The World of a Penguin

Afraid of hackers, spammers, script kiddies will take over your Web-site? Want to be a bit safer? In Ubuntu there is an Apache module called mod_defensible who's aim is to block well know attacking sites to reach your web server. The module locks up every host that access your site and check if it is in a blocking database on the net. If thats the case the host will get Error 403 Forbidden, i.e. your server can not be reached. I have been using a similar tool for ssh for a while called deny host . I did not know about mod_defensible until today when I saw a how to for Debian on the how to forge. There are some small differences installing it between Debian and Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). The main difference is that it is included in universe. So here is a quick instruction how to install mod_defensible. Login to your webserver and become root using sudo -s Install mod_defensible: apt-get install libapache2-mod-defensible Activate the module: a2enmod defensible Create a configfil...

I wrote yesterday that hibernate did not work for me in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). The solution was easy, I changed from the closed source fglrx to the open sourced driver ati. After that can my MSI S271 hibernate again. Information about the bug in fglrx can be found here . I continue to play around with Gutsy. Network-manager is now working. Entered the configuration dialog and activated roaming configuration and then restarted the networking init-script: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

After have used Ubuntu 7.10 a little more than a week I have got some experiences, bote positive and negative. I have not spend any time to try to fix the problems I have, yet. So there may be solutions to them. The computer I have used Ubuntu 7.10 is my laptop MSI S271 with a AMD-CPU and a ATI graphics card. Lets start with the bad things. Hibernation have stopped working and I have found on the forums that I am not alone. This is definitely my biggest problem so far. I got disappointed that I can't use Compiz. It may work if I change driver I have not tested that. Both the new open source driver xgl and the older one may be candidates. Currently am I using fglrx Several sites have written today that AMD/ATI has released a new driver, that may be another solution. The network manager seems still not working for me, but thats no big deal for me. I can use wireless and it is not to big deal to change SSID and network in the old fashioned way. Finally I have some problems with pid...

We are currently rebuilding our room where we have our home office. We are enabling a completely new computer network were all cables are placed in cable channels. A patch panel is mounted in the storage room next to the home office. This will simplify when we want to extend the network to other rooms. We have already prepared for extension to the library and the living room. The Ubuntu server is at the moment standing in the library.

Yesterday I got to annoyed on all the brute force attacks against my computers ssh-server. I know that I am definitely not alone. To prevent brute force attacks on ssh I installed denyhosts. Denyhosts log all login attempts logged in /var/log/auth.log and blocks IP-addresses that tries to login but fails repeatedly. To install denyhosts on ubuntu you have to activate universe and then just select the denyhosts package. Then you are ready, the package starts the application automatically. No configuration needed. But, denyhosts have a nice feature that you can upload your blocked IP-addresses to a server on the net and download what addresses other blocks. This feature is not activated by default. To activate it remove the #-char from the line in /etc/denyhosts.conf: #SYNC_SERVER = http://xmlrpc.denyhosts.net:9911 Then restart the server: sudo /etc/init.d/denyhosts restart 24h later denyhosts block more than 1400 IP-addresses.

I gave up on my problems with Hauppauge PVR 500MCE. I think the card is broken. Instead I saw a shop selling a KISS PVR 558 for about €200. So I bought one. The box runs Linux and the GPL-parts of the software can be downloaded as source. I can FTP to the box and read and write videos, pictures and audio files. The box support free format such as OGG as well as propitary formats. Through their web service can I program it to record a show where ever I am. I have now uploaded the go-open TV-shows and can finally look at them from my sofa, without having the laptop in my knee. The campaign and shows was sponsored by Canonical and HP among others.

I found this hilarious music video which pretty much dedicates the love for the techniques on Internet. It's beautiful and lovely.