Linux

The below was presented as part of the Belfast Linux Users Groups’ May Technical Meetup. I’m also maintaining this ‘short’ as part of my gradually accumulating ‘python_data_workshop’, so that may be the best place to see updates if you’re reading this any later than 2021. Conditions Theme: ‘Universal Screwdrivers’ Event: BLUG Time: ‘5-10mins’ (take the 10) Slides Transcript Evening folks, and I’m happy to be appearing in what we hope is the last virtual BLUG! We’ve all spent a long time toiling in our own little worlds in relative isolation over the course of this sequence of lockdowns, and its appropriate that now as we begin coming back together, that we’re talking about projects that operate and complement across ecosystems. ...

Inspired by a pretty good write up by Cynofield as to his setup for getting a Raspberry Pi to “phone home”, I thought I’d set out how I do it. I have a machine that lives behind a ‘security’ infrastructure that makes my life a living hell. As a result, I set up automatic persistent reverse shells going back to other machines I use, so if I connect to those machines, I can get into the secure environment, without anything nasty being able to get in with me. ...

Had an interesting if annoying problem recently that I assumed would just fix itself eventually. But when you’re sick of prodding a power button to force a machine to reboot, you gotta do something. TL;DR**_ if you’re getting messages like “Restarting System” on an attempted reboot, try setting the reboot=pci kernel boot flag_** To do this, at the grub boot menu, press e to edit the current boot parameters. Find the line starting with “linux” (this is the line that actually kicks off the linux kernel) and at the end of that line, put “reboot=pci”. ...

I am a pirate. I voyage across the root-zones in search for content. Movies available months before local DVD release in a format that my media centre laps up (mostly), I watch once, and don’t take up shelf space for years; TV shows via RSS that I watch at my leisure; and, on the rare occasion that I want to ‘Game’ and not feel like an idiot, I torrent. ...

Intro Click is a modular router library developed at UCLA, allowing Click-definied router networks to be ‘attached’ to an ns-3- nodes layer 3 functionality. It has very little relevance to my own research, but was interesting to play with. In a nutshell, Click is an extention to the linux kernel that provides a highly performant and configurable routing architecture. Requirements Already installed ns-3 git ~/src directory Get ’er dun cd ~/src; git clone git://read.cs.ucla.edu/git/click ; cd click sudo ./configure --enable-nsclick --enable-userlevel; sudo make; sudo make install ...

IRC, Python, Ubuntu linux. Simples! Same as by Twitter post, but for IRC. Biggest problem with this one was working out that the IRC server needs to be kept alive with the irclib.IRC.process_once() command. This is wrapped in the while loop that assumes that there is other stuff going on for which you are waiting on a condition to be satisfied, but could easily be ignored if one is just sending out one message. Also, the PRIVMSG command can be used to broadcast to a channel, as is used here, or, as the name suggests, to communicate with a specific user. ...

Idiot proof setup for persistent reverse shells / port forwards (same thing) under a Ubuntu VM remote and my Dreamhost server, but should apply to nearly* all *nix’s First off, some terms to keep this easy. I want to be able to access my in-office VM, xavier from my server magneto (not my names, but they conveniently complement). xavier is not publicly accessible, but magneto is. I’ll be replacing all of the FQN’s with these terms so expand on your own. In generic terms, xavier is the remote machine (i.e the one behind some NAT firewall or such that you want to get access to) and magneto is the local machine. Its a bit confusing since all of the work is done on xavier, but it makes sense in the long run. Just trust me and get on with it. ...

The Idiot Proof Guide for Windows-host, *-guest setup. (Ubuntu in my case, and should work for any host) Make sure you’re working with a VDI, not a VDMK (if not, File>Virtual Media Manager right-click, Copy) Drop into a command line (on windows, press Win+R, type ‘cmd’) and navigate to the Virtualbox directory (won’t need to do this on *nix) Execute VBoxManage _path_to_your.vdi_ --resize _new_size_in_MB_ Download UBCD and mount it as a DVD to your VM ...

Ubuntu doesn’t manage vim’s addons, so installing the vim-latexsuite package doesn’t actually put all the relevant hooks into your vim installation. To do that, (after installing the package) execute; sudo vim-addons -w install latex-suite

Pre-built packages not releasing 64 bit versions? No Problem. Debian/Ubuntu based: dpkg -i --force-architecture whatever.deb RH/Fedora based: rpm -i --ignorearch whatever.rpm