SoleSky » Technique

Ubuntu Default Wallpaper Collection

calcifer — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:25:47 +0000

Ubuntu Default Wallpaper Collection (Wide screen version)： From Warty Warthog to Oneiric Ocelot

2011-10-20

How to MD5 a String

calcifer — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:06:40 +0000

As a Linux and Unix user, I think to do “md5sum” for your files is just a piece of cake. We always to use md5sum command to check various files, such as a OS disk image. But today I come to a problem, some web site use the md5 of the user ID as the “Invitation code”

I would like to take “calcifer” as the user ID, so how to generate the md5 code for such a string??

Let’s see the manual:

MD5SUM(1) User Commands MD5SUM(1)
NAME
md5sum – compute and check MD5 message digest
SYNOPSIS
md5sum [OPTION]… [FILE]…
DESCRIPTION
Print or check MD5 (128-bit) checksums. With no FILE, or when FILE is
-, read standard input.
-b, –binary
read in binary mode
-c, –check
read MD5 sums from the FILEs and check them
-t, –text
read in text mode (default)
MD5SUM(1) User Commands MD5SUM(1)
NAME md5sum – compute and check MD5 message digest
SYNOPSIS md5sum [OPTION]… [FILE]…
DESCRIPTION Print or check MD5 (128-bit) checksums. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
-b, –binary read in binary mode
-c, –check read MD5 sums from the FILEs and check them
-t, –text read in text mode (default)

Obviously, we can’t make it as the usual way we used to do ….
So we have to do a litter small trick: using pipe ~

echo -n "calcifer" | md5sum -

PS: ”-n” is to make sure we didn’t include the “new line” this invisible symbol .
So here can to the result:

calcifer@calcifer-laptop:~/Desktop$ echo -n "calcifer" | md5sum -

3ba9c9546d5dcb7ce2ee47967a83e324  -

That’s what we need~~
And further more, it’s nautilus for some people to input the command like this:

 echo -n calcifer | md5sum

In fact, the outcome is the same:

calcifer@calcifer-laptop:~/Desktop$ echo -n calcifer | md5sum -
3ba9c9546d5dcb7ce2ee47967a83e324  -

Update the MSN certificates for Pidgin

calcifer — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:26:43 +0000

If you are using MSN via Pidgin (ver < 2.7.7), maybe you can’t get logged in MSN right now. The error message about “SSL Certificate Error” shows that we need a new certificate file for Pidgin to connect the MSN server.

So to fix this problem, we need to update the certificate file.

Use vi or gedit or any editor you like to open the file: ~/.purple/certificates/x509/tls_peers/omega.contacts.msn.com
(For Pidgin in Windows, the path and file should be C:\Program Files\Pidgin\ca-certs\Microsoft_Secure_Server_Authority.pem)

Then copy all the text blew to replace the old content:

Install PPStream on 64bit Ubuntu…

calcifer — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:00:45 +0000

PPStream is one of the biggest online TV in China. Now PPStream release a new client software on Linux. The first official release version is packaged as Ubuntu deb package and … only for 32bit system(x86).

As the Ubuntu on my laptop is 64bit release and has be updated to 10.10, install such a 32 bit software is a god damn tough job.

As we know that to install a 32bit software on 64bit OS, the first step is to install 32bit libs :
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
and force to install without considering the architecture problem:
sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture somename.deb
Then if there is still some missing “lib” problem, use tool “getlibs” to solve:
getlibs -i somelib
And at the most of time, this problem has been solved at this step and we are happy to run the god damn 32bit on our OS.

But thanks to my upgraded Ubuntu 10.10, the tool “getlibs” didn’t work this time. And I tried to copy the missing libs for /usr/lib/ to /usr/lib32/ , only turn out a classical error message:

Library error: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

Familiar? Yup, of course. This message is very common when you do some coding. It tells us that this library is not suitable. The reason is that those file I copied from is 64bit base software and their lib is also not suitable for 32bit software to use.

OK, it’s so suck that I can’t install 32bit lib just by typing apt-get command to fetched. And the stupid time started…

I went to http://packages.ubuntu.com/ to search those packages which contain lib file I needed. Then found the 32bit version to download.
Due to the suck architecture difference, we can’t install those package directly of course. Then how to move the lib file to /usr/lib32?

Use this command:
sudo dpkg -x somepackage.deb

“man” the dpkg command you will found

-x, –extract archive directory
Extract the files contained by package.

This command just extracted to deb file and didn’t do anything after all.
Then you know how to do next:
sudo cp lib*.so.* /usr/lib32
OK, we fixed one lib already. But my nightmare didn’t stop, because the god damn PPStream needs lots of extra libs to run.

Finally, the god damn thing works and I can have a little TV time before went to bed…

Save the Energy, Save the World

calcifer — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:08:39 +0000

The sticky damn summer of Canton has come. My poor little laptop would face a serious problem about its own temperature which cause it closes itself directly.
Yep, we can set the power performance manually. But there are only few fixed profile to choose: high performance, low performance and balance… Then I have to focus on the temperature’s changing and switch different setting among them.

Maybe Granola is a good choice for me. It’s a smart automatically energy management software. That sounds cool~ Now I only have to install it and let it do the job for me. And beside, I can also install a GUI interface to see what it has done.

Make a notice for myself:

1 download and run the install script: here

2 install software and GUI interface:

sudo apt-get install granola granola-gui

and it’s done~

Back to 32 bit Linux Flashplugin again…

calcifer — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:25:29 +0000

After Adobe released its 64 bit flashplugin for Linux 64 bit OS , I switched to that 64 bit version at once and hope that the problems can be fixed forever. But I am so bored with its endless crashing and decided to turn back to the 32 bit version.

Just make a record for myself :

1st: Remove the gnash (If you have)

sudo apt-get remove gnash

2nd : Install nspluginwrapper and Flash 9:

sudo apt-get install nspluginwrapper flashplugin-nonfree lib32nss-mdns

3rd: Flash 9 is not packaged, but the package installer script will fetch it from Adobe’s download site and install it. Now simply install nspluginwrapper as a Firefox plugin:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins/

OK, Bye

Play SSH Trick Freely Part 2

calcifer — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:35:01 +0000

As we said, we can set up a secure Socket 5connection via SSH tool. Then we make our App. like browsers programs go through it. But,,, not all of the browsers support the Socket 5 proxy method. For example, the new generation Google web browser Chrome doesn’t support that.

So we have to make it through. First, the Chrome browser does support the common proxy way — Http proxy. And then, if we can “translate” the socket connection into the http connection, then it works!

The solution is to set up a http proxy in our localhost and let it do the job to help those App. to talk to the remote socket proxy. Then comes to the next tool we need, the Privoxy. Yep, we always use this software to help our Tor proxy services smarter. So we can also do it in this way:

Find the configure file of Privoxy : /etc/privoxy/config (in Ubuntu)
And add this line at the end of the file:

forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:7070 .

(don’t miss the “.” at the end of line, that make this route complete)

Easy to see that all the date transfer through the 7070 port will “translate” into the SSH socket 5 proxy service
Save and exit.

Restart the Privoxy :

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart

(in Ubuntu)

And finished…. All you have to do next is to set up your browser’s proxy as http proxy: 127.0.0.1:7070

And BTW, the DNS pollution problem is still needed to be considered.

Play SSH Trick Freely

calcifer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:47:43 +0000

SSH is a very popular tool for remote control under Unix and Linux System. And ssh command is included in most Unix/Linux OS shell by default.

SSH stands for “security Shell”, that’s to say it provides a security access to OS via a “SHELL” like interface. So before you wanna play SSH trick, you have to own a host as the remote host. Then we can use ssh to access our host safely and manage the machine just like you are in front of it(normally in TEXT mode, of course ). But there is another way to use SSH tool, let it make a “tunnel” for our applications in local host. That means our applications like browsers can connect to the remote host via encrypted messages and the remote host will help them communicate with the destination sites. The result is that our communications become safer and the GFW can’t block us anymore~

Let’s go to own a host first. Be careful, not all the host or VPS provide SSH access. Make sure you are going to own a host with SSH function! My friend tell me that host-blaster.com provide free VPS with SSH access, so I visited it and registered a VPS.

Then the second step is to make SSH to dig a tunnel for us.
Input such like command in our local shell terminal:

ssh -qTfnN -D 7070 yourname@yourname.host-blaster.com

Maybe you use the ssh command before, but those parameters would make you puzzled. Let’s make them clean first.

-q: Quiet mode. Causes most warning and diagnostic messages to be
suppressed. Only fatal errors are displayed. If a second -q is
given then even fatal errors are suppressed, except for those
produced due solely to bad arguments.

-T Disable pseudo-tty allocation.

-f Requests ssh to go to background just before command execution.
This is useful if ssh is going to ask for passwords or
passphrases, but the user wants it in the background. This
implies -n. The recommended way to start X11 programs at a
remote site is with something like ssh -f host xterm.

-n Redirects stdin from /dev/null (actually, prevents reading from
stdin). This must be used when ssh is run in the background. A
common trick is to use this to run X11 programs on a remote
machine. For example, ssh -n shadows.cs.hut.fi emacs & will
start an emacs on shadows.cs.hut.fi, and the X11 connection will
be automatically forwarded over an encrypted channel. The ssh
program will be put in the background. (This does not work if
ssh needs to ask for a password or passphrase; see also the -f
option.)

-N Do not execute a remote command. This is useful for just for‐
warding ports (protocol version 2 only).

-D [bind_address:]port
Specifies a local “dynamic” application-level port forwarding.
This works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local
side, optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a
connection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and the application protocol is then used to
determine where to connect to from the remote machine.

After that, we have cleaned that mass, this command tell SSH to work in the background and served at 7070 port.

So we go to the final step, make our application work via SSH “tunnel” we made just now.

For example, we browse web with Firefox, that all we have to do is to set our proxy setting of FF use the SSH. Then we set the socket proxy setting as

IP: 127.0.0.1(you can use loaclhost too) port: 7070 and click the socket 5 option.

BTW, if the GFW block the sites by DNS pollution, you have to active the FF to use remote dns. Type about:config to active the network.proxy.socks_remote_dns option.

That’s all, happy SSH life

Add a Small Lovely 2010 Asian Games Countdown in Your Site

calcifer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:45:03 +0000

There is less the one year left for the 16th Asian Games at Canton, 2010. To be a Cantonese, we have our duty to support it with our effort.

I browse the official website of 16th Asian Games (http://www.gz2010.cn/en) which obviously found by the support of NetEase. In my opinion, this website is quite well and enough “official”. Maybe that is the reason why many web design fans blame it as no creation and passion. But integrally speaking, it’s quite simple(simple is the best) and has enough function as a news issue website.

The most attractive thing caught my eyes is not those news and pictures, but a lovely countdown flash on the top of sider bar. It’s a small flash animation with a funny cartoon dragon board keeps rowing forward.

As I am so loved with this small flash animation, I decided to “steal” it to the side bar of my site.

After checking the source code in firebug, I found that piece of code quickly:

>="Player1258246398430" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
      width="257" height="136" 
      codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
              ="src" value="http://swf.news.163.com/2010/yayun/lh/countDownEng.swf" />
              ="wmode" value="transparent" />="quality" value="high" />
              ="Player1258246398430" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="257" height="136"
                          src="http://swf.news.163.com/2010/yayun/lh/countDownEng.swf" 
                          quality="high" wmode="transparent">
               >
>="www.gz2010.cn/en" href="http://www.gz2010.cn/en">>
>

PS: Remember to resize the width and height if you want to fix it into your site. And the value of width and height in the param tab is very important if you want it work perfect for Opera user.

At last, if you wanna use a Chinese version, just change

value=”http://swf.news.163.com/2010/yayun/lh/countDownEng.swf”

into

value=”http://swf.news.163.com/2010/yayun/lh/countDown.swf”

Then you will see :

If you use Worprss blog, it’s very easy to add this code in the “Widgets” Setting by adding a Text widgets and copy into it. That’s all

Mice Hole

calcifer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:16:49 +0000

At the same day in 20 years ago,the Berlin Wall was torn down.Today,another higher invisible “Wall” is still standing in China. ( tweeted by @icalcifer )

Today is the day that Berlin Wall crashed at 20 years ago. The fall of Berlin Wall is the symbol of democracy freedom. The West takes it as a great victory and the opposite side try to make it less attractive. However the fall of Berlin Wall takes the world into a new direction and will be remember forever.

Where there is a wall, there would be some mice hole on it. So the stories of the cat and the mouses will never stop until the day that wall crashed.

There are tricks for the mice to dig holes on the Wall, such as VPN, SSH, Proxy and so on. Tor is my favorite trick cause its untraceable and free to use. But unlucky it got a VIP treatment from the Wall and we have to do something to make it work again.

There is a small trick note for myself below. You can take it if you need it too.

Step 1: Write a request letter to bridges@torproject.org via a reliable email service likes Gmail. (It’s especially important if you are behind the Wall) Then we would get a list likes ” bridge 123.123.123.123 ” .

Step 2: Edit the /etc/tor/torrc file as root. To add that list you have got to the “bridge relays” section at the bottom of the file. Save and exit.

Step 3: Restart the Tor and Privoxy(if you need) services by the commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart