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Google SSL Web Search Extension

2010 August 9
by Philippe Delodder

Just read something quite interesting on LifehackerGoogle SSL Web Search Encrypts Your Google Searches and Suggestions by Default

I hadn’t heard of the Google SSL Web Search at all, it’s now the default in Firefox for me.

But for Chrome there is an extension which the Lifehacker article is about Google SSL Web Search beta (by Google). Well it’s just a bit easier to set up if your using chrome. Maybe they will add additional features to the extension.

A small note you need at least Google Chrome 6.0.419.0

BIC Phone

2010 June 29
tags:
by Philippe Delodder

With a contest on twitter from @Belgacom_press, I had won a BIC Phone. A few days later I received this by mail:

Some short info on the phone:

  • It cost € 39 and you can buy it at a bookstore or probably any other unconventional store.
  • It comes with € 19 call credit
  • New phone number
  • Within  the minute of purchase, you can use the telephone, since it’s fully charged.
  • Simple, light and cheap are the key words of this phone.

A few examples of usefullness:

  • This weekend I went to the beach and since I didn’t wanted to take my expensive phone, I used the BIC Phone. Simple forward all the incoming calls to the BIC Phone.
  • If you selling your house and you don’t want people to know your default phone number you can use a BIC Phone.

An other winner of the BIC Phone, @aolbrechts has wrote a something in french about it, you can find it here.

Some info on wikipedia what the make and model it is.

No more time for the blog

2010 May 5
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by Philippe Delodder

Due to a lack of time i don’t have the time to post or update this blog as much as I want. The reasons for my absence is working on different projects including Time Drive.

The main reasons is my personal calendar it’s bulking with stuff todo and the work life is as busy as every.

I hope the time will come when I update this blog once again, but for the time now it will kept as is.

My new phone a HTC Hero

2010 March 26
tags: ,
by Philippe Delodder

I have a HTC Hero now for a few weeks and I’m very pleased with it. It’s the best phone I had so far.

There is only set back is the alarm clock. It does not work even this very moment. I thought this: Fixing a Silent Alarm on HTC Hero, was a possible fix, no it wasn’t. Still looking for a solution now trying to set two alarm clocks as read on a forum in search for answer.

Dear Lazyweb: If there is a solution for the alarm clock please help me out on this one.

Belgacom Speed Upgrade: Speedtest

2010 March 1
tags:
by Philippe Delodder

Ext4: Reducing reservered blocks

2009 December 8
tags:
by Philippe Delodder

When you format an disk with ext4 a default of 5% reserved blocks are for privileged processes. In case the  file system fills up important process can still fill up and continue to function.

To reduce the 5 % to 1 % use the following command:

sudo tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sda1

Make sure you use the correct partition.

Belgacom blokkeert poorten tegen hacker

2009 November 3
by Philippe Delodder

Belgacom heeft op 31/10/2009, de volgende poorten geblokkeerd:

  • 23 (telnet)
  • 80 (http)
  • 443 (https)

Dit enkel voor inkomend verkeer. Maar volgens dit forum thread kan je telefonisch (080022700 optie 1) of vanaf volgende week open zetten via de e-service na aanvaarden van de nodige risico voorwaarden.

Misschien probeert Belgacom hiermee de hacker te snel af te zijn. maar volgens mij is het geen goede zet.  Zeker dat mensen die poorten gebruiken voor video bewaking, remote management  en andere voorziening.

Maar er is altijd een mogelijkheid om de poorten nummers te veranderen via het LAN servers.

Maar voor mij is de belangrijkste vraag waarom niet gedeeltelijk of volledige toegeven aan de hacker en de datalimiet iets verhogen of zit er meer achter?  Dan natuurlijk ook een patch uitbrengen voor de exploit in de firmware.

Meer overzicht van gesloten poorten inclusief die hier boven: http://tinyurl.com/closedports.

Update:

Als commentaar door  mouse256, je kan de poorten terug open door te surfen naar Belgacom e-service site en dan kiezen voor de optie “Basic Security” onder “Mijn internet –> Mijn Opties”

Transparent Proxy(Squid) server with one nic

2009 October 30
by Philippe Delodder

I was reading an interesting story about squid to save bandwidth with apt-get, more info about that can be found here(squid and debian packages).
But to make more use of the squid I had installed and only one nic, I was looking for a solution: Transparent proxy server with one nic

For more information on how to setup squid3 as  transparent proxy can be found here.

After modifying the config for my purposes, which you can find below, I was all set. It’s a great solution that’s going to save me some more bandwidth

Changes to the /etc/network/interfaces:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

auto eth0:0
iface eth0:0 inet static
name Ethernet alias LAN card
address 192.168.2.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.2.255
network 192.168.2.0

The script that makes it all possible(changed from the solution I found):

#!/bin/sh

# Squid server IP
SQUID_SERVER="192.168.1.5"

# Interface connected to Internet
INTERNET="eth0"

# Address connected to LAN
LOCAL="192.168.2.0/24"
LOCAL2="192.168.1.0/24"
# Squid port
SQUID_PORT="3128"

# Clean old firewall
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -t mangle -X

# Enable Forwarding
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

# Setting default filter policy
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

# Unlimited access to loop back
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT

# Allow UDP, DNS and Passive FTP
iptables -A INPUT -i $INTERNET -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# set this system as a router for Rest of LAN
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $INTERNET -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -s $LOCAL -j ACCEPT

# unlimited access to LAN
iptables -A INPUT -s $LOCAL -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -s $LOCAL -j ACCEPT

# DNAT port 80 request comming from LAN systems to squid 3128 ($SQUID_PORT) aka transparent proxy
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s $LOCAL -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to $SQUID_SERVER:$SQUID_PORT
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s $LOCAL2 -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to $SQUID_SERVER:$SQUID_PORT

# if it is same system
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $INTERNET -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port $SQUID_PORT

#open everything
iptables -A INPUT -i $INTERNET -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o $INTERNET  -j ACCEPT

# DROP everything and Log it
iptables -A INPUT -j LOG
iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

Time Drive 0.3: Better, Easier, More Refined

2009 October 26
by Philippe Delodder

More info about the new release can be found here.

The Ubuntu packages for Jaunty and Karmic are available here.

Time Drive available on PPA

2009 October 6
by Philippe Delodder

Time Drive is now available for ppa more can be read here.

Nothing more needs to be said about it:

https://launchpad.net/~time-drive-devel/+archive/stable

for you sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/time-drive-devel/stable/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/time-drive-devel/stable/ubuntu jaunty main

Also available for karmic:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/time-drive-devel/stable/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/time-drive-devel/stable/ubuntu karmic main

or by adding ppa:time-drive-devel/stable to your system’s Software Sources

For almost daily testing releases can be found here or just change stable to ppa.

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