Recovering Corrupt ext3 Superblocks
Fixing an ext3 partition that has corrupt superblocks and won't mount because the kernel thinks its ext4.
Category: Computer
SIP Intercom
Why settle for a doorbell when you could make a SIP-enabled intercom?
Images Rendering in Firefox but not IE
What do you do with images that render in Firefox fine, but appear as a red cross in Internet Explorer 6 & 7?
Fujitsu Siemens Repairs
As many of you may know, My laptop's motherboard broke and I had to get it repaired. Here's my review of Fujitsu Siemens' in-warranty repair service.
Oxford Date Panel Applet
Do you find the GNOME date/time panel applet virtually useless during Oxford termtime? I've written one that displays the Oxford date instead. It's based on Andrew Godwin's oxdate python module, which is inspired by Dom's Oxford Dates perl module.
Lighttpd Book Review
Packt Publishing have released the first book devoted solely to Lighttpd that I have come across. With chapters covering compiling, configuring, virtual hosting, CGI, streaming, logging, SSL, optimizing, migrating from Apache, Lua and even writing your own lighttpd modules, Andre Bogus has attempted to cover everything you will need to know. In this post, I will discuss what I think are the good and bad points about this book.
Installing Python eggs for multiple users
I recently needed to update my python-psycopg2 package to a version that wasn't available in the Debian or Backports repositories, so I decided to use Python's ez_install command. In short, ez_install installs Python eggs, which are equivalent to Ruby's gems and are meant to be a cross-distro library installation system. However, the egg couldn't be used by other UNIX users.
Packt Publishing’s Book on lighttpd
The kind people at Packt Publishing have requested that I review their new book about lighttpd. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on how good the book is until it arrives and I have a chance to read it, but they do have a sample chapter(pdf) online to look at. Watch this space
Stripping Headers in Postfix
How to hide Received headers when relaying emails - handy when you trust an authenticated user who shares an IP with a known spammer.
Royal Mail and User Agents
So I've finally tracked down why Royal Mail's website looks horrible in Firefox on Linux. They sniff user agents and if it isn't one of their 'supported' browsers then they send different HTML that doesn't render properly.
Asterisk iCal Reminders
If you're anything like me, you've probably missed appointments due to your bad memory. Well now there's now excuse, you can use your trusty basic phone to recieve reminders with reminder calls from Asterisk.
My new script, AsteriCal, will poll your Google Calendar's iCal URL and call you to remind you of upcoming events. Find out more here
Dial No to 0870
You may have heard of the site Say No To 0870. It's a UK database of mappings of Company Names and their 0870/0844/0845 numbers to their geographic equivalents. Using the geographic equivlalents is a good idea - they're cheaper and included in a lot of plans' free minutes. Some companies can detect people calling their geographical numbers. Prefixing the number with 141 to withhold your number sometimes beats the system; sometimes it doesn't.
I thought it'd be a good idea to integrate the Say No To 0870 database with my Asterisk PBX, so that when I dial a number beginning with 08, Asterisk will actually call the geographical number with my Trunk provider. I achieved this using Asterisk AGI and Python. I screenscraped the Say No To 0870 website (theres no API, nor did they reply to my email) and untangled the HTML with Beautiful Soup.
Festival and Asterisk
How to setup Festival with Asterisk for arbitrary text-to-speech in your PBX.
Whilst playing with asterisk, I wanted the feature of text-to-speech, so the PBX can read things such as caller IDs.
Disclosing a key to a GPG-encrypted file without exposing your private key
I was recently reading Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill -- Some Scenarios and scenario 2 about session keys perked my interest. I wondered if it could be done with GnuPG, and after researching for a while I discovered it can, and here's how:
lejog.maniacmartin.com retired
The cycle ride is over, and I'm in the process of collecting those pledged sponsorships. People have an amazing ability to not have any money on them when its time to pay up, which is pretty convenient for them.
Benchmarking Wordpress and Django
Regular readers will know that I recently migrated to lighttpd from Apache 2, to try and enable my blog to handle traffic spikes better. Out of curiosity, I decided to benchmark the new setup.
Migrating Django and CherryPy to lighttpd
After learning that my 256mb Debian Xen VPS died instantly after being reddited, I decided to take some action to prevent the same thing happening again.
webpwman released
webpwman is an online password manager that I wrote in CherryPy, that can import from KDE pwmanager CSV exports, and run behind an SSL-enabled webserver (which also prevents MITM attacks). It asks 3 security questions, which it randomly rotates on every correct login and asks for a master password which is used to decrypt the password from a json file. The idea being, that if you're on a compromised public terminal, then the bad guys should only get the passwords you viewed that session.
Initial thoughts on web.py and SQLObject
I recently started writing an online password manager. The basic idea is that it would ask 3 questions from a bank of questions, and then prompt for a decryption password and the name of a service of which to get a password. The service would run over SSL, and the passwords would be exported from my laptops KDE pwmanager in my server backup script.
Upgrading from Django 0.96 to 1.0 Alpha
This post is by no means up to the standard of the official Django 1.0 alpha release notes; it merely details what I had to do to get a Django 0.96 site working under Django 1.0 alpha.
Introducing breeze
I have recently embarked on writing a simple open-source BitTorrent private tracker and community website, as a single Django project.
Land’s End to John O’Groats Cycle
I've decided to cycle the length of the UK for fun (and charity as well). And what better way to get in the mood by trying to learn Django and make a semi-useful Python app. So, I've given it a shot with a GPS/Google Maps mashup thing to analyse blogged route parts from maemo mapper on one of Andrew's Nokia internet tablets. Obviously you won't be able to see all of that until after we have actually blogged something - so check back after Monday, 12th August to see live progress (if it all works that is).
WordPress won’t upload
Something that's been bugging me for a while is that when I updated my Wordpress install (using svn), file uploads ceased to work. Attempting to upload a file resulted in the message "An error occurred in the upload. Please try again later.".
PwManager for Windows
Having just put Windows XP back (in a dual boot configuration) I wanted to share the password manager that I have in the KDE system tray with Windows. I looked on the internet, and the only thing that has been ported is the pwmanager_dump program. However, combined with some the Windows ext2 driver, GNUWin32 tools (grep, awk, xargs etc) and a program that copies its command-line argument to the Windows clipboard, I have a hacked-up working pwmanager that syncs with linux.
Virgin CEO: “This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks”
Whilst I'm not one to cover a news story that's already been covered elsewhere, TorrentFreak has a priceless quote from Virgin Media's CEO: “This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks".
Publisher 2000 BorderArt causing instant reboots
I have discovered a most annoying bug with Microsoft Publisher 2000's BorderArt feature.
Random Topic Generator
It happens way too often. You're in an msn conversation with someone who's really cool, then the conversation runs dry. But you really don't want it to end. You could be completely random like me, and change the topic if the previous topic runs dry.
Recovering Truncated or Corrupt Tar Archives
I was unfortunate enough to use resize2fs to resize an ext3 partition. The result, which at first appeared OK, was a corrupt filesystem.
Fixing File Uploads after upgrading to PHP5
As some of you may know, I upgraded from PHP4 to PHP5 recently. And it went smoothly - or so I thought. Now, it seems I overlooked the fact that the reference <code>$HTTP_POST_FILES</code> has been phased out. This has been replaced with <code>$_FILES</code>. This is great, since Zen Cart, custom scripts, old phpBB installations and other old php scripts where users can upload a fail now fail spectacularly as they access an empty array.
Wildcard Parsing in Linux Shells
I have just discovered a quirk in linux shells.
Andrew’s PHP unzip poem
When I thought I needed to recompile PHP 5 to get the unzip function for Installatron for Plesk Reloaded, Andrew helped me find <code>yum install php-pecl-zip</code> and everything all started to work.
Running a command as a /bin/false user
In case anyone else wants to run a command as a user whose default shell is set to /bin/false, type this:
Moving to CentOS
I've finally decided that enough is enough with DirectAdmin. It's haphazard way of downloading tar.gzs and compiling from source to random places that it only knows is a sure way to make a disaster in the future. Not only does this make applying updates a cumbersome process, as it doesn't use any sort of repository or anything, it also means that when something does go wrong it can take ages to track down.
BBC iPlayer and Net Neutrality
I don't know how closely you have been following the BBC's controversial iPlayer that uses torrent-like peer-to-peer technology to distribute programmes aired on BBC TV to users over the internet, but a thorny issue was always the that 3rd-party production companies insisted on DRM being present to limit the number of days that the download will remain watchable to 30 days. That way they cash in on after-sales of DVDs.
Random Drive
So it was just before 5pm yesterday and I was bored. After checking a few things on #friends, Donov and I set out on an adventure. Our drive took us through many places including Lincoln Rush Hour, the M1 and the entire width of the Peak District, including the Cat and Fiddle (A537 Buxton-Macclesfield - hilly and bendy with cliff edges and real fun to drive on).
Side-stepping SingTel’s Bandwidth Caps
Are you a customer of SingTel?
Replacing Microfilters
I was bored today, so I ripped out every microfilter and replaced them with brand-new matching Speedtouch ones. The phone has stopped buzzing.
Half sorted
Broadband restored;
Fighting Demon & BT
This is the start of what will probably turn out to be a lengthy story. On Saturday I returned home from university to find that my parents had bought a new phone. Also the internet was painfully slow.
Compsoc - a society of followers
Compsoccers by definition (read: stereotype) are not born to lead groups of people, or even to interact with others. And you can't program guest speakers to appear to give talk.
Server Termination
This morning I got an email from my server's hosting company saying that they are ceasing to trade. My server will be unplugged on 1st March. Its now 27th February. What a lot of notice.
Dedicated Server
Thanks to Will who is now called Tom, we now have a dedicated server.
Moving to Dedicated Servers
ManiacMartin is moving to dedicated servers. I should be able to provide a wealth of cool new features for you, like reseller accounts, irc shells and servers, you own reverse DNS, SSL certificates, SSH, vnc, proxies and more.
Tunnelling through Microsoft ISA Server
Unfortunately Microsoft's ISA Server usually doesn't work with the methods I have explored so far because:
Bypassing Corperate & College Firewalls - Method 2
Maybe the previous post was a bit too longwinded to you. Or maybe you have a proxy that requires NTLM Authentication. Then try this alternative method
Bypassing Corperate & College Firewalls
<strong>Legal Stuff:</strong>
Demon Upgrade
Well I've had the new "upgraded" Demon internet a while now
Turning a Modem into a Router
About a week ago I bought a cheap £18 Linksys ADSL2+ ethernet modem (code ADSL2MUE).
Proposed LAN
Internal review only
Windows Update
Now My PC is uberslow.
Web project
Today I embarked on my latest web project. This time I have decided to let someone else do the programming (Andrew Godwin) and I will stand make and admire it. Hopefully this top secret project wont go into the pile of abandoned code and be a thriving community, unique in its special way. Well 2am gotta dash
Sorting MP3s by ID3 tag
OK so nothing much happened today except calculus which I'm sure you aren't interested in. I have sucessfully done some laundry too :)
Ubuntu Installation
Ubuntu is now fully installed on my HP nx6325.
