbler). Also please note that my plug-in requires the lastfm client to work correctly.

Read more about the plugin and get the source code at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

Ubuntu Hardy user can get the package by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ hardy main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ hardy main

to /etc/apt/sources.list. Ubuntu Intrepid users should use

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ intrepid main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ intrepid main

instead.
After adding those lines, you can install the package with:

$ aptitude update
$ aptitude install rhythmbox

The repositories are signed with my GPG key which can be imported into your apt keyring with

$ wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

Please remember to disable the old Last.fm plug-in before enabling mine (New Style Last.fm Scrobbler). Also please note that my plug-in requires the lastfm client to work correctly.

Read more about the plugin and get the source code at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

• 040-decorator.patch
  This patch implements metacity-like raising and lowering of windows by pressing the left or middle mouse button on a window’s decoration. Useful if you don’t use raise-on-click or auto-raise.
  References: Ubuntu bug, OpenCompositing bug
• 041-shadow_offset.patch
  This patches makes the shadow x/y offset settings work, they had no effect up to now. The patch also pushes the upper limit for the shadow radius to 48.0 because that is what the decorator can handle.
  References: Ubuntu bug, OpenCompositing bug
• 042-smart_placement.patch
  This patch fixes the client size calculation for smart window placement. Without this fix smart placement insists on keeping about 17 pixels of free space on the right viewport edge.
  References: Ubuntu bug, OpenCompositing bug

All patches are for Ubuntu’s current compiz packages for Hardy Heron.

As for my original plan, I will post the Compiz article on the weekend!

You can get it by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ feisty main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/rhythmbox/ feisty main

to /etc/apt/sources.list. If you are using Ubuntu Gutsy, just replace feisty with gutsy in these two lines.
Then upgrade/install rhythmbox:

$ aptitude update
$ aptitude install rhythmbox

The repository is signed with my GPG key. The key can be imported into your apt keyring with

$ wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

If you are going to use the Last.fm integration of Rhythmbox, make sure you only enable one of the two plug-ins! If you want to use the new-style plug-in, you need the lastfm client. The latest beta package for Ubuntu is available on the Last.fm beta forum.

• Start the last.fm client in the system tray
• Try to start last.fm (beta client) before lastfm (stable client)
• Reduce bogus RESUME/PAUSE commands
• Miscellaneous small bug fixes

Read more about the plugin and get the source code or an Ubuntu package at Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style.

If the Rhythmbox developers are interested, I’ll start to merge this new plug-in with the old one that is bundled with Rhythmbox.

I have written a new last.fm plug-in for Rhythmbox today. Instead of scrobbling directly like the old one, it submits tracks via the lastfm client application. The client displays additional information about the currently playing song and you can love and tag the song with it.

The source code is available as a patch against Rhythmbox 2.90.1 (git snapshot 20120108): scrobbler-v3t.patch
You can apply this patch with:

patch -NEp1 < ~/scrobbler-v3t.patch

Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot users can get precompiled packages from my APT repositories by running these commands in a terminal:

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
    '/static/debian/rhythmbox/ main'
$ wget /static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins lastfm

To enable the new plug-in go to Edit » Plugins. Disable the “Last.fm” plug-in and enable the “New Style Last.fm Scrobbler”.
If you enable this scrobbler plug-in, you have to disable the old Last.fm plug-in! Otherwise you will have two plug-ins which will both submit to last.fm at the same time. Only use one at a time!

Note that this first version of the plug-in does not start the lastfm client automatically! It will scrobble only if you start the client manually. I will fix this in the next version.

Feedback, postive as well as negative, is very welcome. If you want to report a bug, please include the output of “rhythmbox -D rb-scrobbler-plugin” and the tags of the song you wanted to scrobble.
If you want to report a crash, providing a gdb backtrace would be nice.

You might also want to take a look at this thread on the last.fm development forum.

May 20th, 2007: v2 of the plug-in is available now. lastfm gets launched automatically now.
May 22nd, 2007: v3 is available. The patch and the Ubuntu package have been updated: Changes since v2
May 25th, 2007: v3a: Updated patch and deb for the new Ubuntu Gutsy version of Rhythmbox.
May 29th, 2007: v3b: Updated patch and deb for the new Rhythmbox release.
May 31st, 2007: Updated patch Ubuntu package.
June 1st, 2007: Added APT repositories for Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy.
June 28th, 2007: v3c: Updated patch and debs for the new Rhythmbox release.
August 16th, 2007: v3d: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.2.
November 14th, 2007: v3e: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.3. Add Hardy repository.
November 30th, 2007:Updated gusty and hardy builds. Include fixed Croatian po file from Franko Burolo.
February 7th, 2008: v3f: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.4. (Thanks to Iain Buchanan for notifying me of the missing patch!)
May 31st, 2008: v3g: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.5. (The debs for hardy have been at 0.11.5 for quite a while).
October 15st, 2008: v3h: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.6. Ubuntu packages are available for i386, amd64, and lpia now.
October 20st, 2008: v3i: Updated patch to apply cleanly to the real Rhythmbox 0.11.6 release. v3h was for a later version from SVN.
April 24th, 2009: v3j: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.0. Provide debs for Ubuntu Jaunty.
November 4th, 2009: v3k: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.5 and provide debs for Ubuntu Karmic.
November 29th, 2009: v3l: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.6 and provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid too.
April 25th, 2010: v3m: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8. Provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid.
Jun 3rd, 2010: v3n: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100602. Provide debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
Jun 13th, 2010: v3o: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100611. Updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
October 10th, 2010: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.1. Provide updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
April 4th, 2011: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.3. Provide debs for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04.
October 16th, 2011: v3r: Updated patch for new plug-in infrastructure in Rhythmbox 2.90.1. Provide debs for Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10.
December 23rd, 2011: v3s: Updated patch. Provide debs for Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.
January 14th, 2012: v3t: Update patch and debs for Ubuntu Precise.

Read the complete SSL setup guide here: Securing WordPress 2 Admin Access With SSL

Regarding WordPress security, please note that there still is a possible exploit for 2.0.6: New WordPress exploit also affects version 2.0.6
Make sure you use safe a PHP version and set register_globals = off.

• Prepare the chroot directory. It’s recommended to use an extra partition/filesystem for it. I will use /srv/mysql (which is an LVM2 partition with an ext3 filesystem on my system) for the rest of the text.
• Stop MySQL:

  /etc/init.d/mysql stop

• Copy the databases to new location:

  mkdir -p /srv/mysql/var/lib
  cp -a /var/lib/mysql /srv/mysql/var/lib

• Copy this script to /etc/default/mysql-chroot
• Edit /etc/init.d/mysql:
  • Source the mysql-chroot script somewhere at the top:

    …
    test -x /usr/sbin/mysqld || exit 0
    
    . /etc/default/mysql-chroot
    
    SELF=$(cd $(dirname $0); pwd -P)/$(basename $0)
    …

  • Fix the disk space check:

    …
    # check for diskspace shortage
    datadir=`mysqld_get_param datadir`
    if LC_ALL=C BLOCKSIZE= df --portability $CHROOT_DIR$datadir/. | tail -n 1 | awk '{ exit ($4>4096) }'; then
      log_failure_msg "$0: ERROR: The partition with $datadir is too full!"
    …

  • Run setup_chroot right in the start section:

    …
    if mysqld_status check_alive nowarn; then
      echo "...already running."
    else
      setup_chroot
      /usr/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 &
    …

  • Somehow /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid disappears after each start. We have to create it each time, otherwise the stop command won’t work properly:

    …
    if mysqld_status check_alive warn; then
      log_end_msg 0
      ln -sf $CHROOT_DIR/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid \
                     /var/run/mysqld
      # Now start mysqlcheck or whatever the admin wants.
      output=$(/etc/mysql/debian-start)
    …

• In /etc/mysql/debian.cnf, change the two socket lines to:

  socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

• In /etc/mysql/my.cnf:
  • Change the socket line in the [client] section to:

    socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

    Don’t change the socket lines in the other sections!

  • Add

    chroot = /srv/mysql

    to the [mysqld] section.

• Prepend /srv/mysql to the log files listed in /etc/logrotate.d/mysql-server
• Make /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade_shell use the chrooted socket. Note: Currently these changes must be made each time mysql gets upgraded because upgrades override this file!

  …
  --password=*) password=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
  --socket=*) socket=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
  --ldata=*|--data=*|--datadir=*) DATADIR=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
  …
  fi
  $bindir/mysql_fix_privilege_tables --silent --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket $args
  exit 0
  …
  check_args="--check-upgrade --all-databases --auto-repair --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket"
  …
  $bindir/mysql_fix_privilege_tables --silent --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket $args
  …

• Start MySQL:

  /etc/init.d/mysql start

• Check /var/log/syslog for errors ;-)

As a result of this move, there are now packages of Sun’s Java for Debian and Ubuntu.
The packaging code is largely based on the code we are using for Blackdown Java for some years. The code is available under the MIT license from the jdk-distros project on java.net. (More info on Tom Marble’s blog.)

I’m glad Sun finally opens Java up a bit after years of restrictive licensing.

After some searching I found out that you apparently need lvm2 2.02.01 or later and devmapper 1.02.02 or later to successfully remove snapshot volumes now. Unfortunately neither of these versions is available for sarge from Debian or backports.org yet, so I had to make my own backports.
As it turned out (see below), it is also necessary to use 2.6.16.12 or to apply the patch from this email to older 2.6.16 versions in order to reliably remove snapshots.

If you are brave enough, you can get the backported packages by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/lvm/ sarge main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/lvm/ sarge main

to /etc/apt/sources.list.

The repository contains debs for devmapper, dlm, lvm2, and lvm-common. The Release files is signed with my GPG key. If you have a recent apt version, you can authenticate the packages after importing the key with apt-key:

wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

April 15th, 2006: In about 40 backup cycles I’ve seen three lockups with 2.6.16.2 now. Until snapshots get fixed in 2.6.16, I’d recommend to stay with 2.6.15. I’m using 2.6.15.3 again now.

April 24th, 2006: Added note about “dm snapshot: fix kcopyd destructor” patch from Alasdair G Kergon. With this patch snapshots work fine for me again.

May 2nd, 2006: Alasdair G Kergon’s patch has been included in 2.6.16.12.

The built-in sound card is completely unsupported at this time. As I did not feel like writing a driver for it, I plugged in an old USB sound device (Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX). At first this did not work, I just got oopses. But with a small fix (included in the kernel since 2.6.15.5) it started to work.

Next I tried to set up ALSA‘s dmix plug-in with S16 which resulted in horrible crackling: The byte swapping code was broken.

Also, ALSA’s softvol plug-in (not strictly necessary but nice to have with GNOME’s volume control applet) didn’t work, it did not support any format available with snd-usb-audio on big-endian machines.

Here are the fixes for these two problems (against alsa-lib-1.0.11rc3):

• alsa-dmix-fix.patch
• alsa-softvol.patch

If somebody is interested, here is the USB-Audio.conf I use with my Audigy 2 NX.

By the way: Is it normal that the dmix plug-in consumes 100% CPU?

April 9th, 2006: The patches have been integrated into alsa-libs 1.0.11rc4, the 100% CPU issue is fixed in that version too.
There’s also a ALSA driver for the chip in the PowerMac Quad now, see this mail from Johannes Berg.

The situation has not changed much since WordPress 1.5: WordPress 2.0 still does not support HTTPS access to the admin area when the rest of the blog is served via normal HTTP and I still do not like logging in to my server over unencrypted connections, especially not when using public WLANs. Getting around this WordPress limitation requires quite a few steps:

The Goal

All communication involving passwords or authentication cookies should be done over HTTPS connections. wp-login.php and the wp-admin directory should only be accessible over HTTPS.
Normal reading access, as well as comments, tracebacks, and pingbacks still should go over ordinary HTTP.

The Plan

• Add an HTTPS virtual host that forwards requests to the HTTP virtual host
• Modify WordPress to send secure authentication cookies, so cookies never get sent over insecure connections accidentally
• Require a valid certificate on HTTPS clients. That means to log in to WordPress you need both a valid certificate and a valid password. If someone manages to get your password, he still can not login because he does not have a valid certificate.

The Implementation

Note: This documentation assumes a Debian sarge installation with Apache 2. Some things, in particular Apache module related ones, will be different on other systems.
The server used throughout the instructions is example.org/192.0.34.166. The server’s DocumentRoot is /blog and WordPress resides in /blog/wp. The value of WordPress’ home option is ‘http://example.org&/#8217; and the value of its site_url option is ‘http://example.org/wp’.

• Prepare the SSL certificates:
  • Generate your own certificate authority (CA) if you don’t have one already (I’m using the makefile from OpenSSL Certificate Authority Setup for managing mine) and import it into your browser.
  • Generate a certificate for the SSL server and certify it with your private CA.
  • Generate a certificate for your browser and certify it with your private CA. Most browsers expect a PKCS#12 file, so generate one with

    $ openssl pkcs12 -export -clcerts \
        -in blogclient.cert \
        -inkey blogclient.key \
        -out blogclient.p12

    Then import blogclient.p12 into your browser.

• Make WordPress SSL-ready:
  Apply this patch to the WordPress code. It makes the following changes:
  • Use secure authentication cookies in wp_setcookie()
  • Make check_admin_referer() work with HTTPS URLs
  • Use HTTPS URLs for notification mails
  • Use HTTPS URLS for redirects to wp-login.php
  • Only allow XML-RPC logins from the local host (ie. the HTTPS proxy)
  • Add the Mark-as-Spam feature from trunk

  The patch is against svn version 3825 of WordPress (ie. WordPress 2.0.3), when you apply it to a newer version, you will likely get some harmless ‘Hunk succeeded’ message. If you are getting ‘Hunk FAILED’ message, just send me note and I’ll update the patch.

• Enable the necessary Apache modules:
  • Install mod_proxy_html. It will be used to replace absolute ‘http://example.org&/#8217; HTTP URLs in the WordPress output with ‘https://example.org&/#8217; HTTPS URLs:

    $ aptitude install libapache2-mod-proxy-html

    The module gets enabled automatically after installation.

  • Enable mod_proxy and mod_ssl

    $ a2enmod proxy
    $ a2enmod ssl

    Debian provides sane default configurations for both modules. You might want to take a look at the configuration files (ssl.conf and proxy.conf) nevertheless.
    I have changed SSLCipherSuite to

    TLSv1:SSLv3:!SSLv2:!aNULL:!eNULL:!NULL:!EXP:!DES:!MEDIUM:!LOW:@STRENGTH

    in ssl.conf in order to just allow TLS v1 and SSL v3 ciphers which provide strong encryption and authentication (see ciphers(1)).

  • If you are compressing WordPress output (that is if you enabled the ‘WordPress should compress articles (gzip) if browsers ask for them’ option) then also enable mod_headers:

    $ a2enmod headers

• Configure Apache to listen on the HTTPS port

  $ cat > /etc/apache2/conf.d/ssl.conf << EOF
  <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
  	Listen 443
  </IfModule>
  EOF

• Modify the blog virtual host to limit access to wp-login.php and wp-admin to the local host. Also completely deny access to files which should never be accessed directly. Here is an example: 10-wp2-example.org
• Now setup the HTTPS virtual server: 20-wp2-example.org-ssl
  If you are compressing WordPress output you have to enable the RequestHeader line.
• Enable the site and restart Apache

  $ a2ensite 20-blog-ssl
  $ /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

• Remove the old WP cookies from your browser
• Test the new setup!

February 1st, 2006: wp2-ssl.patch updated for WordPress 2.0.1

March 11st, 2006: WordPress 2.0.2 has been released, fixing some security issues. The HTTPS patch still applies fine to that version.

March 19th, 2006: Updated wp2-ssl.patch. Changes: Fix bug in list-manipulation.php, use HTTPS for ‘Login’ and ‘Register’ links, backport ‘Mark-as-Spam’ feature from trunk

May 1st, 2006: WordPress 2.0.3 has been released. Here is the updated wp2-ssl.patch.

July 29th, 2006: WordPress 2.0.4 has been released, fixing some security issues. Here is an updated version of the wp2-ssl.patch.

January 12st, 2007: wp2-ssl.patch updated for 2.0.6 and 2.0.7-RC1

January 15st, 2007: WordPress 2.0.7 has been released. The patch still applies fine to that version.

The issue isn’t Blackdown-specific. Sun released an advisory too.

Thanks to Matthias Klose, Debian packages for 1.4.2-03 are available too. Just add something like

deb ftp://ftp.tux.org/java/debian/ sarge non-free

to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

The Release files are signed with the Blackdown Java-Linux Package Signing Key. If you have recent apt version you can use this key to authenticate our Debian packages. Just import the key with apt-key:

$ wget http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/java2-status/gpg.asc
$ apt-key add gpg.asc

The lack of security support was one of the main problems with “testing”. You had to pull security fixes from “unstable” or even build your own packages to keep it secure.

I hope they have the manpower to keep up with security issues. Debian’s main security team, which only provides updates for the “stable” distribution, had some problems over the last months.

The official sarge installer still uses a 2.4 kernel by default but includes a 2.6 kernel that can be used by booting with "install26" or "expert26". But even that kernel, 2.6.8, is too old for the Inspiron 9300. It still doesn’t recognize the hard disk.

Ubuntu’s installer, which uses a 2.6.11 kernel, works fine on the machine. Although Ubuntu is a nice distribution, I like pure Debian better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any 2.6.11 based Debian installer on the net, even a question on debian-boot yielded nothing.

Anyhow, I finally had the time to build one myself:
debian-2.6.11-i386-businesscard.iso (GPG signature)

The image is basically a sarge businesscard ISO with a 2.6.11 kernel from Debian testing instead of the original 2.6.8 kernel.

Unlike with Ubuntu, installation on the Inspiron 9300 still doesn’t work out of the box but with a few tricks I was able to install Debian sarge:

• Boot with expert26
• When the installer starts up, switch to the second console (Alt-F2) and enter these commands:

  ~ # modprobe ide_generic
  ~ # modprobe ata_piix

  Without this the installer won’t find the CD-ROM.

• If network configuration via DHCP fails, just retry — worked for me
• When asked what version of Debian you would like to install, choose stable. Installing testing or unstable directly doesn’t work.
• It doesn’t matter which kernel you choose to install, we have to replace it with a 2.6.11 kernel later anyway
• Just before the first reboot, that means right after the installer ejects the CD-ROM, switch back to console two. Now download and install the latest available Debian kernel. I’ve used 2.6.11-1-686:

  ~ # mount -t proc proc /target/proc
  ~ # chroot /target
  sh-2.05b# cd /root
  sh-2.05b# wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/kernel-image-2.6.11-1-686_2.6.11-7_i386.deb
  sh-2.05b# dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.11-1-686_2.6.11-7_i386.deb
  …
  sh-2.05b# exit
  ~ # umount /target/proc

• Reboot (using the kernel just installed) and complete the installation
• Upgrade to testing or unstable
• Build a custom kernel (2.6.12 or newer). It’s probably a good idea to include some additional libata patches. To get the DVD drive working you have to apply this patch.

deb ftp://ftp.tux.org/java/debian/ sarge non-free

to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Upgrading is recommended as 1.4.2-02 contains an important security fix.

Users of other Java implementations based on Sun’s code should check for updates too.

Read more on the shorewall-devel list.

It is sad to hear that, Tom did a great job. Shorewall is one the best firewall tools available for Linux. I sincerely hope somebody will pick up the project and continue development. If I had the time I would do it myself.

As one can guess from the look of this site, I’m using WordPress as my blog engine. At this time WordPress does not support HTTPS access to the admin area when the rest of the blog is served via normal HTTP. This is a bit unfortunate. I do not like logging in to my server over unencrypted connections, especially not when using public WLANs. Getting around this WordPress limitation requires quite a few steps:

The Goal

All communication involving passwords or authentication cookies should be done over HTTPS connections. wp-login.php and the wp-admin directory should only be accessible over HTTPS.
Normal reading access, as well as comments, tracebacks, and pingbacks still should go over ordinary HTTP.

The Plan

• Add an HTTPS virtual host that forwards requests to the HTTP virtual host
• Modify WordPress to send secure authentication cookies, so cookies never get sent over insecure connections accidentally
• Require a valid certificate on HTTPS clients. That means to log in to WordPress you need both a valid certificate and a valid password. If someone manages to get your password, he still can not login because he does not have a valid certificate.

The Implementation

Note: This documentation assumes a Debian sarge installation with Apache 2. Some things, in particular Apache module related ones, will be different on other systems.
The server used throughout the instructions is example.org/192.0.34.166. The server’s DocumentRoot is /blog and WordPress resides in /blog/wp. The value of WordPress’ home option is ‘http://example.org&/#8217; and the value of its site_url option is ‘http://example.org/wp’.

• Prepare the SSL certificates:
  • Generate your own certificate authority (CA) if you don’t have one already (I’m using the makefile from OpenSSL Certificate Authority Setup for managing mine) and import it into your browser.
  • Generate a certificate for the SSL server and certify it with your private CA.
  • Generate a certificate for your browser and certify it with your private CA. Most browsers expect a PKCS#12 file, so generate one with

    $ openssl pkcs12 -export -clcerts \
        -in blogclient.cert \
        -inkey blogclient.key \
        -out blogclient.p12

    Then import blogclient.p12 into your browser.

• Make WordPress SSL-ready:
  Apply this patch to the WordPress code. It makes the following changes:
  • Use secure authentication cookies in wp_setcookie()
  • Make check_admin_referer() working with HTTPS URLs
  • Disable login over XML-RPC
• Enable the necessary Apache modules:
  • Install mod_proxy_html. It will be used to replace absolute ‘http://example.org&/#8217; HTTP URLs in the WordPress output with ‘https://example.org&/#8217; HTTPS URLs:

    $ aptitude install libapache2-mod-proxy-html

    The module gets enabled automatically after installation.

  • Enable mod_proxy and mod_ssl

    $ a2enmod proxy
    $ a2enmod ssl

    Debian provides sane default configurations for both modules. You might want to take a look at the configuration files (ssl.conf and proxy.conf) nevertheless.

  • If you are compressing WordPress output (that is if you enabled the ‘WordPress should compress articles (gzip) if browsers ask for them’ option) then also enable mod_headers:

    $ a2enmod headers

• Configure Apache to listen on the HTTPS port

  $ cat > /etc/apache2/conf.d/ssl.conf << EOF
  <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
  	Listen 443
  </IfModule>
  EOF

• Modify the blog virtual host to limit access to wp-login.php and wp-admin to the local host. Also completely deny access to files which should never be accessed directly. Here is an example: 10-example.org
• Now setup the HTTPS virtual server: 20-example.org-ssl
  If you are compressing WordPress output you have to enable the RequestHeader line.
• Enable the site and restart Apache

  $ a2ensite 20-blog-ssl
  $ /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

• Remove the old WP cookies from your browser
• Test the new setup!

A closer look at ipt_recent.c revealed that the time tests did not work like intended if one of the last hits was more than LONG_MAX jiffies ago or if the list of last hits contained empty slots and jiffies is greater than LONG_MAX.

To fix this, I replaced jiffies with seconds since ’00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC’. I have sent the patch to linux-kernel and netfilter-devel. The patch also includes some 64-bit fixes.

May 12th, 2005: The patch has been added to Linux 2.6.12-rc4-mm1

September 8th, 2005: Please note that only the 64-bit parts of my patch have made it into 2.6.12. I’m working on an updated fix for the time comparison problems which will hopefully get accepted for 2.6.14 or later.

September 12th, 2005: These issues have CAN numbers now: CAN-2005-2872 and CAN-2005-2873 (which supersede CAN-2005-2802)

July 10th, 2006: The jiffies issue is fixed in the vanilla kernel now. Also note that 2.6.18 will contain a rewrite of ipt_recent.c.

Yes, we are working on porting HotSpot and J2SE 5 to both ppc and ppc64!
There is no sponsor for this port, so nobody is working on it full-time currently. That means work is progressing slowly (but steadily), not much is working at this point.

I have not found a bug in these patches yet but I am pretty sure that it is no GCC bug.

Now if 2.6.12-rc kernels were just a tiny bit more stable on my G5…

As my old work-around (providing a uname command that returns ‘ppc’) didn’t work anymore, this forced me to look at the root cause of the problem.

I’ve finally found two issues with the PER_LINUX32 personality:

• uname(2) didn’t respect PER_LINUX32
• Child processes didn’t inherit PER_LINUX32

This patch for 2.6.12-rc1-mm4 fixes both issues:

$ uname -m
ppc64
$ linux32 uname -m
ppc
$ linux32 sh -c "uname -m"
ppc

Without the patch all three commands return ‘ppc64’.

I’m not completely satisfied with the MX1000. It’s too heavy and a bit too small for my hands. The notable exception is the Forward button, it’s too far away from my thumb. I’ve had the last problem with the IntelliMouse Explorer too. I still have a few IntelliMouse Optical on other machines, I really like that mouse. Perfect Size, good wheel, easily reachable side buttons. The only drawback is the annoying big red light.

Anyhow, back to the MX1000. Only a few changes to my configuration for the IntelliMouse Explorer where needed to get it working. Here’s my new configuration:

• /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

  Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "MX1000"
   Driver     "mouse"
   Option     "CorePointer"
   Option     "Protocol"        "evdev"
   Option     "Dev Name"        "Logitech USB Receiver"
   Option     "Buttons"         "12"
   Option     "ZAxisMapping"    "11 12 10 9"
   Option     "Resolution"      "800"
   Option     "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
  EndSection

• /etc/X11/Xmodmap:

  ! MX1000
  pointer = 1 2 3 8 9 10 11 12 6 7 4 5

  This gets the buttons in right order: Scrolling the wheel generates 4 and 5, tilting the wheel 6 and 7.

• ~/.xbindkeysrc:
  (You have to install xbindkeys and xvkbd for this; I’m starting xbindkeys in ~/.gnomerc)

  # Backward and Forward buttons
  "xvkbd -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]""
    m:0x10 + b:8
  "xvkbd -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
    m:0x10 + b:9
  
  # "Cruise Control" disabled:
  #"xvkbd -text "\[Page_Up]""
  #  m:0x10 + b:11
  #"xvkbd -text "\[Page_Down]""
  #  m:0x10 + b:12
  
  # "Cruise Control" enabled:
  # Only use this if you have problems with Mozilla
  #"NoCommand"
  #  m:0x10 + b:11
  #"NoCommand"
  #  m:0x10 + b:12
  
  # Application-Switch button
  # A-Tab doesn't work
  # Use it as another Forward for now
  "xvkbd -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
    m:0x10 + b:10

  Using the Application-Switch button for switching windows in GNOME doesn’t work because it would require holding down the Alt key while pressing Tab several times, xvkbd can’t do that. I’m using the button as another Forward now, it’s easier to reach than the real Forward button.
  Defining actions for the Cruise Control buttons only makes sense when Cruise Control is disabled (you can disable it with the Logitech Mouse Applet). If it is disabled, the buttons generate 11 and 12. When it is enabled, they generate a single button 11 or 12 event and then a series of button 4 or 5 events just like scrolling the wheel does.
  I have no idea why the mouse generates 11 or 12 before starting normal scrolling in Cruise Control mode. I’m mapping 11 and 12 to “NoCommand”, this eliminates the ButtonPress but not the ButtonRelease event. This seems to eliminate the negative effects of the extra button events in Mozilla. (Mozilla interprets the 11 and 12 events as normal left clicks, Firefox doesn’t have this issue. So if you’re using Firefox or if you don’t see the left-click problem with your Mozilla build, then don’t bind 11 and 12 to anything.)

• At this point the Backward and Forward buttons should work in GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla-based browsers. Horizontal scrolling should work in GNOME and KDE.
  Mozilla-based browser like Firefox need two additional changes to get horizontal scrolling working with the tilt wheel: Open about:config and set

  mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action = 0
  mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines = true

April 5th, 2005: Update: Don’t bind 11/12 to anything in Cruise Control mode by default (only needed if there are problems with Mozilla). Fixed the "Cruise Control" comments in ~/.xbindkeysrc.

January 15th, 2006: Xorg 6.9 and later come with a different evdev driver. I’ve made an updated version of this guide now.

My exim configuration uses three different cyrus_sasl authenticators and each exim invocation resulted in three of these OTP warnings because exim calls sasl_listmech() for each configured authenticator. It doesn’t specify a limiting mech_list, that means SASL will test which of all installed mechs actually can be used for authentication. Debian’s SASL package includes libotp.so, so it also tries to use OTP which is not configured on my system.

There are two ways to get rid off the warnings:

• Remove /usr/lib/sasl2/libotp.*. You’ll have to do this after each upgrade of the libsasl2-modules package.
• Rebuild exim with this patch. The patch specifies a limiting mech_list option for SASL. This limits sasl_listmech() to the mechs used in the exim configuration. Other mechs won’t be tried anymore.

May 3rd, 2005: A slightly modified version of the patch has been integrated into Exim CVS and will be included in the next Debian release of exim4 (see Debian bug #299743)

March 18th, 2005: The patch has been integrated into inotify 0.21-2

• Shell scripts which need no porting at all
• Stuff that already works on ppc32 and ppc64
• Windows applications which will be quite hard to port
• Wine, which won’t work without an x86 emulator (AFAIK some Windows programs already work with Wine and qemu)

Unfortunately it’s still x86-only — no AMD64 or PowerPC versions are available. Linux users on non-x86 architectures maybe should send them feature requests and bug reports until they extend their support to those architectures.

That means libc.so.6 is linked statically now. But glibc’s getpwnam and getpwuid implementations still need the shared libraries. The needed libraries must be copied into the chroot because mysqld calls those functions after calling chroot. I’ve updated the mysql-chroot script accordingly.
(The rest of the chroot setup procedure still works as described in Chrooting MySQL on Debian.)

By the way, I’ve filed a wishlist bug at Debian’s BTS (#299265). mysqld should do all /etc/passwd lookups before calling chroot. That way chrooting would work without $CHROOT/etc/passwd and with copying any libraries into the chroot. That’s how Apache and Bind 9 do it.

March 17th, 2005: Debian has removed the -all-static flag again. I’m leaving the additional bits in the chroot script however, just in case the maintainers decide to add the flag again.

March 17th, 2005: Updated patch available here

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.2:80>
        ServerName JustForOpeningSyslog
        Redirect permanent / http://127.0.0.1/
        ErrorLog syslog
</VirtualHost>

Now apache calls openlog(3) with LOG_NDELAY before being chrooted by libapache2-mod-chroot, and libapache2-mod-php4’s syslog(3) calls work just fine.
(Idea stolen from syslog(3) and chroot(2).)

But I’ve found no guide for chrooting MySQL, so here’s my short recipe:

• Prepare the chroot directory. It’s recommended to use an extra partition/filesystem for it. I will use /srv/mysql (which is an LVM2 partition with an ext3 filesystem on my system) for the rest of the text.
• Stop MySQL:

  /etc/init.d/mysql stop

• Copy the databases to new location:

  mkdir -p /srv/mysql/var/lib
  cp -a /var/lib/mysql /srv/mysql/var/lib

• Copy this script to /etc/default/mysql-chroot
• Edit /etc/init.d/mysql:
  • Source the mysql-chroot script somewhere at the top:

    …
    test -x /usr/sbin/mysqld || exit 0
    
    . /etc/default/mysql-chroot
    
    SELF=$(cd $(dirname $0); pwd -P)/$(basename $0)
    …

  • Run setup_chroot right in the start section:

    …
    if mysqld_status check_alive nowarn; then
      echo "...already running."
    else
      setup_chroot
      /usr/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 &
    …

  • Somehow /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid disappears after each start. We have to create it each time, otherwise the stop command won’t work properly:

    …
    if mysqld_status check_alive warn; then
      echo "."
      ln -sf $CHROOT_DIR/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid \
                     /var/run/mysqld
      # Now start mysqlcheck or whatever the admin wants.
      /etc/mysql/debian-start
    …

• In /etc/mysql/debian.cnf, change the socket line to:

  socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

• In /etc/mysql/my.cnf:
  • Change the socket line in the [client] section to:

    socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

    Don’t change the socket lines in the other sections!

  • Add

    chroot = /srv/mysql

    to the [mysqld] section.

• Prepend /srv/mysql to the log files listed in /etc/logrotate.d/mysql-server
• Start MySQL:

  /etc/init.d/mysql start

• Check /var/log/syslog for errors ;-)

March 13th, 2005: I’ve updated the script for newer Debian packages, see Updated MySQL Chroot Script for more information.

July 30th, 2006: These modifications still work fine on the current stable Debian release (3.1, “sarge”). The mysql packages in the testing (“etch”) and unstable (“sid”) distributions of Debian need a few additional changes, I’ll post an updated guide in a few days.

December 30th, 2006: I’ve made an updated guide on how to chroot more recent MySQL packages on Debian and Ubuntu

• Mouse section from /etc/X11/XF86Config-4:

  Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Configured Mouse"
    Driver     "mouse"
    Option     "CorePointer"
    Option     "Protocol"        "evdev"
    Option     "Dev Name"        "*Microsoft IntelliMouse*"
    Option     "Buttons"         "9"
    Option     "ZAxisMapping"    "8 9 6 7"
    Option     "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
  EndSection

• To get the buttons in the correct order for X11, change /etc/X11/Xmodmap to:

  pointer = 1 2 3 8 9 7 6 4 5

  Now horizontal scrolling should work with GNOME!

• In Mozilla-based browsers however, tilting the wheel moves back- or forward in the history now. To fix this open about:config and set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0.
  Unfortunately Mozilla and GNOME seem to have different interpretations of left and right; set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines to true to fix that.
• To get the sides buttons going back- and forward in history again, install xbindkeys and xvkbd. Bind the buttons to Alt-Left and Alt-Right in ~/.xbindkeysrc:

  "xvkbd -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]""
    m:0x10 + b:8
  "xvkbd -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
    m:0x10 + b:9

  and run xbindkeys in ~/.gnomerc

January 15th, 2006: Xorg 6.9 and later come with a different evdev driver. I’ve made a new guide now. The new guide talks about the Logitech MX1000 but it’s quite easy to adapt the configuartion for other mice.

March 16th, 2005: The patch has been integrated into 2.6.11-mm3

• /etc/exim4/exim.pl:
  Don’t forget to change ppp0 to the interface you want to handle!

  #! /usr/bin/perl
  
  # Requires libio-interface-perl
  
  use strict;
  use IO::Socket;
  use IO::Interface;
  
  sub get_remote_helo_data()
  {
      my $s = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => 'udp');
      my $addr = inet_aton($s->if_addr('ppp0'));
      my $hostname = gethostbyaddr($addr, AF_INET);
  
      $hostname = '' if (!$hostname);
  
      return $hostname;
  }
  

• /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/50_exim4-localconfig_perl:

  #main/50_exim4-localconfig_perl
  perl_at_start = true
  perl_startup = do '/etc/exim4/exim.pl'
  

• Add the following code to the appropriate transport, e.g. remote_smtp_smarthost:

  helo_data = \
    ${if >{${strlen:${perl{get_remote_helo_data}}}}{0} \
                   {${perl{get_remote_helo_data}}} \
                   {$primary_hostname}}
  

The Limit action can be used to limit accepted connections per IP and timeframe. The hardcoded limit currently is 6 connections per 60 seconds. If an IP tries to connect more often, the attempts will be DROPed.

The Whitelist action provides some simple port-knocking whitelist. If you know the WHITELIST_PORT and can lift the limits imposed by the Limit action for your IP and 60 seconds by connecting to that port.

Here’s how you can integrate those two actions:

• Create two empty files:
  • shorewall/action.Limit
  • shorewall/action.Whitelist
• Copy Limit and Whitelist to the shorewall directory
• Add Limit and Whitelist to shorewall/actions
• Set WHITELIST_PORT in shorewall/params
• Use Limit in shorewall/rules, for instance:

  Limit:ULOG:SSH    net  fw  tcp  ssh
  Limit:ULOG:IMAP   net  fw  tcp  imap,imaps
  

  Note: You must use the <action>:<log>:<tag> format for the rules. Limit uses the <tag> for the ipt_recent table name.

• Optionally add a Whitelist rule:

  Whitelist:ULOG    net  fw
  

If you’re running OpenSSH 3.9 or later, you additionally might want to set MaxAuthTries to 1 (see sshd_config(5)).

May 9th, 2005: I have found a bug in the ipt_recent module, see this article for more information and a fix.