Some days ago the DNS server of my dormitory stopped working, so I (we, me and all my colleagues) lost most of the network functionality. As the DNS port is blocked by the dormitory firewall, I could not rely on external servers to resolve names, so… ? Fortunately, I had already established an SSH tunnel towards the outside world, so I wondered if I could use it to solve my problem. If only I could re-route the local DNS requests over the TCP tunnel…
Well, I was not able to force my system to resolve names over TCP, so I needed a “UDP to TCP, and back” translation mechanism. Briefly, udp2tcp was born!
For a couple of years I used Vmware as virtualization solution, because the alternatives weren’t at its level. I used to run Vmware to emulate a WinXP-Pro guest, with IIS, to write an ASP project for a course. Thanks god, the teacher changed his mind and let some of us code in PHP as well. Anyway, recently Vmware went crazy. Whenever I open it, it just disables my Shift and Control keys: only restarting X solves to problem.
It’s released under the GPL. And this is a very good thing.
It does not mess up with my keyboard. Yay!
Bad news:
I have to use the binary image of the program, because the GPL’d version has no USB support (and I need it for another course).
Requires the QT libraries to run. Yuck! As I am a Gnome user, I try to avoid QTs as much as possible. Well, nevermind, I’ve packaged them some time ago (when I used the GUI of wpa_supplicant, but this is another story), so I do not have to compile them.
The last issue drove me crazy. To set up networking in Virtualbox you have three choices (well, actually four, but I do not consider “cable unplugged” a choice )
You can use a “fake” NAT, but it makes very painful the access to guest resources. You have to manually map your resources onto local ports: this is secure (well… not very secure, actually, as the socket binds to the INADDR_ANY address, and not on the loopback device), but not as friendly as the Vmware solution (that is, NAT the guests and give to the host OS a virtual network interface on the guests LAN).
You can use a network bridge. But this is bad, as it exposes your guests to your LAN. The problem could be solved using iptables, but, in my case, it wouldn’t help very much, as I cannot have more than one MAC address per computer (dormitory restrictions).
You can configure a local network between guests with no host connectivity. Not really a solution.
I looked for informations on the Net. No solution. So I decided to write a shell script on my own.
Why not? It combines my Bash and networking skills, and I like writing little tools, so…
It’s written with the Gentoo subsystem in mind, but it can be ported to other distros with little pain. It’s very easy to set up: edit the beginning of the script, substituting dark with your username and eth1 with the name of the physical interface that you use to connect to the world. Basically, it does the following:
Loads/unloads the Virtualbox kernel module
Starts/stops the Virtualbox network interface
Associates the Virtualbox network interface with the user that runs the Virtualbox guest
Enables/disables IP packets forwarding in the whole system
Starts/stops the iptables userspace daemon
Adds a iptable rule to allow NAT
And that’s it
UPDATE: I’ve edited and uploaded again the script to resolve the issue at comment #1. If /sbin/functions.sh is missing, wrappers functions are defined to handle the console output.
Finally the package netscape-flash, version 9.0.31.0, is stable on x86 and amd64!
I have used the unstable version for 2 weeks and it worked fine for me: finally I watched to the Flash videos without that annoying lag between audio and video stream. The big drawback is that, sometimes, when closing webpages with embedded Flash objects, mozilla-firefox crashes.
While browsing YouTube website, I accidentally found this video, presenting the prototype of a new 3D desktop manager called BumpTop.
The most interesting feature of BumpTop is the usage of real world physics to rule the movement of the icons; like paper sheets or CD-DVD boxes, you can move or even throw them around, just like you would do on your desk. The usefulness of this approach? None, IMO. It’s just eye-candy, a waste of useful resources and CPU power.
At the first look, I kept staring at it for minutes. I didn’t believe that the story was true, or that someone could even think of buying that crap. What am I talking about, you say? Give a look here, for example.
And, yes, I could write posts more often, if only exams gave me a break, and someone stopped bugging me every ten seconds .
Recently upgrading the mozilla-firefox package on my Gentoo box, from the 1.5.0.9 version to the 2.0.0.1, I noticed that the Gentoo developers have changed the logo (new one) and the name shown on the About box: Bon Echo (which is the development name of Mozilla Firefox 2.0).
This is not a new story in the Firefox world; the mantainers of the Debian distribution, for instance, have renamed their version of Firefox to IceWeasel some time ago.
This is mainly a matter of trademark.
This topic, found on the Gentoo forums website, confirmed my assumptions. The Mozilla license allows to:
redistribute the official build, complete and with no edits (same name, same logo)
distribute unofficial sources and compiled binaries, provided that the application name and the logo are modified
deliver unofficial versions of Firefox, mantaining the name and/or the logo, after Mozilla’s direct approval
While the Debian developers, much more involved in the Free Software cause (IMO), decided to fork their own software (retaining, anyway, many of the features of the official version - they removed artwork and plugins classified as non-free), Gentoo mantainers changed name and logo and plan to continue to apply their own patches. A proper use flag, anyway, forces the compilation to use the old denomination and image:
www-client/mozilla-firefox:mozbranding - Enable official branding
I’ve recently read an interesting article about how having back the money you’ve paid for the preinstalled Windows copy that is bundled with many personal computers. I know that this is an old story and almost everyone has ever read/heard about one million different ways to accomplish the goal. Anyway, I’m posting the link because the author of this article, while confirming that the refund call is long and tedious (if not useless, sometimes), has written down a small quantity of common you-cant-get-your-money excuses, along with the appropriate responses.
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It combines my Bash and networking skills, and I like writing little tools, so… 
