Dec 9

I recently go some spyware through Google’s Chrome browser. I had disabled AVG 9 in hopes of getting Mass Effect to run longer than 30 minutes without crashing (to no avail).

Anyway, I was doing something on the internet somewhere and I saw the evil AntiVirus2009 window pop up and the icon in my system tray. I knew the next few hours would be packed with fun!

The key, I found, was to completely clear all of the cookies from all of my browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, MineField, Opera, Chrome, Chromium, and Iron). This fixed the link redirection issue.

Here are the free projects that let me eventually remove all the crap from Windows XP:
1.) Ultimate Boot CD. I loaded it and ran EZ PC Fix to clear my temp files and recycler. http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm
2.) Malware Bytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org/
3.) SpyBot SD: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
4.) AutoRuns: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
5.) Hijack This: http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/
6.) LSPFix: http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm
7.) WinSockXP fix: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
8.) Fixwareout: Source unknown, can be found at http://ip2k.com/tools
9.) Dial-A-Fix: http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Dial-a-fix
10.) Windows Installer CleanUp Utility (to remove broken MSI packages): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

I have the hard-to-find stuff mirrored here ( http://ip2k.com/tools ) so it never gets lost

Dec 9

1.) Download the update file from http://ip2k.com/droid_2-0-1.zip
2.) rename the file “update.zip”
3.) Upload the zip file (do NOT extract it, leave it zipped!) to the root of your MicroSD card (not in any folders, just on the root of the card)
4.) You needed to pull the battery in your Droid to get the card out, so replace the card and open the keyboard.
5.) Hold the “x” key on the Droid’s keyboard and power it on. Continue holding “x” until you see a triangle with an exclamation point.
6.) Release the “x” key. Simultaneous press the “volume up” and “camera shutter” buttons. A menu should pop up.
7.) Using the D-Pad, select to update the system software from the update.zip file.
8.) The update will take a few minutes. During this time, do NOT pull the battery or attempt to turn off the phone. Doing so may corrupt the firmware on your device and render it unbootable.
9.) Once the update is complete, select “Reboot system now”. Enjoy!

This was written based on the original article at http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/Want-to-manually-update-your-Motorola-DROIDs-software-Heres-how.-article-comments-a_8232-p_2.html
md5sum of orig file (and my mirror): 3af35446905040a3123ec09195299596

Nov 1

Safari 4 has known issues with showing just a white screen randomly. There are many threads on the Apple support forums regarding this, here is an exmaple: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9785751 . Personally, I use Google Chrome which is also a WebKit-based browser and I’ve never had an issue.

It seems that with the iPhone encryption issues ( http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r22999133-iPhone-31-breaks-Exchange-Sync-for-pre3GS-phones , and even on the new 3GS: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/07/new-iphone-hardware-encryption-not-even-close-to-hack-proof.ars ), the Snow Leopard data loss issues ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10373064-260.html ), and Time Capsules dying early ( http://gizmodo.com/5379865/are-apple-time-capsules-short-lived , http://timecapsuledead.org/ ) Apple doesn’t have it’s software development in line just quite yet.

With all these issues, it’s no surprise that at least a few people feel the same as this columnist: “I suspect that Apple has set back its enterprise cause several years, if not permanently.” ( http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=54536&PageMem=2 )

Sep 19

UPDATED: now works with most apache installs and is more portable / useful:

http://ip2k.com/sitelist.sh

This bash script combines many useful little tricks that you may be interested in even if you don’t need the whole thing. Some include:

- Print a list of IPs on the linux system
- Print a list of websites hosted on the server that match a certain pattern (app = Magento in this case)
- Looping


trap sorry INT
#Two levels of debugging, 1 and 2. 1 shows just pings, 2 shows everything.
dbg=0

function prnt {
echo -e "\e[1;36m[ $1 ]\e[00m"
}

function prntok {
echo -e "\e[1;32m[ $1 ]\e[00m"
}

sorry ()
{
prnt "Caught SIGINT, cleaning up..."
if [ -f tempfile ]; then
rm -rf tempfile
prntok "Found and removed tempfile, exiting now"
else
prntok "tempfile not found, exiting..."
fi
exit 1
}

function getip {
ping -c1 -W1 -q $1 | grep PING | awk '{print $3}' |tr -d \(\)
}

iplist="$(ifconfig | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d [a-z,:] | grep -v '127.0.0.1')"
echo > tempfile
for ip in $iplist; do
echo $ip >> tempfile
done

sites="$(awk '$1 == "ServerName" { print $2 }' /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost_* | uniq)"

for site in $sites; do
if [ $dbg -gt 0 ]; then
prnt "DEBUG: Pinging $site..."
fi

siteip=$(getip $site)
ison=$(grep -c $siteip tempfile)

if [ $dbg -gt 1 ]; then
prntok "DEBUG: siteip = $siteip"
fi

if [ $ison = 1 ]; then
if [ $dbg -gt 1 ]; then
prntok "DEBUG: $site found!"
fi

echo "http://$site"
else
if [ $dbg -gt 1 ]; then
prnt "DEBUG: $site not found"
fi

fi

done

rm -rf tempfile
exit 0

Aug 23

I oversee a few hundred Linux-based systems, and >99% of them run the typical QMail / ClamAV / SpamAssassin stack. I personally think QMail sucks, but I have written a script that usually fixes most issues (stuck queue, delayed mail, other strange issues). You could easily edit this to be compatible with cPanel-based servers, but as it stands it’s written for InterWorx-CP and servers without a control-panel system. Note that this needs BASH to run and won’t work properly due to the way the counter is incremented in regular POSIX ‘sh’.

Link: http://seanp2k.com/m.sh

It is below:

#!/bin/bash
# ----- BEING DECLARE FUNCTIONS -----

# prnt - formats and echos input
function prnt {
echo -e "\e[1;32m[ $1 ]\e[00m"
}

# killproc - uses pidof to find process name then tries to kill COUNTER number of times.
# Accepts $1 as process name and $2 as $
PROCNAME=""

function killproc {
procname=$1
counter=0
pids="$(pidof "$procname")"
while [ "$pids" ] && ((counter++ < $2)); do
if [ $counter -eq $2 ]; then
echo -e "\e[1;31m[ Couldn't kill $procname, tried $2 times. PID is $pids ]\e[00m"
else
# ----- DEBUGGING - uncomment next line -----
# ps -elf | grep -i $procname
for pid in $pids; do
echo -e "\e[1;36m[ $procname killed, PID $pid, try $counter/$2 ]\e[00m"
pkill -9 $pid
done
sleep 1
pids="$(pidof "$procname")"
echo
fi
done
}

# ----- END DECLARE FUNCTIONS -----
# ----- BEING MAIN SUB -----

prnt "Reset local and remote delivery concurrency limits"
echo 200 > /var/qmail/control/concurrencylocal
echo 200 > /var/qmail/control/concurrencyincoming
echo 200 > /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote

prnt "Restart InterWorx-CP"
/etc/init.d/iworx restart

prnt "Restart ClamAV & SpamAssassin"
/etc/init.d/clamd stop
/etc/init.d/spamassassin stop

killproc spamd 5
killproc clamd 5

/etc/init.d/clamd start
/etc/init.d/spamassassin start
prnt "Restart POP3"
/etc/init.d/pop3 restart

prnt "Restart POP3-SSL"
/etc/init.d/pop3-ssl restart

prnt "Restart IMAP4"
/etc/init.d/imap4 restart

prnt "Restart IMAP4-SSL"
/etc/init.d/imap4-ssl restart

prnt "Restart SMTP"

svc -d /service/send /service/smtp /service/smtp2
/etc/init.d/smtp stop
/etc/init.d/smtp status

if [ "$(pidof qmail-send)" ]; then
counter=11
echo -en "\e[1;32m[ Waiting for SMTP to stop: "
while [ "$(pidof qmail-send)" ] && ((counter-- > 0)); do
echo -n "$counter.."
sleep 1
done
echo -e " ]\e[00m"
fi

/etc/init.d/smtp status
svc -k /service/send
killproc qmail-send 5
prnt "Force-send qmail message queue"
svc -u /service/send
svc -a /service/send
svc -u /service/smtp /service/smtp2
/etc/init.d/smtp start
prnt "Please ensure that SMTP and send are up"
/etc/init.d/smtp status
/var/qmail/bin/qmqtool -s
# ----- END MAIN SUB -----
exit 0;

Jul 11

I really hate it when sites try to make you register just to get your E-Mail address and spam you. I also really hate poorly-written PHP scripts that don’t work. Combine these two and you have the newest trend in PHP CrapWare direct from middle-eastern “software” companies. I’d like to note that all of these scripts have issues and none of them are near production quality or the quality of finely-written software, such as WordPress or Movable Type.

So without further ado, I present to you Download URLs to forgo the registration process and not let these jerks get more E-Mail addresses for their crappy software. ClipBucket is the only one that doesn’t require registration to download, but unfortuantely ClipBucket is even crappier than the others; I couldn’t even get the main page to come up without crippling errors.

——osTube
Community Edition: http://ip2k.com/ostube/osTube_2.6_osTube_2.6_community_edt.tar.gz
Clean URLS doc: http://www.ostube.de/files/download/documentation/osTube_2.6_CleanUrls_en.pdf
Installation Instructions: http://www.ostube.de/files/download/documentation/osTube_2.6_Schnellanleitung_en.pdf

——Vidiscript

http://vidiscript.com/get

——PHPMotion
For PHP 4.x – http://downloads.phpmotion.com/V3.0/php4/phpmotion.zip
For PHP 5.x – http://downloads.phpmotion.com/V3.0/php5/phpmotion.zip

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS
For installation instructions visit http://wiki.phpmotion.com/InstallingV3

——ClipBucket

http://clip-bucket.com/

If you’re looking for a quick breakdown on why each sucks:

osTube: Mostly foreign-language, setup process is much more complicated than modern PHP scripts…C’mon guys, this isn’t the 90′s anymore and not everyone has SSH access to install your garbage.

VidiScript:
It’s “beta” software from a “quality” developer…need I say more?

PHPMotion: Would be fine except it’s encoded with PHPShield (as if anyone would want to steal their AMAZING source code). Loader progress bar is broken and updates percentages incorrectly. Path settings don’t have any affect on actual paths that it’ll try to use. Doesn’t like being installed in a subdir; in fact, it won’t even work in a subdir.

ClipBucket: Couldn’t even get main page to load, that’s how terrible it is.