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MythTV, XBMC, misc.

Posted May 11, 2012 By Landis V

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Server/Backend

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=MythTV

Seriously, can’t Mac just use Ctl+V/Ctl+X/Ctl+C?  Thought they had a “control” key as well, in addition to the poison apple and the cloverleaf.  Guess I’ll have to check.

After a bit of a hiatus, getting back into MythTV a little bit.  This time, just going to set up backend on a PC I always have running anyway, and as noted in the second link, run XBMC as a Myth frontend.  Since I finally bought a TV from the modern era, I ordered a video card with an HDMI output and am thinking I can get an XBMC set up as a frontend so we can DVR the very small handful of shows I actually kind of give a damn about watching.

I’ve also been doing some research and playing with Joomla, as it seems like it may be a better platform for my most recent web endeavor than WordPress.  As much as I like WordPress and am relatively comfortable with it, there are some layout things that I think would take additional work in WordPress that I can just do or use a plugin for in Joomla.  I could probably make WP do what I want, but I think I’d probably have more time in that than I would in learning Joomla and implementing the plugins I need to deliver the experience I’m looking for.  Plus, without digging into the backend and really building an understanding of the platform, I’m not comfortable with my ability to build out the changes I want securely.  At layer 2 or 3 of the OSI, I have enough experience to trust my judgment, even cross platform.  At layer 7 (8?), I question myself a little more.  I’m not comfortable in situations where I can’t trust my own judgment.

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Filed in Links, Linux, Projects, Software, TV, Video | Tagged:

Devil Linux serial console

Posted May 8, 2012 By Landis V

I’m a fan of Devil Linux.  It’s the first distribution I encountered that, by default, has no ports listening when you boot it up.  As you might expect, this does hint at a less tailored fit in a desktop environment (in most cases), but is a great base for a network appliance.

As an appliance, many times it’s handier to be able to just jack in a serial cable from a laptop or an aux port than to cart around a display, keyboard and mouse.  Unfortunately, the live CD by itself doesn’t provide that console access.  However, if you have saved a working configuration to storage media, it seems to be fairly trivial to do this – caveat emptor, I haven’t run full tests natively, only after running install-on-usb and installing to local disk media using syslinux with console option.

After running install-on-usb as noted above, I had serial access to the system once the boot was completed and the login prompt displayed on the real console.  I proceeded to lose this access by replacing the etc-mods.tar.bz2 with my live configuration, and figured then that the changes must be contained within the saved mods.  Here’s what I added back to regain console access (adjust your serial port name as necessary for your platform):

  • To the end of /etc/inittab, add:
    S0:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 9600 ttyS0 vt102
  • To /etc/securetty, add:
    ttyS0

Don’t forget to save-config – reboot (reinit?), and you should have a working serial console.  Lots more room to play and improve these, but this is sufficient for my needs at this time and may help someone else down the road.

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Filed in Linux

How to SCP a path with spaces

Posted May 8, 2012 By Landis V

http://www.thingy-ma-jig.co.uk/comment/7122

I’ve needed this a few times and been lazy about it.  Finally got around to looking it up.  Quote the path and double-escape the spaces… I’d have never just guessed it, though maybe would have figured it out if I had spent some time reading through the documentation.  Thanks, Nick.  Saved me a huge chunk of time there.

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Filed in Communications, Links, Software

How to get IPSec encrytpion key for a specific session – The Cisco Learning Network

Posted May 7, 2012 By Landis V

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/4654

Memory string preceding per-session IPSec keys in an IOS core dump:  00 00 00 00 63 C0 60 0C 63 C0 60 1C 07 D0 00 19 00 00 00 00 63 C0 60 0C 63 C0 60 1C 07 D0 00 19

Exactly 16 bytes after B8 begins the inbound encryption key, which is 24 bytes long. Immediately after the encryption key is the 16 byte authentication key.  Once these are sussed out, they can be used to decode a wireshark capture for troubleshooting purposes.  These keys are not the pre-shared key; they are the derived session key that changes periodically based on time or bytes sent.

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Filed in Cisco, Links, Security

Find and display a DHCP server’s IP address – Mac OS X Hints

Posted May 7, 2012 By Landis V

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060124152826491

Shows how to find the address of the DHCP server that issued your current lease on a Mac.

Similar to ‘show ip dhcp lease’ on Cisco, ‘ipconfig /all’ on Windows, or one of… well, I guess I’m not sure how to tell with dhcpcd  OR dhclient under Linux.  Something else to figure out at some point.

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Filed in Links, Mac | Tagged:

How to print in black & white? [Archive] – MacRumors Forums

Posted May 7, 2012 By Landis V

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php//t-300332.html

Printing in black and white.  Probably would have figured this one out if I had looked around long enough, but it just seems to be more intuitive (to me) on Windows and Linux.  One of the things I’ve found most interesting about this experience thus far is, for the claim I’ve often heard that Mac is just simpler and more intuitive… for me, it’s not.  There’s a fair chance that that experience could change as I become more accustomed to the way Apple has laid out the environment, but as a crossover… it’s not that way for me 🙂

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Filed in Mac | Tagged:

I bought a Mac

Posted May 7, 2012 By Landis V

I recently purchased an older iMac to get some one-on-one time with the interface, just in case I ever have a need to know or the time and focus to work on a project I have an idea for that I would like to compile natively across several environments.  It’s a bit of an odd setup, probably especially for an iMac.  I have an existing el cheapo KVM switch that I use with a Windows and a Linux box, and I have a wireless keyboard designed for Windows that’s tied into that system.  Makes the keyboard mappings just a little more interesting.

So, from time to time, I’ll be posting things tagged with “useful Mac links” providing links or information I’ve found useful/interesting/annoying as I work with the Mac, from the perspective of someone who frequently gets under the hood on other platforms, prefers the shell to a GUI, and engineers IP networks as a day job.

A couple of interesting things I’ve run across thus far.

  • ‘ls –color’ is a non-entity on Snow Leopard’s bash shell.  I miss this one quite a bit.  It was a quick and easy differentiator of regular files, executable files, directories, and compressed files.
    EDIT: I discovered that ‘ls -G’ provides this functionality on Mac.
  • Windows Key + UpArrow (/DownArrow) appears to let you scroll in a Mac terminal with a Windows keyboard, and Alt + PgUp (/PgDown) appear to provide pagewise scroll, as opposed to Shift + PgUp/PgDown in Linux.
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Filed in Mac, Purchases, Uncategorized | Tagged:
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