stuff – Page 24 – Will Chatham's Blog

May 1, 2009

More YouTube/Warner Fallout

I got another mention in the Media Post News regarding my Star Wars On a Banjo video being taken down by YouTube due to a complain filed by the Warner Music Group.

“Larry Lessig is not alone,” said Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is one of many, many, many examples where obvious fair uses get taken down.”

In case you were wondering, I never did file the complaint to get my video back online. I first contacted the EFF because I had seen an article that they were willing to help people whose content had been taken down.

They didn’t take my case, but referred me to a page of information about what the ramifications might be should I choose to make the claim to YouTube. In short, I would be opening myself up to getting sued directly by Warner Music Group. Since they have many more lawyers and much more money than I do, I opted out of that plan.

It’s a shame, really, that something that fell squarely under the “parody” and “fair use” clauses got yanked off the Internet forever, and that there is no recourse for the little guys such as myself. All I ever did was play the Star Wars them on a banjo, which you would think WMG would like because of the millions of views and propogation of the Star Wars legend. It was free publicity in a very postivie way for WMG.

April 18, 2009

Garbage Bear’s Debut

The second of my two bands, Garbage Bear, had our debut performance the other night here in Asheville, NC. The awesome folks at the Grey Eagle shot some video and put a couple of clips on YouTube (thanks Jeff!).

April 8, 2009

Local Restaurant Scam

The Buncombe County web site is reporting that scammers have been targeting area restaurants, telling them they need to pay $19.95 each for “hand washing” signs which are required to be posted in restrooms.

An interesting, if not original scam, probably concocted while someone was using the restroom, saw the sign, and got the bright idea. Fascinating.

April 1, 2009

Simple SSH Tunneling with FoxyProxy

Ever been to a coffee shop and got worried about hopping on their public wifi network to check your email? If not, you should have been, and you should presently be concerned about wifi security anywhere you go — a topic we have covered here many times. Continue reading “Simple SSH Tunneling with FoxyProxy”

March 28, 2009

30% off coupon for Dell Latitude

I hardly ever trust the coupon sites floating around on the net, but I figured what they hey, it can’t hurt to try one.

I’ve really been wanting a Dell Latitude D630 series (yeah it’s an older model, on the 800 bus etc.) but, it IS the perfect laptop when looking to run 100% of any version of Linux and works with all the major “Security Tool” CD’s. ;0) Continue reading “30% off coupon for Dell Latitude”

March 28, 2009

WordPress and special characters

Today when I was adding an article, I was getting really upset with WordPress, I just wanted to add some simple characters and have it printed AS IS.

When working with WordPress and using special characters like a redirection symbol ” > ” or something enclosed in it’s on tag like “<dev>” it will get hosed while editing in “HTML” mode. You could insert syntax to stop it from doing that, but it’s much easier to add a post with such things in “Visual” mode first. Then switch over to “HTML” mode if any other special tags are needed. Continue reading “WordPress and special characters”

March 28, 2009

Rescan the SCSI bus w/out rebooting

Just in case the article dissapears (it happens). This is a edited version of the following.
“How do I rescan the SCSI bus to add or remove a SCSI device without rebooting the computer?”

To add or remove a SCSI device explicitly, or to re-scan an entire SCSI bus without rebooting a running system: Continue reading “Rescan the SCSI bus w/out rebooting”

March 14, 2009

SWAT in 60 seconds

Q. What is SWAT?
A. It’s the “Samba Web Administration Tool”

Q. What can I use it for?
A. (shrug )Maybe to quickly setup a SAMBA server etc. 😉 from following my previous howto.
A2. It does have some good info even if you don’t use it for your SMB configuration.

We all know it’s best to use the command line interface (CLI) when learning something,
and most GUI tools don’t give you all the options anyway. However, it’s nice to have a GUI tool when you’re in a rush or you just want to try something new without digging for hours.

This article assumes you have already installed SAMBA. See my previous article if you haven’t.

According to the SWAT docs, it will overwrite you current SMB.conf,
so you may want to backup your current one first.

# Backup the current smb.conf
sudo cp --preserve=context /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.pre-swat

# Install the SWAT tool
sudo yum install -y samba-swat

# Set the service to launch and start it up
sudo vi /etc/xinetd.d/swat (change the disable from yes to no) sudo /sbin/service xinetd restart

# Browse to
http://localhost:901/

* Addtional Info:
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/SWAT.html

March 14, 2009

SAMBA – Home Directory Shares Made Easy

Q. What is SAMBA?
A. “Samba is a Free Open Source Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients.”

Q. Where is SAMBA’s home?
A. http://www.samba.org

Q. Why did you bother writing this?
A. Several reasons, mostly to help myself and others.

Note: You may want to copy/paste this into a txt file for easier reading.

---------------------------------------------
This “entry level” guide will show you how to configure SAMBA in order to let users
browse their home folders under Linux via Windows.

Please note: I write these guides under RHEL/CentOS. However, they should work under any distribution. You still may need to tweak things a little. ;0)

I’m also assuming you have sudo rights. You shouldn’t work from root!

---------------------------------------------
If you’ve installed the default settings for SELinux, it will be in “Enforcing” mode.

# To check your SELinux status. (1 = Enforcing, 0 = Permissive)

[[code]]czozMDpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyAvdXNyL3NiaW4vZ2V0ZW5mb3JjZVwiO3tbJiomXX0=[[/code]]

# If you wish to change the state from Enforcing to Permissive temporarily

[[code]]czozNzpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIC91c3Ivc2Jpbi9zZXRlbmZvcmNlIDBcIjt7WyYqJl19[[/code]]

If you wish to change it permanently between reboots, alter the /etc/selinux/config file to say Permissive
If you wish to keep using SELinux, I’ll provide the extra step to work with this guide,
other wise just ignore the SELinux “setsebool” command.

NOTE: Review the /etc/samba/smb.conf for addtional SELinux settings.
---------------------------------------------
# Install the SAMBA server.

[[code]]czozMjpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIHl1bSBpbnN0YWxsIHNhbWJhXCI7e1smKiZdfQ==[[/code]]

# Add a user for testing the SMB/CIFS Shared Home directory.

[[code]]czo3MDpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIC9zYmluL3VzZXJhZGQgc2FtYmF0ZXN0CnNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIHBhc3N3ZCBzYW1iYXRlc3R7WyYqJl19XCI7e1smKiZdfQ==[[/code]]

# Configure the user “sambatest” smb password.

[[code]]czozNzpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIHNtYnBhc3N3ZCAtYSBzYW1iYXRlc3RcIjt7WyYqJl19[[/code]]

# Backup the /etc/samba/smb.conf file prior to any changes.
# Edit the smb.conf file and set your “workgroup” / “netbios name” if needed.

[[code]]czoxMTI6XCIKc2hlbGwmZ3Q7IGNkIC9ldGMvc2FtYmEKc2hlbGwmZ3Q7IHN1ZG8gY3AgLS1wcmVzZXJ2ZT1jb250ZXh0IHNtYi5jb257WyYqJl19ZiBzbWIuY29uZi5vcmcKc2hlbGwmZ3Q7IHN1ZG8gdmltIHNtYi5jb25mClwiO3tbJiomXX0=[[/code]]

workgroup = workgroup (this is Windows default group)
netbios name = CENTOS (don’t forget to uncomment this line)

# Set the SMB daemon to start on boot up. (for levels 2345)

 [[code]]czozNzpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIC9zYmluL2Noa2NvbmZpZyBzbWQgb25cIjt7WyYqJl19[[/code]]

# Start the SAMBA daemon.

 [[code]]czozODpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIC9zYmluL3NlcnZpY2Ugc21iIHN0YXJ0XCI7e1smKiZdfQ==[[/code]]

# OPTIONAL (if using SELinux)

[[code]]czo2MzpcInNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIC91c3Ivc2Jpbi9zZXRzZWJvb2wgLVAgc2FtYmFfZW5hYmxlX2hvbWVfZGlycyBvblwiO3tbJiomXX0=[[/code]]

---------------------------------------------
# You’ll want to edit your iptables/firewall rules to allow connections.
# I would recommend locking this down to local network hosts etc.
# I’ll assume your trusted hosts are on a 192.168.1.0/24 network.

[[code]]czoxMTY6XCIKc2hlbGwmZ3Q7IGNkIC9ldGMvc3lzY29uZmlnCnNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIGNwIC0tcHJlc2VydmU9Y29udGV4dCBpcHR7WyYqJl19YWJsZXMgaXB0YWJsZXMub3JnCnNoZWxsJmd0OyBzdWRvIHZpbSBpcHRhYmxlcwpcIjt7WyYqJl19[[/code]]

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp -s 192.168.1.0/24 --dport 137 -j ACCEPT-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp -s 192.168.1.0/24 --dport 138 -j ACCEPT-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp -s 192.168.1.0/24 --dport 139 -j ACCEPT-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp -s 192.168.1.0/24 --dport 445 -j ACCEPT

---------------------------------------------
# From Windows, browse your “workgroup” network and you should now see “CENTOS”
# Simply log in with the account/smbpasswd you’ve created.

---------------------------------------------
Additional Info:

* Official Samba 3.2.x HOWTO and Reference – http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/

* SELinux Guide – http://docs.fedoraproject.org/selinux-user-guide/f10/en-US/
Copying / Moving files and retaining SELinux Contexts – See section “5.10. Maintaining SELinux Labels ”

* Dan Walsh’s SAMBA / SELinux info – http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/14195.html

* IPTables
– https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IptablesHowTo
– http://fedorasolved.org/Members/kanarip/iptables-howto