linsec.ca blog

Create your own SSL CA with the OS X Keychain

vdanen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:02:42 +0000

This week’s mac techmail is Create your own SSL CA with the OS X Keychain. This talks about how you can use the Certificate Assistant on OS X, to create your own SSL Certificate Authority for a local network or internal organization. The tool is quite slick, if a little complicated for the uninitiated, but it does work quite well.

Convert CVS repositories to Git

vdanen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:46:55 +0000

This week’s techmail is Convert CVS repositories to Git which goes into the how, and possibly the why, of converting a CVS repository into a git repository, retaining all commit and history information.

Remotely wake a sleeping Mac

vdanen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:45:17 +0000

Last week’s mac techmail was Remotely wake a sleeping Mac which explains some tricks on how to wake up a local Mac that is asleep. Useful if you want to have a file or media server that is also energy efficient so it’s only on when it needs to be.

Linux Magazine: Vote for the Linux distro you use the most

vdanen — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:31:39 +0000

Linux Magazine is having a vote where the results will be published in an upcoming magazine: the poll.

Currently Fedora is third at 8% with Ubuntu leading at 35%, and Debian in second at 10%.

Show these people some Fedora pride!

How to create LXC system containers to isolate services

vdanen — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:35:34 +0000

This week’s TechMail was How to create LXC system containers to isolate services which goes into further details on using LXC, using an OpenVZ template to create a new LXC container for use, and a brief rundown on how to configure it, start it, etc.

Using ExpanDrive to mount remote file systems

vdanen — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:00:06 +0000

This week’s mac techmail was Using ExpanDrive to mount remote file systems which takes a look at the ExpanDrive tool, which sits in the menubar and allows you to connect to remote SFTP, SSH, FTP/FTPS, or Amazon S3 file systems and mount them on the computer as if they were local filesystems. It’s essentially a polished front-end for FUSE with sshfs support for the SFTP/SSH connections. It’s a really great tool and while not free, it’s relatively inexpensive and works wonders. With it I can remotely mount the filesystem of my VPS using SSH with keys, or connect to the home filesystem while on the road, etc. And instead of having to navigate the remote filesystem within one application like a traditional FTP client, I can access it using the terminal, Finder, PathFinder, or any other utility that operates on the local filesystem. It securely mounts the remote filesystems to be as available as a SMB or AFP share.

Introducing Linux virtual containers with LXC

vdanen — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:51:01 +0000

This week’s techmail is Introducing Linux virtual containers with LXC. I played with LXC for the first time a little while ago when writing this tip, and it’s pretty slick. It’s not quite as feature-complete or as robust as OpenVZ, but it’s very close. It also has some benefits over OpenVZ, like direct integration with the upstream kernel. LXC is something to watch; it would be extremely cool to see things like Firefox stuffed into an LXC application container in the future, so it can really only ever mess with specific files/directories. LXC is definitely something to keep an eye on.

1Password for Mac OS X: One program to store them all

vdanen — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:28:25 +0000

This week’s mac techmail was 1Password for Mac OS X: One program to store them all which is an introduction to the immensely useful 1Password program. If you have a mac and you don’t have 1Password, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. 1Password stores passwords (browsers, database, SSH logins, etc.), serial numbers, and notes in an encrypted keychain format. It has plugins for the mac browsers that let’s you autofill password information in sites meaning you have one place to store your passwords and they are accessible from all browsers (and you can add new login info from any browser). To make it even better, you can sync the 1Password keychain using Dropbox or whatever so the same keychain can be used on different systems.

This is probably the absolute best password management app I’ve ever laid eyes on. The companion iPhone/iPod Touch app is icing on the cake. Well worth checking out if you haven’t played with it before.

Use Live USB Creator to install Fedora 12 from a USB stick

vdanen — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:23:33 +0000

This weeks’s techmail was Use Live USB Creator to install Fedora 12 from a USB stick which looks at using the Live USB Creator tool to build a bootable USB stick that can be used to run or install Fedora (or any other Live CD Linux distro). Very slick stuff. Worked great for me to get Fedora 12 installed on my MSI Wind (the old hackintosh that I thought was acting up due to me bungling something with OS X). Sadly, it appears the MSI Wind is truly hooped, as the same hanging issues I had on OS X I am also getting on Fedora 12. Swapping the harddrive made no difference, so I think the Wind is a paper weight. =(

iChat-like remote desktop sharing for Linux

vdanen — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:34:31 +0000

Does anyone know of such a beast? Last night I had to drive to my mother’s place as she insisted there was a problem with her email and needed me to come check it out. Sadly, it was due to the Buzz stuff and if she actually read the page, she’d have seen the “skip the Buzz, take me to my inbox” link. Instead, I arrived to a half-dozen firefox windows open to the same Buzz introduction page.

In light of that, I know I can setup VNC or NX or whatever to get onto her computer. That’s fine, but I’d like something like iChat that does screen *sharing* so I can see what silly thing she’s doing and prevent me from getting in the car in the first place (not that I dislike visiting my mother, understand, but this is a fairly routine occurrence that would best be done by remote since I’m not so good at hiding the irritation in my face).

I’m not aware of anything that can do this… is there something out there that will do the trick? Right now she’s running Mandriva 2009.0, but I plan to upgrade that to Fedora 12 one of these days.