(English) Securing ejabberd on Debian Wheezy (7.0) : Bind epmd to localhost (127.0.0.1)

Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf English verfügbar.

Boosting Audio Output under Ubuntu Linux

I often had the problem when I wanted to watch a movie or listen to some audiofile and there was background noise I wanted to turn up the volume but it was already at 100% . I thought it should be possible to turn up the signal beyond 100% and decide by myself if the signal is clipping/distored. And there is a very easy solution for the people using pulseaudio.

Just install the tool paman

sudo apt-get install paman

Now you can boost the audio to 500% volume. For me usually 150% was enough ;).

Encrypted off-site backup with ecryptfs

I was looking for a method to backup my data encrypted. Of course there exist plenty of possibilities, but most of them either encrypt a container or complete partition or seemed to be complicated to setup. I did not want container or partition encryption as I fear if the media is corrupted or something goes wrong during network transfer perhaps all my data would be unaccessable for me. With file-based encryption I have almost the same risk as without encryption. Even if I loose some files to corruption I can still decipher the rest of the data.

Finally I chose ecryptfs because it is a file-based encryption which also encrypts the filenames and it is very easy to setup and use. On the homepage it advertises itself as You may think of eCryptfs as a sort of „gnupg as a filesystem“. and that’s basically what I was looking for. It safes all meta information in the file, so you can recover it when you have the file itself and the encryption parameters (which are few and easy to backup).

So lets get started. I ciphered a testfile on Ubuntu 12.04.1 and deciphered it successfully under Debian 7.0 .

First you have to install the tools which is very easy using apt (the same on both Ubuntu and Debian):

sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils

Then create a new directory, (which will be encrypted) and enter some parameters needed by ecryptfs:

mount -t ecryptfs /home/ecrypttest/encrypted/ /home/ecrypttest/decrypted/
Passphrase: 
Select cipher: 
 1) aes: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (loaded)
 2) des3_ede: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 24; max keysize = 24 (not loaded)
 3) cast6: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32 (not loaded)
 4) cast5: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 5; max keysize = 16 (not loaded)
Selection [aes]: 
Select key bytes: 
 1) 16
 2) 32
 3) 24
Selection [16]: 
Enable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]: n
Enable filename encryption (y/n) [n]: y
Filename Encryption Key (FNEK) Signature [9702fa8eae80f468]: 
Attempting to mount with the following options:
  ecryptfs_unlink_sigs
  ecryptfs_fnek_sig=9702fa8eae80f468
  ecryptfs_key_bytes=16
  ecryptfs_cipher=aes
  ecryptfs_sig=9702fa8eae80f468
Mounted eCryptfs

The filename encryption key FNEK will be created for you and will be different from mine. Just copy & paste the parameters to a textfile. We will need it later for deciphering.

now enter the directory, and create a test file:

cd /home/ecrypttest/decrypted/
echo "hello ecryptfs" > ecrypttest.txt
cat ecrypttest.txt
hello ecryptfs

if everything is fine, unmount the encrypted filesystem

cd ..
umount /home/ecrypttest/decrypted

Now copy the file to your remote computer to try recover it. Of course you can recover your file anywhere you want, also on the same computer you encrypted it. This is just to prove, that it works on another box without copying anthing else than the file and the mount-parameters.

scp /home/ecrypttest/encrypted/ECRYPTFS_FNEK_ENCRYPTED.FWaL-jeCfc1oO-TGS5G.F.7YgZpNwbodTNkQxRlu6HylnEGw7lTdtfV59--- root@yourremotehost.com:/tmp/ecrypt

log into your remote computer and verify the file is there. Then mount the folder in decrypted mode. You need the parameters from above, when you created the first mount. It is basically only the FNEK Key if you used the defaults for the rest.

ls -lah /tmp/ecrypt/*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       root        12K Aug  4 23:04 ECRYPTFS_FNEK_ENCRYPTED.FWaL-jeCfc1oO-TGS5G.F.7YgZpNwbodTNkQxRlu6HylnEGw7lTdtfV59---

cd /tmp
mount -t ecryptfs /tmp/ecrypt/ /tmp/decrypt/ -o cryptfs_unlink_sigs,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=9702fa8eae80f468,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_sig=9702fa8eae80f468,ecryptfs_passthrough=n
Passphrase: 
Attempting to mount with the following options:
  ecryptfs_unlink_sigs
  ecryptfs_fnek_sig=9702fa8eae80f468
  ecryptfs_key_bytes=16
  ecryptfs_cipher=aes
  ecryptfs_sig=9702fa8eae80f468
Mounted eCryptfs
cd /tmp/decrypt
cat ecrypttest.txt
hello ecryptfs

Voila everything worked fine. Now unmount the encrypted directory and you can copy your encrypted data safely where you want.

(English) Importing tpc-h testdata into mongodb

Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf English verfügbar.

(English) Importing large csv-files into mongodb

Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf English verfügbar.

(English) Fix sluggish mouse in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

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(English) Ubuntu Upgrade to 12.04 LTS -> Libreoffice not working anymore

Ubuntu 12.04 Gnome Classic Panel Rechtsklick funktioniert nicht mehr

Nachdem ich im Netz ziemlich lange suchen musste, hier der Link zur Lösung:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/66414/how-to-add-panel-applets-to-classic-gnome-panel

Beim neuen gnome muss man wenn man eine gnome-classic Session nutzt Meta + Alt + Rechtsklick machen um das Panel-Menü zu sehen. Meta ist z.B. bei mir die „Alt Gr“ Taste. Also einfach ausprobieren:

• Alt + Rechtsklick (und wenn das nicht klappt, dann:)
• Alt Gr + Alt + Rechtsklick (JA man braucht große Hände 😉 )

(English) Informatica 9.1 Installation could not start _AdminConsole

Glassfish Directory Deployment (explode Ear)

Recently I was struggeling with glassfish directory deployment. Actually it is quite easy:

• unzip the ear-File (eg. example.ear) to a directory without .ear
• then go into this directory and unzip all war and jar files to directories named _jar and _war (only on this directory level, don’t touch the files in /lib)
• now copy the folder into your domains-autodeploy-folder

For more convenience, use this script. I think it is selfexplaining.

earexploder.sh example.ear

FILE: earexploder.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
EAR=$1
 
EARDIR=${EAR%.ear}
 
unzip $EAR -d $EARDIR
cd $EARDIR
 
for ARCHIVE in $(ls -1 *.jar); do
    ARCHIVEDIR=${ARCHIVE%.jar}
    ARCHIVEDIR=${ARCHIVEDIR}_jar
    unzip $ARCHIVE -d $ARCHIVEDIR
done
 
for ARCHIVE in $(ls -1 *.war); do
    ARCHIVEDIR=${ARCHIVE%.war}
    ARCHIVEDIR=${ARCHIVEDIR}_war
    unzip $ARCHIVE -d $ARCHIVEDIR
done