Installing Redmine on Debian Etch

Here is a step by step summary of what I did to get to get Redmine up and running on Debian 5.x (Linux etch55 2.6.24-24-openvz #1 SMP Fri Sep 18 19:57:34 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux)

If you don't know what Redmine is, it is like Trac, but better and on Rails. If you don't know what Trac is you probably wouldn't be interested in Redmine, so you can stop reading.

What it took?

1. Review this Rails on Debian guide. I'm sure there are others, but this is was a good starting point to get the nuances of running Rails apps on Debian, which can be a bit of pain if you are relying on packages. I know real rails folks use OSX but I'm not a real rails guy.

2. Install the necessary Debian packages. This is what I had to do on an OpenVZ VE, so you your packages may differ slightly: ruby ruby-dev irb sqlite3 ri libzlib-ruby libsqlite3-ruby libmysql-ruby mysql-serer mysql-client libopenssl-ruby

3. Install Rubygems the normal way. I installed 1.3.5. I created a symlink for gem1.8 just because.

4. Read the Redmine Installation Guide. Most of what you need to know is there, and I'm not going to repeat what it is there because it should just work, especially if you are familiar with rails or the configuration of rails apps.

5. Install rails and rake. I installed rails 2.1.2 based on the minimum for the 0.8x of redmine. I assume more recent versions of rails will work.

6. Download the stable release of Redmine.

7. You should have already configured mysql-server during the install, but make sure you put your password in the database.yml.

8. Create your database.yml, the session key and run the various rake scripts in the installation guide.

9. Fire up with webrick and login with admin/admin.

What went Wrong?

The main issues I had were related to not installing the right Debian packages. For example you definitely need libopenssl-ruby or the startup scripts will fail. I also screwed up the database.yml.

What Next?

Get git working following the instructions here. But first I need to work on my git skills, since I mostly have used subversion.

Sexing Up Your Boring Hardy Desktop to thwart Mac-Envy

So image is important. I get that. That is why so many security folks like Mac's these days. It certainly isn't because they are more reliable, but I digress.

Karmic has decent themes and wallpapers, but 8.04LTS is bloody awful. And you can't go onsite somewhere with a bunch of non-IT folks that will already be looking over you shoulder with ugly Ubuntu brown. It is bad enough that I have to use an older Dell D630, which of course runs faster than my E6400 with XP.

So the Bisigi Project has some pretty cool themes. I picked Showtime, a nice monochrome, almost but no completely OSX like theme. Next you need a simple monochrome theme for Firefox. If you have to use Firefox, Full Flat kicks ass, especially on Netbooks with limited resolution, but I swear it is faster. Lastly you need a nice monochrome wallpaper like Dark Times (after all it is Advent remember) from gnome-look.org.

And this just in, a monochrome Chrome theme to match.

Linux Netbook Use Case: EVDO/Wifi Firewall to protect your "Big Company" XP Laptop

So if you've used any large enterprise XP image you know they are awful.

The larger the company, the worse the build. They are slow. They crash all the time. They have a zillion agents running doing God knows what and they probably have the firewall disabled.

But you want to do the "right thing" and actually follow policy and NOT put Linux on the lovely Dell hardware they give like you used to do "back in the day."

And you don't want to run these in a coffee shop or an untrusted network. But I feel reasonably safe about running my Ubuntu S10-2 in relatively hostile environments.

Because most modern NICs (including the Broadcom's in most Atom-based netbooks) have auto-MDX so you can just directly plug in your laptop into the unused Ethernet on your Netbook after doing the following:

1) Configure a static address on the eth0 in (/etc/network/interfaces) making sure it is not an network you actually use (DOH!)

2) Make the appropriate change to sysctl.conf (if you have to ask...)
3) Install dnsmasq for DNS and DHCP (an apt-get away)
4) Add whatever iptables rules you want to rc.local (or run manually because if the ppp0 interface is not up it may not work)

Sometimes I share over the Wifi others I use my EVDO card.

Bottom line: it just works.

Bonus: you get to see whatever the hell all those pesky agents are doing when they phone home to your corporate network over the Internet.

Snow Photos and More

In lieu of Facebook. Recent birthday party, lego club, and more!

blizzard09

WebSocket Service Fingerprinting with Curl

Fingerprinting is probably a bit of a stretch, but at least I didn't use the "h" word, but using pywebsocket is probably the easiest way to learn about the protocol.

Startup the server....

franz@mfranz-s10-2:~/Documents/pywebsocket-read-only/src/mod_pywebsocket$ python standalone.py -p 8888 -w ../example/

Then the client...

mfranz@mfranz-s10-2:~/Documents/pywebsocket-read-only/src/example$ python echo_client.py -s 127.0.0.1 -p 8888
Send: Hello
Recv: Hello
Send: 日本
Recv: 日本
Send: Goodbye
Recv: Goodbye

Look at the traffic on the wire with ngrep.

interface: lo (127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0)
####
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
GET /echo HTTP/1.1..                                              
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
Upgrade: WebSocket..                                              
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
Connection: Upgrade..                                             
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
Host: 127.0.0.1:8888..                                            
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
Origin: http://localhost/..                                       
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
..                                                                
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
HTTP/1.1 101 Web Socket Protocol Handshake..                      
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
Upgrade: WebSocket..                                              
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
Connection: Upgrade..                                             
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
WebSocket-Origin:                                                 
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
http://localhost/                                                 
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
..                                                                
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
WebSocket-Location:                                               
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
ws://127.0.0.1:8888/echo                                          
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
..                                                                
##
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
..                                                                
##
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
.Hello.                                                           
#
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
.Hello.                                                           
#
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
........                                                          
#
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
........                                                          
#
T 127.0.0.1:44284 -> 127.0.0.1:8888 [AP]
.Goodbye.                                                         
#
T 127.0.0.1:8888 -> 127.0.0.1:44284 [AP]
.Goodbye.                                                         
###

Now with curl, notice the headers that you have to add to get a response. With anything less I got a 404. The origin header can be anything.

mfranz@mfranz-s10-2:~$ curl -v http://127.0.0.1:8888/echo -H "Upgrade: WebSocket" -H "Connection: Upgrade" -H "Origin: http://localhost"

* About to connect() to 127.0.0.1 port 8888 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 8888 (#0)
> GET /echo HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.19.5 (i486-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.19.5 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.15
> Host: 127.0.0.1:8888
> Accept: */*
> Upgrade: WebSocket
> Connection: Upgrade
> Origin: http://localhost
>
<>
But if the URI doesn't match you get

mfranz@mfranz-s10-2:~$ curl -v http://127.0.0.1:8888/ -H "Upgrade: WebSocket" -H "Connection: Upgrade" -H "Origin: http://localhost"

* About to connect() to 127.0.0.1 port 8888 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 8888 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.19.5 (i486-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.19.5 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.15
> Host: 127.0.0.1:8888
> Accept: */*
> Upgrade: WebSocket
> Connection: Upgrade
> Origin: http://localhost
>
* Empty reply from server
* Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
* Closing connection #0